blue clay, a run in winter, nostalgia tinted trails..

i.

something akin to kerouac when running a trail, hardclay slicing through thin pine zips and the leaden arms of old oak, just thinking and kicking by the rainblack muds collecting tiny footprints out of the woods, trailside threshers in small leaf-eruptions, just thinking and kicking, crossing a footbridge, meditating ricepaper layers of poetic continuum, untangling my years on this earth into a ragged narrative, thrusting towards a meaning, discovering and forgetting, a constant rebirth of breath, of falsity and faith, an image whether goya schnabel turner or richter, inhale and exhale broken by a moment's scramble of rootbruise misstep, arch growls and eases forward towards next stride. a brief beat lost and stalled, like a cursor at the end of a paragraph, blinking.

deja vu at the sound of a train - the familiar, a promise in the sweetness of america, a rustle through the woods, quiet (but for depth of breath), listening to that distant train, a corso whistle, a snyder grind of track, a set of solo legs burning winter out of muscle and mind, the wet smells of pine / oak, coltraine birds spilling notes into air, the strangely full february air and the coldest morning yet in winter, 28*F at blue clay and no one else around. . . freedom to recall the coffee-and-burnt-oil tire stores of concord, the kannapolis trains pumping canon mills into the market before the fadeout and blight, the paintings of foscoe bedrooms where grandfather mountain slept, salisbury bridges of the wpa bridge overlooking lugubrious morning trains. . . luxury of memory, the luxury of forgetfulness.  the loss of language is transcendence into body.  

ii.

Thoughts of batting cages with josue, his questions, a pier, a quiet intention perhaps. Then the accident. Years later, the driver of that fatal vehicle is found responsible for the accident. Rasha, contrition. The unbelievable irony of time, sometimes a moment requires years to reconcile. A lifetime, perhaps.

iii.

and tonight, after work, the fog of downtown wilmington smells like something out of a dfw short, a mix of burning diesel and tattoo ink. . . . a strange smell for a surreal foggy night with the cape fear lapping up misty light under a partial moon. A werewolf's desklamp. An undertaker's dull light.  a writer's distorted view of things.