Once, in my breathless midst
of trudging many laps around
and around a track, sweat
drenching my shirt quite through,
a sometime acquaintance sneered
that I was running to perspire
myself all the way to immortality.
Gasping and depleted, I
quietly disputed his swipe,
but how else can I understand
the lure of all this light
as it bounces and sprays
glare from the midday sun?
My arms and legs thrash
through the chopping water,
eyes dazzling with starshine
when turned up toward breath,
down to the sunlit spine of black
tile on the bottom. An ellipsis
of white intercedes before
the dark returns, elevates
and transforms itself on the far
wall into a ceramic cross. Each
touch and turn complete one
more station of this pilgrimage
that repays the body’s passage
in renewed coins of breath,
of light, that seem as if they
could go on forever. Even though
they can’t, who wouldn’t want
to haul himself up, water draining
as his lungs balloon with air
and swell with a love of the
only life he has? Who wouldn’t
want to feel his skin aglow,
consider it a gift he would
travel for miles to bestow
gladly onto any child lying
warm in even the rudest of cribs
on the very day of his birth?
John Graves Morris earned his BA in English from UW-Eau Claire in December 1977. He is the author of Noise and Stories (Plain View Press, 2008). To learn more, visit johngravesmorris.org.