The Road Writes Back: Cycling as a Form of Poetry

Last Updated: November 28, 2025

Quick Take: Some people write poems with pens. I write mine with pedal strokes. Long rides strip the noise away, leaving the kind of clarity you can hear in your chest. These are the verses the road gives me.

How Poetry Found Me on the Bike

Some people write poems with pens. I write mine with pedal strokes.

I didn’t set out to be poetic. I set out to ride. But somewhere between mile 30 and mile 70, between sunrise and sunset, I started hearing the road differently. Not just as terrain, but as verse.

The hum of my tires was meter. The climbs and descents, line breaks. The miles, stanzas.

Sometimes the words come on the ride itself. Sometimes they come when I’m lying in my tent or sipping juice the next morning. But they always come. Because long rides strip the noise away. What’s left is what matters.

Against the Wind and With Myself

Here’s one I heard once, rolling solo through West Texas:

No music but breath, no witness but sky,
My wheels turn stories no one can buy.
The heat says stop. The heart says go.
I answer both with miles and slow.
Each ride a verse, each verse a mile,
Some end in pain, some end in smile.

How Cycling Mirrors Poetry

• It’s built on rhythm. Your legs keep time. Your breathing marks the meter.
• It’s honest. A poem—and a bike—can’t lie. They reveal what’s inside.
• It’s solitary, but not lonely. You're alone with your thoughts, but never without meaning.
• It begins when you let go. Just like poetry, a ride flows best when you stop trying to control every line.

Ode to the Tailwind

And sometimes, the poems aren’t about struggle or distance. Sometimes they’re about joy.

You are the silent gift,
The push I don’t deserve.
I do not see you, but I fly.
Today, I am fast.
Today, I am forgiven.

Final Thought

You don’t have to be a writer to make poetry. You just have to listen. The road speaks in verses if you let it. And every ride becomes a line in a poem only you can write.

So next time you ride, try this: don’t track. Don’t measure. Just feel. Let the ride write you a stanza.

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Read Next

• Why I Prefer Riding Solo: The Freedom of the Open Road
• A Terrifying Night: Riding Into a Thunderstorm in Bowie, Texas
• My Lifetime Love Affair With Long-Distance Cycling

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I’ve ridden more than 150,000 miles — chances are, I’ve written about it.

About the Writer
I’m a 70-year-old long-distance cyclist riding 140–150 miles a week and writing the truth the road teaches me.
No ads. No influencers. No noise. Just real miles and real stories.

If this spoke to you, stick around.
The road keeps giving me stories — and I’ll keep riding until I hear the next one.