A Jog on a Rainy Day in Covid Times

 

It wasn’t about the jog.

It was about us, the park crazies,

who insisted on getting our park fix

despite the rain and despite

or because of everything else.

 

Caught by a heavy shower, we huddled,

distantly,

under the stadium roof: moms with prams

doing burpees and checking on babies,

an older woman doing careful stretches

and smiling shyly,

a man with earbuds dancing to some music

we couldn’t hear and doing pull ups,

 

and then, jogging past us

with a heavy shuffle and an open umbrella,

a grinning man, who sailed by in slow-motion

and looked at us as if to say

what craziness – all this!

and all of us falling in with the beat of that

craziness

craziness

craziness…

 

 

A Birthday in October

October earth, still summer-warm,

but moist and muddy

from the recent rain,

and then:

 

a sweet and oily scent of lavender,

a prickly whiff of drying echinacea,

a soggy smell of decomposing reeds,

a deep-red fullness of rosehip clusters,

a resin aroma of jack pines and blue pines,

a papery whisper of oak leaves,

a green dance of gingko leaves,

a sweet perfume of wet chamomile,

a harsh coarseness of the black-willow bark,

a tang of pine needles scattered on the ground,

and someone almost taking off on a hang glider.

 

All the herbs, and spices, and fragrances

mingling and combining into a fresh bouquet

of your evasive but steady presence

fifteen years after you left.

 

And you are still all around.