Sometimes,
when I am out on the trail,
pushing,
for no reason other than to see,
it feels like I’m not even the one
making the steps.
Like I am somewhere else
and my body
is under the control of some strange force.
I watch
as this vessel takes me somewhere
that has no meaning to me yet.
Why is my body doing this?
Why bother?
Why go up the mountain and why come back?
Where is this all going?
When do the steps end?
Who makes that decision?
Since writing 4000s by 40, one of the comments I get a lot—which I never anticipated—is that forty is not middle age. During the AMC Awards night, where I had a table selling my book, a number of fifty-, sixty-, and even seventy-year-olds pointed at my display, nudged a friend, and laughed. “Look—forty is middle…
They caught my eye today
for the first time,
like tree rings of a tall oak—
well, if one was to wear them on its skin.
Fingers out,
reading the stories of the day,
they curled up from the wrist,
just beneath the light.
I stretched them and started counting.
Wondering
and maybe hoping,
they matched my number.
That there was a story here,
feeding upwards
towards the contour lines
of the knuckles.
I’ve entered that patch of life (late forties) where, I swear, every time I exercise, a new patch of gray hair sprouts up. I go for a run, and poof—another shock of dead stalks appears. After cardio I feel like a shriveled prune who can’t inhale water fast enough, and whenever I rub the back…