My Visceral Specific: A Poem
It is gone now, but there is a decade of that world in me.
A world where the small sounds of spring like to creep in through the crack of a window.
Every spring, I heard it: the little chirps of black-capped chickadees, the haughty calls of crows, and the trundle of cars down slushy streets.
Every spring, a cool breeze came in through the crack of a window with an invitation to explore.
So I’d put on my running shoes and do a little calisthenic dance outside.
I’d warm up and test my hips and glutes and then sit down on the wet driveway.
I’d stretch my hip flexors and watch squirrels scrabble up leafless trees.
I’d get loose.
I’d get cocky.
I’d get ready to face the insanity.
—
People go on cruises for a couple days and talk about how they love to travel.
But I have run past and through almost anything you could see on a boat:
Blizzards at night, storm fronts in the summer.
The motion parallax you can see from blowing past red pines.
Patches of marram grass on the half-bowls of sand dunes.
Piers and lighthouses, dead ends and museums.
The doric columns of an amphitheater, friends walking toward an ice cream parlor.
Power plants, car exhaust, cattails, and coal piles.
Cottonwood trees and cotton seeds. The sick fog of a sandy breeze.
Light blue condos, leaning shanties, a festival full of people who want to be Greek.
Gulls that screech over the booths of an art fair. Pelicans that manage to fly with their pudgy bodies.
I have run through the entire city of Sheboygan.
But I have never been on that boat.
—
Let’s forgo any vague language when we talk about value.
What was wasted and was worth it can’t be set beside a ruler.
Length, breadth, depth, worth all depend upon the mood that’s
neither safely aloof nor broadly defined, but wildly immediate–sudden, even harsh.
It’s stepping in a puddle in the early days of March.
—
So next time I hear you were “grateful for the opportunity to travel to such a wonderful destination”, let’s talk.
Let’s talk about bare trees and tall grasses. Cattails and coal piles.
Heat that demoralizes you, chills that surprise you
On your way down a rural county highway bordered by red dogwood.
Let’s talk about running toward a heat shimmer on a windless day.
The heat rising up from the black asphalt.
The blood and rhythm of the run.
Your pulverized legs and your pulsing head.
Sweat rolling down your arms like you’re melting.
Let’s talk about stopping at bubblers every couple of miles to fight off chills.
Let’s look up at the strange arms of pylons that appear to be, in our suffering, alien structures of no prior invention.
And let’s look up in near-hopelessness at a sky that prevents total disenchantment from the entire pursuit
With little smears of cirrus in immense blue.
Let’s talk about running into Lake Michigan with our clothes on with no care.
Let’s talk about our dumb courage to suffer under a cruel sun and say that
None of this was wasted.
—
Let’s talk about bleeding toenails and natural painkillers.
Let’s talk about roadkill, the entrails of turtles, and life’s vicissitudes.
Let’s talk about red-winged blackbirds, dogs, and the territory they defend.
Let’s talk about the electrical hum of powerlines and the steely-eyed look of dangerous ambition.
Let’s talk about the worms that show up on parking lots after a rainfall. Let’s talk about taken chances.
Let’s talk about the shadow of grass that crawls toward a sunrise.
Let’s move only with the pure feeling of being.
Let’s jump down steps and cut through traffic.
Let’s race cars around a roundabout and stare at drivers.
Let all of us get reckless.
Let all of us smash records.
Let all of us be like Billy Mills.
—
Let’s talk about the madness of marathon training and laugh at “lazy” as a label.
Let’s gulp in all the scenery with the same steady turnover
And run toward one mailbox after another until the animal impulse to chase prey takes over.
—
Let’s talk about swagger at odds with shyness, faith in the midst of doubt.
Maintaining your pace til the end of the race and fighting and going all out.
—
Let’s talk about the self-belief we say never dies but then vanishes at a hill.
Let’s talk about hills in a mood to kill you.
Hills that obliterate legs and take your final glycogen because you didn’t eat enough pasta.
Let’s talk about the dignity and vanity of running as slowly as walking.
—
We won’t talk about careers or replace clarity with accountability jargon to reconceptualize existing frameworks.
I never allowed myself to feel empowered by my core competencies.
Instead, I had this.
It wasn’t everything, but it was real,
and none of it — none of it was wasted.
—
When work has pounded your life into the shape of a routine too tiresome for it to change, get in the car with me and we’ll go to Sheboygan.
We’ll go to the beach and stand facing the waves.
It will be a Sunday, in August, when it’s windy and the cotton seeds are just flying everywhere and gulls are hopping around for food.
It doesn’t matter how tired you are.
Your veins will flood with the pure feeling of being and
The simple impulse to run will come.
