Dawn Running
"The breaking dawn signaled time to wind down the writing and put on my running shoes. My morning jogs over dirt paths and along a field bordering woods under the brightening, expansive sky were themselves a primary and continual source of language and concepts for this book. I would see sunrise after sunrise reveal each season’s easy efforts of leaf and blossom or notice how the landscape became sparse and toughened under winter’s pale light, then return to my apartment with ideas I’d practically plucked off branches! I felt myself losing then finding myself by participating in this whole world that I was coming to love, tying into its wider gyre and spinning."
Runner
He runs
In autumn, with the leaf-crisp earth crunching
To the rhythmic roll from heel to toe.
In blank-faced winter, only crows and old snow
To keep him company; yet in their ancient
Glad bravado, he hears an unexpected triumph of ancestral
Dinosaurs; and not unlike one in his plodding gait, knows
The pain of those who still proceed by foot and bear their weight.
If severe enough, a twisted ankle or a nagging knee,
He won’t be here tomorrow, or a few days, or weeks,
Having learned something of what to fight
And what to walk around. But he’ll be back sometime beneath
A spring sky at first light, amber streaked,
The good black dirt beneath his feet
Wet and fragrant, dark harbinger of flowing sap and flowers.
Then summer, with the sweat of self an artist’s oils
Blending him into the canvas of his surroundings,
A single painting celebrating the gift of how mere matter
Came to have a mind to become flesh
And move itself through air.
Round and round, year by year,
Upon the same small plot of ground – pointless, some would say.
Meanwhile, the necessary retracing of steps
And orbits, a working knowledge of collaboration
And a spiral to his groove.
Prose is excerpted from Original Faith: What Your Life Is Trying to Tell You available on Amazon and other online retailers including Amazon UK and Flipkart (India) and by special order at bookstores (ISBN: 978-1-934611-00-5).
"Runner" is from the eBook Original Faith: The Crossing - Mystical Poems, Essays and Sayings available on this site.
Runner
He runs
In autumn, with the leaf-crisp earth crunching
To the rhythmic roll from heel to toe.
In blank-faced winter, only crows and old snow
To keep him company; yet in their ancient
Glad bravado, he hears an unexpected triumph of ancestral
Dinosaurs; and not unlike one in his plodding gait, knows
The pain of those who still proceed by foot and bear their weight.
If severe enough, a twisted ankle or a nagging knee,
He won’t be here tomorrow, or a few days, or weeks,
Having learned something of what to fight
And what to walk around. But he’ll be back sometime beneath
A spring sky at first light, amber streaked,
The good black dirt beneath his feet
Wet and fragrant, dark harbinger of flowing sap and flowers.
Then summer, with the sweat of self an artist’s oils
Blending him into the canvas of his surroundings,
A single painting celebrating the gift of how mere matter
Came to have a mind to become flesh
And move itself through air.
Round and round, year by year,
Upon the same small plot of ground – pointless, some would say.
Meanwhile, the necessary retracing of steps
And orbits, a working knowledge of collaboration
And a spiral to his groove.
Prose is excerpted from Original Faith: What Your Life Is Trying to Tell You available on Amazon and other online retailers including Amazon UK and Flipkart (India) and by special order at bookstores (ISBN: 978-1-934611-00-5).
"Runner" is from the eBook Original Faith: The Crossing - Mystical Poems, Essays and Sayings available on this site.
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