It’s okay to lay here and not want to open my eyes
To listen to my heartbeat and feel blood pumping through my legs
It’s okay to admit that I don’t what to be here
At the side of the mountain, in the early pre-dawn stillness
What if I got up and ran through the fields – as fast and for as far as I could go in a day?
Where would I be? (I doubt I could outdistance this mountain.)
It would block out the sunset. And then I would feel the tug of the weight of the task
that I had run from, crushing any satisfaction about the field in which I have laid.
It is true that hope is but the dream of those who wake.
Yet, running is hopeless. It’s an abdication of duty.
And, now, it is time again to open my eyes and rise.
– Chris George
May 2020