My Bike

The following poem was written by my 7th grade son for an assignment in his English class...it may or may not have made me cry just a tiny bit this morning. It captures beautifully what it is like for a parent to watch their tiny child grow up...and the bicycle is a perfect representation of that process. I know he didn't mean for it to be all that...but maybe that is the beauty of poetry and literature and its flexibility to represent so many different things to so many different people.

Love you Jake!

Bikes

My very first bike

The bike with the tiny seat

The bike I raced with my friends

The bike the training wheels finally came off of

The bike I crashed on multiple occasions

The bike that got too small for me

My second bike

The bike with the tires that never seemed flat

The bike that seemed to like crashing into things that would land me lying on my stomach

The bike that reminded me all too often that stunt bikes and mountain bikes are different

The bike with pegs

The bike I also raced with my friends

The bike that rode down to the snow cone shack many a time

The bike with tires that just wouldn’t inflate

My current bike

The bike that I rode to the library

The other bike that’s been to the snow cone shack

The bike with gears

The bike with a bell.