wordiness, unbound

Wordiness, unbound to exorcise my demons for my own sake, for sanity’s sake.
I can feel spring creeping into my bones I see the mud begin to ooze from the ground
And the cardinals and blue jays have returned to take up their posts on my crabapple trees.
Winter is loosening its death grip upon the Midwest
At least for now, at least for the year.
I’m not quite ready for the season to come, I’ve been cocooned away in my glorified shack
feeding on my regrets and my disappointment.
Every winter seems to get worse my resistance is low, my desire is fading fast.
I need to get out and run about, shed some of this padding I keep accumulating.
I know what needs to be done, but the actual doing keeps eluding me.
My thirteen-year-old is running track this year, not quite sure who’s idea that is since he hates running.
Six weeks until his first meet, plenty of time for him to get in shape, plenty of time for me to get in shape.
I’m gonna ride his coattails, gonna draft behind him
And hopefully get myself into shape again. I haven’t run seriously in almost twenty years,
but still brag about the glory days, even if they weren’t all that glorious.
The thing about running, the reason I’ve been skirting,
Is that you can’t lie, can’t fudge the results.
Either you’re in shape or you’re not.
Your time is good, bad, somewhere inbetween.
I can’t face the reality of my own decline,
I talk such a good game, but haven’t played in so long.
My son is apprehensive, doesn’t think he’s fast enough, doesn’t think he can compete.
With running, you realize right where you are, no illusions,
You see what you have to work with and start from there.
You put in the time and the effort and you improve, and in the end you might just surprise yourself.
That’s the way it is with life, when you truly live, with your eyes wide open, living in the real,
instead of believing, wishing for some illusion.
I’ve become a semi-permanent resident of the daydream nation, wacked out on prozac,
wishing I had been bigger, faster, smarter, more, more.
When all I really needed was just to be me.
Whatever that entails, merely to start with where I am, right where I am and nowhere else.
I want me son to learn this lesson right now, not when he’s pushing thirty-seven--
carrying too much credit, too many regrets, living in a haze of desire and disappointment,
all the coulda beens and shoulda beens piled to the ceiling in a five-room shack just north of the state college.