Jimbo’s Boys, for Coach Jim Deane
We ran intervals
around Man Made Lake.
The sand there slows
time. Memory gives it some heat,
burns the legs a
bit. I’m 43 years old tonight,
and I clearly
recall your face,
the way your
neck turned, and that smile
you gave at the
end of our last interval,
our last gasp
of oxygen to get us across the line.
Keep moving, you said. Give me one more lap.
There was no
break here, not this time, just a turning over.
We turned the
legs over to the head, and then to the arms.
We turned this
ancient movement over to some stillness so deep
within us we
won't be able to name it years later.
Somehow, in the
sticky hot air, we found another lap,
one we didn’t
know we had. We found it to impress you,
or each other,
or some girl. We found it for our parents.
Or maybe even for
ourselves.
We found this thing because we had to,
because we were
Jimbo’s boys.
It changed
something inside us, that last lap.
The air leaving
our lungs was newer, the blood richer.
We were
different people, full of hope and possibility.
We carry that
last lap with us, and we find it in places
we never
expected, places where we need it.
We find it when
we realize we’ve lied to ourselves too long.
We find it on snowy
rivers, in detox cots and prison visiting rooms.
We find it when
we bury friends and family
and when we hear
our boy’s first cry, that first breath of life.
We find it in
hotel rooms when we think our run is over,
when we realize
there’s a new life waiting outside the door.
We find it on moonlit
midnight runs covered in soft rain
and in divorce
courts and car accidents and doctor’s offices.
We find that
last lap when we most need it,
and we learn to
carefully unwrap this gift
you
helped us discover, the gift of being one of Jimbo’s boys.
