Even When I Run

Even when I run

I feel the fatigue of life

Feel the fatigue of all they took from me

From us

All the years I can’t run fast enough to catch

Because they’re not ahead of me

They're not behind me

They're inside of me

They're dreamseeds that wait in vain for the rains

They're dead end roads off Route 66

Leftover from another glory day

Old hotels and dance clubs staring vacant like broken promise

Behind Populux signs for a million me and Moms to find the money and

Bring a million possibilities

And visions we had to leave behind

The strip mall world moved on

And left us wrinkled and with our ungainly oversized dream innards hanging out

Beneath hard yellow flashing bulbs

Someone stopped paying the bill to light decades ago

And even when I run

I can't catch it anymore

I can't restore Route 66 to how it was

Or how it could be

I can no longer wave the magic wand of childhood imagination

 
And summon the laughing dancing crowds for us to play in

And my muscles have no future to drive to

It's just me climbing that lonely hill

And me running down in pain longing

For joy that my heart has shrunk and withered every passing fruitless season praying for

And me to know the memory of their mass and weight and strength

And how they carried me like a buck

Pulling at reins chasing freedom

I always had somewhere

And hope I never lost, but hid for safety

 
And now the crumbling fragments apologize and make their way from my hands to earth

At least I've saved as much as I could for this long

But I cannot catch up to relevance

And time and destiny

No matter how I outrun myself

I'm from another time, my people and memories

And long nights on endless roads

Are no longer running beside me

One by one they fall off and leave the race

And the only place I catch them

Is in the wind

The dark wind that speaks mystery

The playful sunny wind that whispers love and forever young

The gentle wind that settles down with me at sunset

The only place I trust enough to rest

They catch me when I stop and follow me

Even when I run

 - Colleen Lloyd
April 8, 2013 1:48 am
Hurricane, Utah

To all my friends who run

You are with me

And all my ones who have been with me

every step of my life

    

    

When you meet the Pacific, you will find the ocean peaceful and gentle. The waves rush toward you and absolutely throw themselves at you like over-enthusiastic children, caressing you, engulfing you in love. You begin to think of the ocean as your friend, and you accept its ecstatic embraces with open arms, falling gratefully into its bosom, trusting it to carry you a few feet further toward the shore.
     Then suddenly the waves twist viciously underneath you, grabbing your legs and shoving you along like some panicked crowd of humans would. Sometimes when you're under that swirling madness scrambling like a cat on a slippery floor, you feel that same thing you've felt on a thousand carnival rides or when the heat of summer erupts suddenly into a violent senseless game between two knived young men too close to you; the possibility of dying is thrust upon you unwillingly, and a frozen quickening of your heart informs you that the control you have over your life has just been ripped from you by a power which dwarfs you.
     And that is the romance of the ocean -- that fascinating, tempting, irresistible duality of pleasure and danger, of tranquility and passion, of eternal rhythm and unpredictable-ness, of life and death. The conflict of these great primal forces is what I see when I walk along the sand at the edge of this continent and search the horizon for truth.
-Colleen Lloyd
1985, Venice Beach, California

 I took that picture of the pier at Imperial Beack, California on my last visit last year. Thinking of Michelle, Jackson, Michael, family, all the people whose lives and destinies have mingled with mine over decades of cycles of tides and travel and seeking out dreams.