"Paul Short Invitational: Bethlehem, PA"

It was a cross-country race in October,
too warm and humid, a few runners collapsed
on the side of the course like shot horses,
bleeding and humble, feeling the little death
rolling around their guts, as the rest of us charged
past like a herd of stallions, dream-like, holding on,
holding to each other without touching,
the heat packed in our throats, our feet
dragging sprays of dirt across the land,
between corn fields and rolling hills
lifting and dropping us like waves in the ocean.

In the sixth kilometer a stranger sidled up beside me
our strides finding a common rhythm,
and we ran as a pair, no longer strangers,
the grunt and gasp for air our only utterance,
galloping into the relief of shaded woods,
into the shadows cut out in front of us, into time
as time shaped itself around us and inside us,
and the mind gave way to the unexpected voice of the body,
the animal within us learning to speak without speaking —
and then he was gone.

It was later that day, driving home, when I realized
it must be this way that animals whisper to each other,
every drove and pack, flock and yoke,
ambling across the lush earth,
chasing the last light of the sun,
driven by a hunger grown horrible inside,
whispering without the debilitating maelstrom of words,
without past or future,
only sweat and flesh, the heart beating wildly,
alive and eternal.

"Wikham Park"

There are so many moments
where I've reached for my camera
to capture in a photo the million ways
that reality flowers in your presence:
what the photographer Cartier-Bresson would call
"the decisive moment"—

Like that day in Wikham Park, standing in the sunlight,
your eyes like two small paintings,
the simple colors of your black coat
on the green grass, the white tail of your dog
wagging like mad,
and the contrast of your dark hair
against your pale cheeks,
delicate as dandelion seeds blown in a breeze.

But today, staring out the window
at the taxis going down the avenue,
I realize there is so much life in you
it's impossible to capture. I've quit trying. 
Maybe life is not meant to be trapped
like some exotic bird.

Instead, my mind returns to the grassy hill,
when I stood with my hands in my pockets,
leaning into the bit of warmth
left in the cold light,
and I watched you chasing Layla,
your laugh hanging like a string of bulbs in the air,
and I watched the little girl in you come out
and wrap her arms around the world.

And I thought how like a sunset it was:
there forever and gone
at the same time.

"Primitive Rain"

I wonder what primitive man felt
the first time it rained.
A blue sky turned grey, bruised
and cracked open like a new mind,
a new consciousness of the universe
expressing itself in lush abandon,
with torn shards of cloud, blackened and jagged.
And now this wetness, a spackled blanket of liquid —
how strange, how exhilarating!
 
There must have been a first rain,
after man became conscious of himself:
for it had kissed his face, he’d felt it —
it was for him, for him!
Perhaps he would recognize it
in a moment of stunning awareness:
the ancient understanding of nature
having the same body as man.
For how could the rumble above be anything
other than the beating of his heart?
How could the rain, a broken-beaded necklace
of delicate drops, driven down from heaven,
be anything else, if not the tears
falling down his face?