Once I went running at sunrise and a fox went running with me, keeping my exact easy pace, loping through the backyards of my neighborhood toward the sun as if in pursuit of that red. That was the wildest I’ve ever felt. I sometimes wonder if it was when the fox felt the tamest.
autumn night
the heat
from all my organs
.
“If you want to see Dad before he dies, come now,” my sister tells me. “You can’t believe the pain he’s in.” I hang up, make the flight reservations and pack. Then, jittery with nervous energy, I note that there’s just time for me to go for a quick run before I need to leave for the airport.
I put my cell phone in my pocket before I set off, in case my sister has anything else to tell me.
childhood summers —
he combs my tangled hair
painlessly
The sidewalks are coated with ice. I try to run carefully. But a cardinal darts from a branch hanging across the walk, a flash of red that pulls my attention into the sky. Suddenly, I’m on my back, pain in every part of me, afraid, for just a minute, to try to move.
But I force myself to my feet and set off running again, even faster now, despite the ice, because of the ice. I’m young, I’m strong, no cancer will ever worm its way into me and break my bones from the inside out. I’m about to get on a plane and rise thirty-five thousand feet in the air and descend, alive, a thousand miles away.
Nothing else can ever hurt me.
deep inside
the snowbank —
a cell phone rings
.
_______________________________
.
First published in Notes from the Gean 2:4, March 2011
.
.
a buck and a fawn …
ouch! I skinned
my knee!
falling heat
running becomes
hurtling
(See this post for an explanation of what’s going on here.)
Jane:
“This is something Buson used a lot because he, being an artist, was a very visual person. Basically what you do is to start with a wide-angle lens on the world in the first line, switch to a normal lens for the second line and zoom in for a close-up in the end.
“the whole skyin a wide field of flowers
one tulip”
– Jane Reichhold, Haiku Techniques
Me:
ten thousand runners
I stand alone
and look at my feet
on the horizon a freighter
with a box
with a man inside
reading Anna Karenina
once again
finding that sentence
forest full of
maple saplings
guessing which one will live
mud on the path
deciding to go through
not around
prairie in May
if not for these pebbles
I would go barefoot
run by maple saplings
breathing, and listening
to my son breathe
path forks
choosing to run
towards the sun
slow creek water
I stop and feel
for a heartbeat
running through the cemetery
pollen drifting
over gravestones
Red Dragonfly 