Running Through Cedar Pass at Sunrise

Seeing Flat Top Mountain 
this morning, its cold peak 
a paint pot of orange and rose,

I’m reminded of reading 
Wordsworth as a sophomore 
in eastern Idaho, when every

spontaneous overflow 
of powerful two-hundred-year-old 
feeling made me yearn to tear shirtless

through the wilderness
just beyond the undulating lava plain
outside the library window. 

I wanted the world for my backyard, 
a garden paradise where my poems
took roots and sprouted branches 

with leaves so green they inspired 
more poetry to spring from the earth.
And I wanted you sitting beside me

on a picnic blanket, congratulating
yourself on falling in love 
with the shirtless poet whose poem

was the very tree giving us shade.
But now, as I approach a steep hill
and feel a dull ache in my right calf,

I mistake Shetland ponies for sheep
and wince at the unfamiliar warmth
of manure in the air, sure signs

our backyard goes no farther
than the vinyl fence dividing
our property from the neighbor’s.

And I know my poems have never 
become trees, but you do read them, 
grateful for my day job and yours.

SCOTT HALES is an avid runner with a PhD in English from the University of Cincinnati. He works as a writer and historian for the Church History Library in Salt Lake City. His writing has appeared in The Edgar Allan Poe Review, Religion and the Arts, BYU Studies, and other journals. He has a goal of running all major marathons in Utah.