Run Training
an hour before sunset
dogwalkers lope
out the Weaslehead
as I run in
my shadow plows
the advancing path
last spider of the year
scoots for cover
shivers of feathers
in poplars
puff and chip
air musty with
willow
tints of dust
necks straining, stretched
three determined ducks pull
last light over the river
four deer, no five
pose above scrub
ears on my exhalations.
If you looked at me
at a solid 8 km
even just glanced
you’d see blue
perfect power-blue
haloing my body.
~ Juleta Severson-Baker
Juleta lives in her hometown of Calgary where she writes, teaches poetry and performance at the Mount Royal University Conservatory, works as a birth doula, and raises her two children. Her poetry has been previously published in All That Uneasy Spring (a Leaf Press chapbook, ed. Patrick Lane), the journals NoD and Freefall, and online at Verse Daily. In 2010 she won Freefall magazine’s 20th Anniversary Chapbook Contest with her collection A Hundred Pelts. Her first full-length manuscript, Incarnate, was published by Frontenac House Press in 2013.
This poem is included in “The Calgary Project – A City Map in Verse and Visual”
published by Frontenac House and House of Blue Skies, 2014
To read more poems by Juleta click here.
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