The Bicycle Lesson
For half an hour,
he was a few feet in front of me,
trying to tame the little metal beast,
jittery under the torrent of none-too-gentle
dos and don'ts coming from me,
his 6-year-old legs getting bullied by the pedals,
his hands on the handlebars fighting the side-to-side
spasms of the front wheel,
all four limbs wrestling with the fear in his mind.
Then, suddenly, he was 20 feet ahead of me,
then 50, 80,
the short sleeves of his oversized tee-shirt flapping like
fledging wings,
his neck and arms looking especially scrawny in the
horizontal lift-off,
hair gelled by the newfound wind into an
aerodynamic crown,
all of him flying down the promenade of the
dusky park.
The world has many lessons in store to replace
the things I’ve tried
to teach him through the years.
Just not this one.
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