September 7, 2025
the black rubber sole of my boot scraping along the ohio and erie canal towpath, which once ferried long flat boats up and down its length, now reduced to a meandering lily-filled sight as one walks through the cuyahoga valley, framed by steel mils and slag piles absorbing the right-sided noise from my ankle, never quite healed from jumping off of a playset in the dallas galleria, nor from last year’s overuse, nor from the three hundred pound ,am who tackled me in the basement of a jamaican restaurant last november, undoubtedly the same sound heard from these boots in paris, london, baltimore, dc, austin, dallas, new york, and so on. too the same pain in my left knee, bone on bone containing the exhaustion of the week, soft red breath floating out of my mouth, dissolving via brownian motion for the buckeye trees to absorb, last rays of golden summer sunset light filtering through its leaves – one could imagine the lambs’ wool clouds ambling behind them as they reflect in the same intensity as they did in davenport and austin, at once a cooler breeze blowing in. cooler days on the mississippi, warmer on the guadalupe. that light which just arrived leaving the sun minutes ago, a singular purpose to be absorbed by these quaking trees as energy, converting my gasps to sugars sustaining the tree through the coming winter, releasing oxygen blowing southward from the lake through the mining-flattened appalachians. where, as now, a stabbing pain in my right side under my ribcage. though this is temporary. down the path a bicycle rings their bell. the eerie shapes of paddlers filter through the sinister clouds in the water. a small electric shock crawls up the small of my back into my head radiating through my meninges. the skies open and the earth takes another breath. shabbat shalom.