Thursday, April 15, 2010

Night Run

While you were watching tv, reading, tucked in
sleeping
I was breathing midnight air.
Legs stretch out ahead
sinful soul pounds pavement
hopes, dreams, lazy lies of the day
escape my mind like
stars moving behind clouds.

Streets abandoned but for the delivery driver,
the hooded figure walking a dog,
stoplights twitching.
I hear my breath, my footsteps, my now quiet conscience.
Two miles becomes four.

On such a solitary night
I feel the hearts of many.
Running in darkness, blurred by shadows,
faceless, nameless, free.

"The smells of ordinariness
Were new on the night drive through France:"
--Night Drive
Seamus Heaney/Opened Ground