Poetry by Lewis Leicher
When I was five, I accidently learned how to ride
a bike without training wheels: those miniature rear tires
became loose enough to slide backward and lift up
from the sidewalk, no longer providing any training.
I wasn’t an intrepid kid … risk-taking did not come
easily to me (still doesn’t)—I’d put my faith
in those ingenious magic wheels to keep me safe.
They were removed that very day and thrown away.
At eight, a bigger bike gave me more independence:
trips into town with friends or to the public library.
In Fifth Grade, my bike and I delivered evening papers—
we had those then. At fourteen, I got a pale yellow ten-speed,
with hand brakes, and pretended to race. In my thirties,
I had a dark green bike with tough wide tires and many gears,
riding it in Central Park, along Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive,
and on vacations and long weekends in the Berkshires,
where my then-spouse and I rented tandems sometimes.
I started wearing a helmet when we all did—no more
wind-in-my-hair no-hands downhills. Lately, I’ve used only
exercise bikes (to save my creaky knees)—maybe I’ll try
some flat-ground rides or an e-bicycle with a small motor
to help me climb inclines. Still, in a trial-and-error life
of ever-better bikes, of pedaled spoke-and-wheel fantasies,
I will always remember the scaled-down no-frills one
that tricked me into growing up … at least a little.
Lewis Leicher has returned to poetry, now that he has retired, after an almost forty-year break (for which poetry has not yet forgiven him). During that break, he worked as an attorney, including for almost twenty years for WebMD. He has lived in San Diego since 2001 and, before that, lived mostly in and around New York City.