Marathon day

  As much as a vacant
  beach, for different
  reasons, like you 
  I feel an undying
  fondness for playing
  fields in bucolic
  settings. I like to
  walk them alone, in
  the early morning -
  real choirs, if
  of softer footing,
  breathing deep of
  lusher aromatics.

  We conversed in low whispers, 
  Conrad says, as if afraid to 
  wake up the land.

  I walk in measured steps
  such fields, as if before
  they are awakened, and
  sense a music that they 
  harbor of a raucous con-
  test, fitfully embedded in 
  a plush and loamy stillness
  that we constantly enrich. 
  Introduce a runner there,
  we change their rhythm.

  Stephen Crane, his contemp-
  ary, knew this possibility. 

Joseph Conrad

Youth

1898

Stephen Crane

The Red Badge

  of Courage

1895

op. cit.

Giorgio Armani
ribbed sweater

Luigi Ghirri
untitled field

Carl Hardorp

Ely Cathedral