“Tom Petty, who died Monday, was tuned in to the blank spaces between our catastrophes and triumphs, when we are desperately trying to sort out what comes next. When we take to running.” ~ The New Yorker, October3, 2017.

It has been that kind of week and, it is only Tuesday.

“If you write it has it happened twice:…” this life of mine might be more complicated than I thought.

I was standing by the window that early morning, just like I did every morning in those years. The sky was often dark and cloudy, the window streaked with last night’s rain. In the evanescent glow from the street lamps I watched the same impossible nightly show…

These pasts remind me
that there are markers to follow,
Pathways in the foothills, the blowing grass, past misted lakes,
I am born Wolf.
I am so very tired.

Night slides into day on the ridge line,
Dirt and distance, dust and sweat
The spiders and the snakes, the dope driven demons of my nights are gone for awhile.
It will be all right. I will be all right. I am all right.

It is a new chapter
a new day breaking
it is always always darkest before the dawn
what’s yours will come to you

and, “It’s all over now
Baby Blue”-Bob Dylan said that.

If I don’t show up for the grunt work, work my way through the night snakes and demons, there is no dance to dance under the Ali’s lights. So it is on me to get well and get back at it.

It’s in the eyes. What it is varies from runner to runner but make no mistake: it’s there, and every ultra runner has it. Distance. Stillness. Fear. Acceptance. Exhaustion. Joy. Time.

“They don’t know,/ they can only guess” is how most mornings feel these rainy spring days. I’ve been sleeping badly for weeks, beset, it seems, by a rolling dream journey.

The zoo is always open. Until it isn’t.