5:30 AM

Collingswood is dark
as I head out the backdoor,
down the porch steps and icy path,
to the lane where I'll start
without stretching, or motivating psychology.
I just go

to begin my run.

5:42 AM

I jog in a mouth of darkness
under a vaulted roof without stars.
Down its icy throat, and gullet
through all the neighborhoods it has swallowed.
Smothered miles of roads and trees, zip codes
of mail boxes and the collective tonnage of cars.
All of it defined in the sharp line of shadow
as slowly,

I come along.

Arms pumping, icy breath exhaust,
a perpetual machine in motion
disturbing things I can not see.
They make tremulous escapes
over unraked leaves, and winter dry sod
hiding from the sound
and stink in the darkness,
hurling barks and irate barbs

as my first pains begin, and three miles are gone.

5:57 AM

The air is now gray as each step discovers
sandy asphalt under my soles,
a Braille impression of this quiet town.
In time I trade the concrete road
for the lake path smells, Spring mitosis
and wintertime decay,
the biota of streams and the coming of fresh chlorophyll.
It assails me as I run,?that I am less than a footnote
in this world's narrative.
A single breath

against gray light.

6:04 AM

The legs protest this new tax of exertion. This pounding
upon muscle and bone.
The underclass of the body riots
with pain, and unveiled threats.
Of quitting, and crawling home.

I am a spitting automaton in ten degree weather
when I see the fox across the lake.
Rabbit in mouth, liquid silk in a sea of air.
It is life over death, a Prince in the dark.

How can I complain
when it does not
against the dark
or winter's gripe

My heart and mind dream of finding its animal will
and fool the body to go on.

6:14 AM

The low sun is in my eyes.
Fighting cramps I jog the lake path
back to the roads warm with sweat
and thoughts of finishing.

I am in the business of running now.
Nothing is thought of as money
before my rush-hour commute.
Only the economy of pace.
The change of stride.

Scaffolds of shadows darken the ground from houses and trees.
Able to see them I spare a thought
wondering who lives in both.
In our world what isn't moving

remains. Endures.
The irony magnifies me.
Born of protoplasm
four million years later
here I am running,
a mortal species, pronounced
in syllables of step

and stride.

6:25 AM

I am destroyed and rebuilt as doubt,
as molecules of sweat
and blood starved brawn.

I am lead and concrete
with arteries and lungs.

I am Frazier's ribs
against Ali's steel.

?I am David being destroyed by Goliath.
I am something profoundly different
than what left my home.

I am spent. Distilled. Refined.
Stronger through weakness.
A stray dog coming home by

6:39