Satellites

I begin along the gravel track that leads to the woods.

Three crows, bereft of something to mob, harass each other under a clear, matte sky.

Crossing the bridge, the trees.

There’s peace here. Stoic consistency. Self-containment. Dedication to the simple cause of living.

A lot to learn. Things I need.

I reach out to them as I pass, stroking trunks and branches with open hands. The young ache towards the falling sun, the old sink back to the earth they came from. I make sure to acknowledge all.

Even when I’m not here I think of them. They bring me to ground, these trees with ghost arms, reaching from somewhere I’m yet to define.

I stop sometimes. 

Walk for a moment.

Listen. 

Sometimes I just stand, letting silence pool around me.

How different this is to what once I was. This life, this place.

I think back sometimes, to that alien world. To places when feet traced lines on concrete and sticky floors. Smiles flash in staccato lights. Waves of ecstasy are conjured from the air as I run.

I wonder.

All those lives brushed up against, all those orbits, falling in and out of chaos. 

Memories rise then fall. Names and faces swirl in the breeze. They become like spider’s webs, half blown apart by gales, torn by rain.

I plunge on, ducking into hidden paths.

Beech leaves shimmer in the shards of day, glowing like fireflies in the decaying light.

And I run now, faster, beneath intoxicated skies, to the places where streams meld and roots grasp.

I feel like I could belong here. And not alone, even though there’s no-one here.

Dusk comes with feline softness.

I have no torch, but it doesn’t matter. Sight is only one sense.

An owl calls from somewhere high and behind, then alights with vacuumed wingbeats.

Faster still, tracing lines of memory like arterial veins.

Some invisible bulk stirs, shifts. My mind is ablaze. 

Suddenly, in a headlong rush, all things are possible.

If you were to ask me the Why about running, this is it. This portal you sometimes find, cloaked in the ordinariness of a day, like a mystical secret swirled through space and time, just waiting.

Sometimes you find it, sometimes you don’t.

But today I do.

Night settles like a quilt, and I run into the cradling blackness. 

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