Training Day 42 — A Run Across Carnegie Bridge

A run across Carnegie Bridge,
I see for miles.
The north
rock tow­ers,
Lake Erie
dis­tance. Under­foot
swans tack the
Cuya­hoga snow crust.

Art deco, over­head
eyes swad­dling Cleve­land,
steel carved in stone on
steel under stone.
Traf­fic
is light.

There is silence
even in my stride. The pace
a great muf­fler:
my girl,
her slow smile,
that dead-end job like
dish duty.

   now

   else
   where

wires in my calves
tight­en unstrung
rewind. That heart
beats—
   my
   heart?
—slow­ly faster.
The south is
a whole coun­ty
of peo­ple; none run­ning.

   Amen.
   Amen I say.

Still Sun­day, a pil­grim
east­ward, mantra of
foot in front
of foot
body bends to
shape the street
eyes on graf­fi­ti, backs
of bill­boards,
con­crete con­cen­trate
mouths for­get words
feet for­get miles

   This tang of street salt;
   this win­ter air.

          2.12.2006

---

I took a rather extend­ed hia­tus from run­ning due to the crum­mi­ness of the weath­er last week and the extend­ed crum­mi­ness of the side­walks and road-edges even after the weath­er crapped out. Yes­ter­day I woke up to snow, but by midafter­noon it had most­ly melt­ed and I did 7.5 miles in 70 min­utes, which is just a lit­tle faster pace than what I want to main­tain for the marathon. I real­ly got into the zone yes­ter­day and time seemed irrel­e­vant along with every­thing else. So I draft­ed a poem about it last evening.