The Rider

A boy told me

if he roller-skated fast enough

his loneliness couldn’t catch up to him,

 

the best reason I ever heard

for trying to be a champion.

 

What I wonder tonight

pedaling hard down King William Street

is if it translates to bicycles.

 

A victory! To leave your loneliness

panting behind you on some street corner

while you float free into a cloud of sudden azaleas,

pink petals that have never felt loneliness,

no matter how slowly they fell

 

Naomi Shihab Nye, Fuel: Poems (BOA Editions, 1998)