Winter Mornings

Hasn't it been cold? The insides of my thighs are cold when I go jogging in the mornings. The hairs on my legs bristle, seemingly in the breeze, like Velcro. I kind of like that feeling, that exposure, there is life to it. The cold air burns in my lungs, and I cough, just a bit, until my lungs warm up to it, which doesn’t take long. Eventually it burns, just a bit, once I’ve gone the distance. My foggy head spins with the cold wind on my face, and is awakened all at the same time, as my feet go boof, boof, boof on the concrete. 

I start off slow. One foot in front of the other. I feel like I am never going to pick up speed, never want to, if you know what I mean. It’s rather stiff feeling, that commencing forward motion. Just keeping it going.  I know what that little engine that could was thinking. “I think I can, I think I can.”

I turn the corner into the main street and I clop, clop, clop along in front of the closed shops. I keep pushing, keep pushing. I am still creaking and groaning, even if I can feel my muscles warming, and my joints freeing up, warming up, feeling the pain turn to warmth, my stiffness falling way, my heart beating faster, my legs finds some sort of rhythm. 

I cross the first side street. I can feel the strength starting to pump up my thighs. I feel my feet falling into step, feeling easier, starting to feel free.

The fragile beauty of the sunrise makes my heart beat faster, as the day breaks, and the light rises all around me as if out of the ground.

The fresh air expands my lungs. I can feel it doing me good, invading every cell, pumping through me, giving me energy. I have picked up the pace.

The contained beauty of the dark, gives away to the expansive beauty of the light. I run through the veil as it lifts and the dark goes away, and the sky above turns that shade of blue that you only see at first blush in the day.

The sun breaks over the horizon and shines like an opened jar of warm honey tipped all over me. It shines down the middle of the road.

And suddenly the world expands, with a gentle woosh, well, not really a whoosh at all, more like a fffffffffff, as the air exhales from the dark of the night.

I’m running like a machine, over side streets, passed doorways, and delivery drivers, around people walking their dogs early. I am flying, nothing will stop me now.

I turn the last corner into the bottom end of my street and I start heading for home.