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Poetry

Tolstoy's Bicycle

The old man practices
outside his house
on snow-flume tracks;

he’s 67, learning now
how to balance
on a bicycle,
adding lines
to longer journeys
that have made him,
still make him want to try.

He stops, takes off his overcoat
and hangs it on a branch,
nods to his watching daughter
as the branch bows down.

He then re-mounts
and pushes off with sliding foot,
straightens himself,
imagining a pen
drawing a line across
a blank, white page
unaided by a hand.

Soon he’s writing letters
in the snow;
his daughter claps
at the giant ‘O’ he’s made,
catches him
as he comes back to the gate,
cold but happy.

I’ll write Karenina round Moscow
in the summer,
he tells her;
as he goes to fetch his coat
snow falls from the tree
onto his face -
he rubs it in
and laughs at nature’s joke;
he’s known for years how nature always wins,
but now he knows his pen would not
be falling over yet.

Bare Nibs

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Poetry

Tolstoy's Bicycle