Enough.
I drop from the pull
of miles, miles...into hot
skin. Sweat
trickles. It's like
a tropical disease, but this
is health. Bells.
Birds. The sun, clean
as a trumpet and I'm
sinking fast — my heart
my lungs, cantering still —
into a bay of sweet-grass.

Up there, beached
against a reef of cirrus
the half-moon looks like a shell,
a scarred ice-cap holding its own
in the warm stir of a day that has suddenly grown
immense.
              So this is what it means
to age, to lie stretched out
on six feet of earth
face to face with milkweed launch-pads
and the uncut hair of graves.
What did I expect, money? Parades?
I rub wild thyme between my fingers.
It smells like an attic, nights of summer smoke
like citronella, poultices and soap...

I watch the sky's mirage on the water
burr with the first breeze
in weeks. This is the best part
before it all begins again, traffic
and the hustle of downtown shops,
where the mind sprints ahead of the body
and the air is stuffed with dust.

Every morning, for months
I've come here to run
by the lake in misty light
down the same path, further and further.

Soon I will reach the end. I can see it —
a small white gate where the trail stops.

But now I just want to lie in the sun
between two lives, breathing.