Running Back Roads

He ran back roads, untraveled
highways, deserted streets, usually but
not always in the dying sun of an ebbing
afternoon. He ran to grind out, to cleanse
the smell of prison that still clung, the
metallic taste of fear, despair, anger, rage,
the gray dullness and sameness that almost
but never quite suffocated.

He ran with hope, the pounding of his
running shoes indicating, signaling
movement forward, a progression
toward escape, a desire that his sweat
would excrete the poison within, the
poison poured into him, even if he
didn’t know its intensity or direction,
only that it was.

He ran until he felt the blood replace the
sweat, red drops spotting his white
wicking nylon shirt. He ran until he
knew that the taste, the smell, was
still upon him, the poison still within.
He did not anticipate that being free
would turn prison years into
a living thing.

      --From The White Cliff Poems

Photograph: "Wyoming Wind" by Nancy Rosback. Used with permission.
 
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