after my father died infarctively in 1983/I resolved to strengthen my own heart/and starting july 4th of that year/ran a distance of at least one mile/at a pace at least as fast as under nine minutes per mile/every single day rain or shine healthy or sick

managing a streak of four hundred and twenty consecutive days/and in the summer of 1984/trained for and finished my first marathon

to keep myself running on a given day/i developed mental games and tricks/to subdivide and conquer a given goal distance

one game was called “candy man” and the simple rule was to pay myself a nickel for every telephone pole i ran past/and when the run was over spend up to that amount of money/on candy and snacks/at one of the many convenience stores operating under the name “circle k”

at that time I could eat all the candy I wanted and not gain weight/because i had a ravenous metabolic furnace

another mental trick was to turn myself into a rider of the rohirrim in the tolkien mythos

a messenger delivering urgent tidings to a safe haven called “wombwater”

and having delivered the message and bathed in the healing waters of a celestial womb i would turn back and head for home/running till there was a mile to go/then clopping on my non-hooves the rest of the way for cooldown

and since my run started at 19th avenue and indian school road/and wombwater was the frontage road just south of orangewood and also on 19th ave/my run became a walk at bethany home road/for a net running distance of four miles

and at that time four miles was optimal for my training

.

as a man in his seventies my mind turns now and then to mortality

and paul simon singing “it’s all gonna fade”

but i yearn for a reality in which i exit galloping/to reach once more the healing haven of wombwater

and be restored