The old high school track,
cinders deep and dusty with the dry summer.
I'm finishing up, cooling down.
It's dusk, hot and humid and still.
I move the air aside with my body.
I have left my image here so many years now.
I ran here before my sons ran here,
and with them, and now alone, continuing,
always continuing no matter what.
I ran here before this track was a track,
when it was only a white line
in rough grass around the football field,
a few cinders, sand in the pole vault pit
where my sons played while I ran--
always imagining the cheering thousands
in the weathered old bleachers
I never remember as being new.

I jog a last lap, walk a mile, lingering
in the deepening dark, reluctant to leave.
I have run very well. I am not injured.
I am a good tired. But most of all, the moon,
as huge and full as a moon can get, balances
on the edge of the high school roof.
No sound but for my feet on the cinders.
This is as perfect as it gets.
My life is laid out in these lanes.
Every breath that really mattered
has been breathed here. So many steps
per each inhalation/exhalation.
The balance and symmetry of that.

I could not ask for more than to finish
another workout on this old track, the moon,
like all the bright white spotlights of my dreams,
highlighting my body, making me the star
in this black and white movie of my life:
the famous track star past her prime
who has come back home to run again
where it all started, the bleachers
full of ghosts, her sons, little again,
playing in the jump pits while she runs
and runs, her life unwinding mile after mile,
moon after moon.
This is all she wants:
nothing to change,
never to die.