This brisk September morning brings a stiff headwind

New to running, I leave our island home

Pacing down the dirt road to the marsh that divides 

This island into three parts.

I am listening to The Hours

Philip Glass’s soundtrack to the film

That so rattled me 

I never watched it again.

As the score plays, scenes from the movie

Roll out before me.

The bottle of sleeping pills

The birthday cake

The former lover in the wheelchair dazzled by the light of the world.

I run with the music as I am hurtling headlong into a depression

I listen at my own risk.

Now in another time

The score marks my way.

I am thinking of Virginia Woolf 

Her madness, her brilliance and her suicide.

And Mrs. Dalloway

I see Meryl Streep in her pain

And her loss of Richard.

I see the connections between these women

Their loves and losses.

I should be listening

(According to the experts, anyway) 

To music that pulses away at 120 beats per minutes

But I prefer the company of music

That takes me somewhere

I am frightened alive to go. 

A run of my own.