A Midnight Poem

Are you into poetry? I’m not, really. But every once in awhile, I will pick up a book of poetry and find myself surprised again that I don’t read it more often.

This week, I picked up Nikki Giovanni’s Bicycles: Love Poems, and found a gifted writer whose voice resonates with me. (She titled the collection, Bicycles because "love requires trust, and balance".) I flipped from page to page, which is my standard way of perusing a book of poetry. Among all the great poems in the little book, I keep reading and re-reading -

Bicycles

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

Giovanni, Nikki. “Bicycles.” Bicycles, Love Poems. New York: HarperCollins, 2009. 29. Print.