Confession to make. I am usually an extremely conscientious educator of short people, but the last two days, I have been encouraging an unusual amount of "sustained silent reading." Leaves time to sneak peeks at Nikki Giovanni's new book of love poems, Bicycles. Even read a few to the kids. Because this is love in all its worthy forms from familial to friendship to community to romantic to erotic and back again. The book opens and closes with poems about the tragic Virginia Tech massacres, the campus where Giovanni teaches. Both poems remind us that "no one deserves a tragedy." But it is in its depictions of romantic attachment that the collection appears radiant with its message that love delivers transcendence.
"Bicycles: because love requires trust and balance" aptly serves in lieu of a dedication. Beautiful thought for the upcoming commercialized celebration of love. Just read the title poem to find the collection's appeal:
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