Run

Today on my run I saw two men in khaki and camouflage colored pants and T-shirts taking cell phone pictures of their two dogs sitting calmly over 4 or five dead ducks. Or maybe they were dead geese.

Last week on my run I saw a bunch of Union Army soldiers drilling in the high school parking lot.

Once while running Molly and I encountered a couple dozen army reservists running in the opposite direction. Do you think they moved aside for two ladies in their path? No, we moved aside (into the roadway, if I recall correctly) for them.

I don't really like running, but it makes me feel less old. It would make me feel even less old if I could run in cool running clothes. But that never works out. Either the cool running clothes are uncomfortable, or washing makes them shrink into an uncool shape, or they are too revealing or age-inappropriate to buy. It may be that God just wants me very, very humble.

Here is my poem about running.


Run

I’m not a runner.
I just run.
It makes me feel like
someone who runs.
It makes me sound like
someone on the preferable side
of the Hill.

I don’t like the sweat
or the windedness
that gets others high. But
I do like the moments
when the music captures the stride,
stretches it out,
and holds it for awhile. And

I do like the sweet, smooth, and sharp things
that stop me:
The blood-red tree,
the shimmering thread of barking geese,
the breath of late-blooming mimosa
I have to search the fence-tops to find.


Kim Brandt, October 18, 2008