FOUR LAKES

                     

We run around four lakes. 
Tired legs connect them
with the meager help of muscles thrashed on granite faces
not a few hours earlier.
We’ve been
busy bees collecting pollen
for the honey of ascension,
or the hum of truth in still moments,
somewhere between a delayed lunch, and a morning coffee that hits the belly deep
enough to get us up and out, and up again. 
 
Legs which shimmied fear now ebb into the rhythm
of a safe request:
roll along, dodge the roots
wrapped in the pores of tree-trunks.
This is why I run.
To ease into the up and get carried up in the down.
To forgive myself for how I couldn’t
I just couldn’t.
Like a lost swimmer, who undulates with a rhythm
she didn't anticipate, and now depends on
to buoy her up,
as her last breath approaches the precipice
hung between how much she must to relax
before letting go of too much.
So too do I move, so too do I try on trust,
and thrust it off.
 
But my relief comes sooner since
the only tide that tugs
is the light waving through the branches
while dusk comes late, and I’m late again
always late,
hiccuped up and out, ever-desperate to catch up
to the specter I’ve collaged with memories of myself.
Since what we once were always remains
the potential of what we could become
and can never become
muddled in hope and I know.
 
And time once again billows, shoves me forward
buoys me up,
drops me at the end
just as I realize I will never be done
and as hard as it once was, as I swore it would get
there’s never a real memory beyond a timid touch
of the winded that eradicates all outside
the bottom of the last hill, and the top of this one.
Only glimpses, and a fondness for the knife come up
until it’s back in my throat.
Like a lump of a bite I can’t swallow
it needs the heavier pressure of another
 to carry it through.
 
Our body knows what’s best for us and what’s not, after all.
But
my exhaustion does not always have the pillow of trusting one’s self
to rest its head on.
It’s always been impossible
to swallow things whole,
or remember what whole felt like,
after all’s done and run.
I’m still left with that promise
I gave myself for the future
which I’m up against now
always up against
that lump.


                              Ranae  Scott




















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