Great Blue Heron

Catalogue of delights: 12

It’s lap one and already I’m questioning myself. My knees are talking to me like the old wooden floorboards of a house that has endured a million greasy footsteps while the cool Spring air has learned how to burn like hot coals in my lungs. The sky is so blue and cloudless so why don’t I just stop and walk and enjoy the vastness that is this life my life and oh my god my bed how I miss it so! I want to emerge like a butterfly from his cocoon and be changed, more powerful, but I do not want to change.

The sun is staring me down on lap two. Go find someone or something prettier to look at I yell at him. He laughs in response, knowing that he will always be a constant companion. Dust has gathered on the new shoes I bought just for this occasion, and I curse at the ground for being too damn dusty. What are you running from? Maybe I’m running toward something. What is all this work for? For me, for the work itself. Why don’t you have any answers? Because I’m still searching for them. I want to be a butterfly and I don’t know how to be a butterfly.

Suddenly she’s there on lap three. I do a double take to make sure she’s real. What are you doing here? You don’t belong here. Where do I belong? My legs continue to propel me forward but my body remains twisted toward the heron. She’s standing as still as a statue, scanning the field, searching for her prey. I think of butterflies and Mary Oliver’s Wild Geese. You do not have to be good. / You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. So much is moving in her lack of movement. You only have to let the soft animal of your body / love what it loves. I round the bend.

Lap four comes around and I’m feeling thankful for endorphins and the kind of ingenuity that led to their discovery and hence my own. How little I remember of neuroscience, but she’s still there, my winged muse. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. I recount the year’s achings and yearnings, my desire for the kind of certainty I sought through Ellie and her swaying crosshair in The Last of Us. I think of Abby, that bitch, and Joel. Love makes a fool of us, and vengeance too.

I end my run and take a final look at the heron. She is a walking invitation for the imagination. She is a suburb brought to life. She flies away, seconds later. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, / the world offers itself to your imagination. What do you think Mary Oliver? Change doesn’t happen in the blink of an eye, but sometimes everything does change all at once. I dust off my shoes and run another lap.