Not the proverbial treadmill
that conjures up mice and hamsters
and us in our circular
narratives. But this new
or almost new NordicTrack
that I got for fifty bucks
from Lori Novak because
it had turned into a coat rack
and she didn't want it anymore.
I have installed it a corner
of my basement where I walk
every morning and every evening
for thirty minutes at a good clip.
And I love it, I love it, I have fallen
back in love with walking--—
I haven't felt this way since
I was sixteen or seventeen
months old: elated, exhilarated,
intoxicated to be bipedal.
Putting one foot in front of the other
somehow turned into an idiom
not long after I learned how—
it turned into words the way
the whole world turned into words
as I grew literate, literary, sedentary,
fat. But now I'm breaking a sweat,
walking around the world
in a corner. And lo, the world
is growing real again. And I am
growing younger and younger
and younger, up here on the bridge
of my time machine, the console
flashing all these numbers--—
distance, velocity, vital signs--—
as I go striding, gliding,
tottering, toddling
shakily off my starship
and into the shower.

© by Paul Hostovsky.
Used with the author's permission.