I’ve seen her running from one end of Alki Beach to the other,
up Harbor Ave and back to Jack Block Park and the steel mill,
under the bridge and up West Marginal Way—I only know her
running, a plastic bag in hand, face dark from sun and the cold
because I think she’s always running. I think she never stops.
She might be running now and running always, got on her feet
one day and has never stopped. At least 12 years I’ve seen her,
and she looks the same, running back and forth along the shore,
winding the world’s clock, turning the axis with her running feet,
that momentum pushing us through the mist as she goes on
running long before we got here and long after we’re gone.
I watched for two hours as they fished a guy out of the sound,
a fire truck crane dangling a wire bed, a scoop to ladle him out
onto the cement of the boat launch parking lot, lights flashing,
no sirens, just careful retrieval, a brief attempt at resuscitation.
He was pretty gone because I think I saw the fire boat out there
this morning before dawn with running lights and spotlight cruising
back and forth from the loading docks to the ship lanes, so I think
that’s when he went in, and now he’s resurfaced and washed up,
but as far as I can tell there’s nothing left but to haul him off.
Because in one drop of blood you can detect cancer, diabetes,
liver disease, kidney function, bone health, white cell production,
lipids and cholesterol, and on and on, a laundry list of bio-details,
message in a system, systolic, homeostatic flowing, and markers,
chemical profiles of health as a common baseline of happiness,
the story of blood and how to read it, and who knows what more,
say, that it could tell of the drowned man and how his day began
and the way plans unfold in the moments before the next idea
pulses in, unannounced, a phantom lighthouse answer to the light
the running woman keeps alive in her running course, the way
at last they meet in that bright almost blinding head-on sunrise.
Douglas Cole has published eight poetry collections, including The Cabin at the End of the World, winner of the Best Book Award in Urban Poetry, and the novel The White Field, winner of the American Fiction Award. His work has appeared in journals such as Beloit Poetry, Fiction International, Valpariaso, The Gallway Review and Two Hawks Quarterly. He contributes a regular column, “Trading Fours,” to the magazine, Jerry Jazz Musician. He also edits the American Writers section of Read Carpet, a journal of international writing produced in Columbia. In addition to the American Fiction Award, his screenplay of The White Field won Best Unproduced Screenplay award in the Elegant Film Festival. He has been awarded the Leslie Hunt Memorial prize in poetry, the Best of Poetry Award from Clapboard House, First Prize in the “Picture Worth 500 Words” from Tattoo Highway, and the Editors’ Choice Award in fiction by RiverSedge. He has been nominated Seven times for a Pushcart and Nine times for Best of the Net. His website is https://douglastcole.comhttps://douglastcole.com/.