Running Like a Woman With Her Hair on Fire

Not Untrue & Not Unkind

Hunger

After the Earthquake: Poems 1900-2000

                                                                    

TRAINING FOR THE MARATHON (Inauguration Day, January 20, 2009)            The stretching, warming, chanting We can, we will! All of that counted as very little.  All our bluster and burn, amid stops, starts, pauses, sprints� it all came to nothing.  We ate our health foods and sang our nutritious songs to a world that first listened then turned its back in disbelief as we changed mid-race from running shoes into boots, changed our running clothes to armor. The weather was perfect, the crowd lined the streets and we ran, ignoring the crows behind us, the falcons in front of us.  We ran, some of us dropping� sick, dead, exhausted� we ran while reporters took the comments we made through expelled breaths, our swirling egg whites in the cold air. We were obese with war, laden with bloodsport and violence. We trained in murderous lanes, in torturous gyms and hoped for victory, prayed for victory. When it came, it came on the soft mittens of grace. It came on the lids of eyes that knew pity and pleading. It came on the blistered heels of runners who moved through loss as if it was only a bad dream. We won.  We won.  And what now�? Choking on dry prayers, vision obscured In ashes all around, falling like snow. We won. We won.  It is our salvation moment. Now, interrupting this silent deliverance, is an immense sound:  a great chord strikes, and now a new wind rises to blow the dust from our mouths. A sweet rain falls to wash the sting from our eyes. Glory says the wind. Glory.  Oh Glory!

                                         

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