When I Run: A poem

When I run I feel like I could run forever
         The world is sunlight and flowers---
a grand panorama of humanity and life.

When I run I feel like the ground beneath me
         disappears and my body is a machine.
There is nowhere else I want to be,
         My thoughts are not on things I've done wrong,
past mistakes, present worries, anxieties or how much I miss
        the people I have left behind or who have left me.
   

I am one with the sun and moon.
         I am part of the great book of life
and I can contribute a page.

When I run I am lost in my world
       The rest fades away like dew on grass,
I only feel the sun on my back, the wind in my face,
       the rain on my neck, the fierce cold, the soft snow,
the road, the trail, the hill up ahead.

When I run I am fully present
I am not in the past or future.
I am part and parcel of the wildness of life.
I am a body and mind as one----
     nothing I feel is borrowed. It is all me.

When I run I am not running away from things.
        I am running towards a better tomorrow----
full of promises, happiness and dreams.

I can fully believe in my heart--when I run---
    that things will finally work out,
that I am destined for more than I think,
    that the world is my own.


I am not only me. I am the child being tucked in at night safe. I am the hungry girl being fed. I am the woman laying her head down on a soft pillow at the end of a long day. I am a hot bath, a comfortable shoe, a long-awaited dinner with friends. I am comfortable and comforting. When I run I think of my family, my friends, the love I have given and give now, the love given to me and given now, my good fortune at having enough to live a good life, my freedom from addiction, from abuse, from being a stranger in a strange land.


These...all these things......happen when I run.

Heather Rose