"Runners"
By Joseph Hesch
You're running again.
Are you afraid of something
or someone? Don't know?
I used to run, too.
I hide now.
I've tons of debris
behind which we can hunker.
If not, we'll build walls.
Did that, too. Still do.
Sometimes I use walls of silence.
They're all soft and cold.
Other times it's noise,
all hot and sharp. They ward off
attempts at contact.
But running's okay
if you've got the energy -
the fight or flight thing.
One thing I found out
about running is that it's
almost never to…
it's 'most always from.
The course we take tends
to begin and end
in the same damn place,
like a Mobius loop,
where we begin outside,
get down inside and
then end up back out
where we started.
We're left wondering
not so much how we
got there, as why. That's when
runners get scared again.
That's why I have to
ask, as you begin your trip,
this time. Do you know?
What are you running from?
Check the rear-view. That's right.
See that too familiar face, don't you?
But it’s not mine.
Pulled this older one up after reading my friend, the wonderful Canadian poet, Heather Stewart's poem "Walls." We build our own walls all the time even if we don't know how to stack one stone atop another. Sometimes these walls come down, sometimes they get thicker and higher. They protect us, they separate us, they keep us together. They are in the nature of man and woman.
Perhaps I'm biased, pleased to have inspired,
ReplyDeletebut I think this is one of the best one's you've posted so far. So real and raw.
"Sometimes I use walls of silence.
They're all soft and cold."
Excellent.