On morning runs o’er fields of green,

Where the hills rolled high and low,

When the sun’s slant glazed with honeyed light,

and the dew was all aglow,

 

We’d leap the gilded gullies,

And laugh when splash we did,

Watch flaring birds in cursive flight,

‘fore answering a challenger’s bid.

 

Not just a surge or press of pace,

Gauntlets of heart and lung,

But the queries that once did fabulists ask,

Whether in rhyming tone or sung.

 

The ones that spoke of purpose,

Asking why, and when, and how,

Questions that had no finite truth,

But in whose lee there lied the Tao.

 

So with the wind a close companion,

We’d summon with full resolve,

That supplicant’s tool called effort,

As these riddles we sought to solve.

 

And afoot we’d take on such mysteries,

Even coming to affable accord,

As how to measure a life well-lived,

Without reduction to prosaic reward.

 

There was enough in just the doing, we thought,

The prize in the strides we took,

Adding in sum beyond their measure,

That of candle, bell, and book.

 

Yet in the lessening of our pulsing gain,

As our hearts and lungs retreated,

The hollow chamber of the now stilled air,

Made our wisdom feel depleted.

 

Still, we never diminished our searching,

Nor abandoned our explorer’s cause,

As we sought the fullest expression,

Of our sacred native laws.

 

Ones we needn’t be reminded of,

To hold in close compliance,

Ones all men could live well through,

If accepted with a full alliance.

 

But such is not the world’s way yet,

Nor perhaps was it ever meant to be,

Thus we witness the continuing contagions,

Men’s blind spots don’t allow them to see.

 

Still, such musings are ones worth sharing, I think,

If only to indulge the few,

 We congregants who on our early morning runs,

Seek an alternative to Sunday’s pew.

 

END

(Re-posted from October 2014)