DEATH…

Catch me if you can.

            I know the shortcuts through my neighborhood’s creepy dark basements like             the back of my hand.

            I know where every hole in the golf course fence can be found.

            It wasn’t so easy to bring me down in our football games on Gale Place.

            I ran pretty fast from the cops in 1968 and never got clubbed.

Catch me if you can.

            In my final sleep I will be running, heart pounding.

            I once ran around Fresh Pond five times.

            I biked around Lake Champlain.

            I swam sixty laps in camp.

Catch me if you can.

            In my dreams you never grab me.

            I will awaken just in time.

            My mother will rush to the bed to comfort me.

            My grandmother will wipe the brow of her beloved “binty-nu”

Catch me if you can.

            I will run through fields of thistle, like I did that day in Putnam Valley.

            Hop from rock-to-rock down those crazy steep Adirondacks trails.

            Grab random roots to pull me to the peak.

            Wake to find a crack of morning light aglow beyond the summit.

Catch me if you can.


January 5, 2015


All written material © Bill Schechter, 2016
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