What Do You Need When You Walk
Forty Miles in + 100 Degree Heat
water
lines of cloud
a blue-gray sky like old skin
an understanding of things that set us on fire
Hike
I cannot do this alone, but I do,
the hand a marvel of muscle, skin, bone and tendon.
Spread out your fingers ten times and you are probably not autistic.
Make a fist you cannot let go and you probably are.
Everyone has debt.
Even an infant owes its mother for each liter of breast milk.
It’s a hard debt to pay, but it’s doable.
Like a forced march through the slime of day,
somehow it must be done,
and so I walk on, one step at a time, my feet salt and brine,
my hands working themselves into an Aspergers moment.
This too is debt.
When I am finished, I will have one less bill to pay.
| Copyright © 2013, 2023 by Michael H. Brownstein Michael H. Brownstein’s volumes of poetry, A Slipknot Into Somewhere Else and How Do We Create Love?, were published by Cholla Needles Press in 2018 & 2019, respectively. |
Michael, my wife's sister-in-law in San Juan Bautista, California, swears by Jim Ostdick, the author of Palomino Nation: My 2016 Crazyass Walk Across America (Amazon). Jim was her good neighbor and friend before his untimely, recent death. On the back cover of Palomino Nation, he says:
ReplyDeleteIn 2016, I celebrated my 65th year on Planet Earth by walking 3,322 miles from Cape Henlopen, Delaware to Point Reyes, California. I met some of the kindest, most generous, and funniest people in the country along the way. I saw and felt firsthand the amazingly diverse American landscape. Plus I got an intense crash course in the history of the Old West reach across America.
I learned a lot on this trip about myself, my continent, and my culture. Come with me to see what it‘s like to experience America at three miles per hour.
For me, a high line of “Hike” is “Everyone has debt.” We owe something back for everything we’re thankful for, and attempts to evade our debts by shirking thankfulness lead to a barren, desolate life. My life has been enriched by the mountain of debt I have owed to pay back.
ReplyDeleteWhen in doubt, take walk in the woods and revigorate who you might be, who you are.
ReplyDelete