I'm not a power walker ... I don't pump my arms like a windmill ... my legs aren't a blur ... and the only time I pass anyone is when they're going in the opposite direction.
But I do walk.
Mornings are best. I've found, If I walk in the afternoon ... especially if that means missing my nap ... I'm a grumpy walker ... and I have more than the usual difficulty in maintaining a forward motion. I just don't seem to have as much energy.
So the morning it is.
Well, there I was ... walking ... actually, struggling a bit on the uphill climb during a morning walk out in Illinois. Although we were on vacation ... particularly because we were on vacation ... I was out early for my daily walk.
Summertime. Southern Illinois can be pretty steamy then. The air gets heavy, the legs are laboring, the lungs struggling ... and there I am (puff-puff), trying to make it up the hill. And then ...
But let's go to the poem:
Early Morning
I'm walking along, enjoying the prospect
of maybe making it all the way to the top
of a stubborn hill, when three young ladies
in very short shorts go legging it past me
and out of sight, as though I were standing
stump-still, but I really can't help admiring
the way they've crested the hill, left me
there, still laboring up the slope, recalling
a time when I might have overtaken them,
instead, and gone breezing past, but now
I feel my legs flagging, beginning to burn,
and I'm wondering if I can reach the top
(please be still, my thudding heart), and if
I do, whether I'll catch a glimpse of them
while I'm struggling to catch my breath.
© 2007
(received third place award in 2007 Dayton Metro Library poetry contest)
***
Today's word: thudding
Afterthoughts ... in response to your comments:
Hey, welcome back, Helen! I'm so glad that was a short hospital stay, and hope the road is smooth and gleaming ahead. You are so right about those hills ... and your reaction to them ... then ... and now. I have much the same history ... hill-wise ... having grown to prefer just to look at hills ... and confine my walking to those easy, level places ... something like malls? Well, yes, something like that. Regarding your P.S., I would've have guessed that your smile was mainly at having that hospital episode behind you ... been there, done that, too.
2 comments:
I'm glad to get back to the Chosen Word. I just wrote a long, what I thought was humerous note--at least had a smile when I wrote it...that went off into the Land of Lost E-Mails. I've been in the hospital since Wednesday...and it's always...one more experience...but one I could have done without. I was there because I was extremely dizzy (no comments from the peanut gallery.) I didn't see a poem in it--nor a picture that begged to be painted.
I was just reading the your poem about not dancing on your toes...first...and want you to know :) that you are the kind that step on toes, when dancing, lsounds like--or possibly make girls step on yours.
Now about this one...it's another "been there, done that" one. I was one of the girls in the short skirts, and then before I could blink my eyes, I was the one struggling to climb to the summit on the ones in Southern Illinois.
We had one of our H.S. reunions in a building down in the "holla", or some say "holler", of these hills. It wasn't so bad going down. I doubt that we will have it there again. In the poetry and watercolors in my mind and dreams I can climb them without even getting out of breath.
Hope all are well on the other end of this site. Helen
P.S. I didn't mean to sound cocky in the other comment. I meant that the smile was because of getting out of the hospital...not anything I had written. Sometimes I know what I mean, but it doesn't always come out that way. Sorry! Helen
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