Allen Grossman

[from Allen Grossman's The Woman on the Bridge over the Chicago River, New Directions, 1979]

The Runner

The man was thinking about his mother
And about the moon.

                              It was a mild night.
He was running under the stars. The moon
Had not risen,
                      but he did not doubt it would
Rise as he ran.

                      Small things crossed the road
Or turned uneasily on it. His mother
Was far away, like a cloud on a mountain
With rainy breasts. The man was not a runner
But he ran with strength.

                                    After a while, the moon
Did rise among the undiminished stars,
And he read as he ran the stone night-scripture
Of the moon by its own light.

                                            Then his mother
Came and ran beside him, smelling of rain;
And they ran on all night, together,
Like a man and his shadow.

Woman on the Bridge: Over the Chicago River : A Book of Poems