Bicycle Poetry

Nikki Giovanni is Professor of English at Virginia Tech in the USA.

In her book of poems, the bicycle is a metaphor for life. The wheels represent tragedy and trauma, because they're always there on the bike spinning. Falling and pain is inevitable as you learn to ride a bike.

In an interview with Bill Moyer, Giovanni says, "When we see the messengers on that bike, that's just trust and balance. They just say, 'I'm coming at it. I don't care if the cars are going to swerve, I'm ...' It's beautiful watching them on their bicycles. But we do that in our relationships. It's the same bike. We are continuing relationships through trust and balance."

"Bicycles" by Nikki Giovanni from her book Bicycles Love Poems

Midnight poems are bicycles
Taking us on safer journeys
Than jets
Quicker journeys
Than walking
But never as beautiful
A journey
As my back
Touching you under the quilt

Midnight poems
Sing a sweet song
Saying everything
Is all right

Everything
Is
Here for us
I reach out
To catch the laughter

The dog thinks
I need a kiss

Bicycles move
With the flow
Of the earth
Like a cloud
So quiet
In the October sky
Like licking ice cream
From a cone
Like knowing you
Will always
Be there

All day long I wait
For the sunset

The first star
The moon rise

I move
To a midnight
Poem
Called
You
Propping
Against
The dangers

Via Cyclelicious