The Jogger on Riverside Drive, 5:00 A.M. by Agha Shahid Ali

Thinking about one particular deadline I would have very much liked to meet. But life is different now, T., so get over it.

The Jogger on Riverside Drive, 5:00 A.M.
Agha Shahid Ali

The dark scissors of his legs
cut the moon’s

raw silk, highways of wind
torn into lanes, his feet

pushing down the shadow
whose patterns he becomes

while trucks, one by one,
pass him by,

headlights pouring
from his pace, his eyes

cracked as the Hudson
wraps street lamps

in its rippled blue shells,
the summer’s thin, thin veins

bursting with dawn,
he, now suddenly free,

from the air, from himself,
his heart beating far, far

behind him

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