Something I wrote after Zelda's Sunday night. Needs polishing but I think there's something good here:
Wednesday mornings now I go running
almost a year now
not far, about three miles, halfway out then turn and come back
(out downhill, back uphill)
nice paved path, on pleasant days I pass moms with strollers, old people out walking
before I turn around and run back I turn off into the woods for a few minutes, along a trickle creek
sometimes, right about there
I feel him running with me
my grandfather
I know he was a runner when he was younger
before I knew him
before a war wound, before old age
but I know he ran like this, felt the legs pounding the earth, the earth pushing back, the alchemy of motion, breath in and out like the tides
Sometimes when I run I feel like melting wax
the stiffness of my anger becoming flow
in the alchemy of motion
I know that anger was in him
His stiffness, his stern judgement
I wonder if his melted too when he ran
When I get tired I run for him
I run for my mother, his daughter
sometimes victim of that anger
sometimes, when she was my age, a runner herself
sometimes I am running for these ancestors
connecting the generations
through the alchemy of motion
if I keep moving
the surface tension will hold us all up
if I keep moving
the wind will give us lift
if I keep moving
the chain of a thousand generations streams out behind
if I keep moving
they all live in me
through the alchemy of movement
they all live in me