Archive 02/04/09 - (2)

   

The Stairs

                                                                         

This late afternoon, following an hourlong workout

In my office building's fitness center

(Where, seven days a week,

I take a break from my love-labor of composing poems),

I trudged upstairs, to my suite — forty-three steep steps —

Panting, limbs exhausted, feet aching,

Lactic acid having depleted my reserves against fatigue,

Holding sway over my sixty-seven-year-old body,

No matter that I've fought to stay in shape.

 

And as I climbed those three flights of stairs,

I couldn't help but be reminded of my days at Yale,

When I rowed freshman, then varsity, heavyweight crew,

Devoting a part of each winter afternoon,

When the Housatonic River was frozen solid,

To running, three times, nonstop, all nine and a half flights

Of the Payne Whitney Gymnasium's unforgiving stairs,

Believing myself as indomitable as Prometheus, Zeus,

Refusing to foresee the me I'd be, fifty years hence.

 

 

 

 

 

02/04/09 - (2)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
       

 

 
   
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