May 14: Chafed, Ellen Bryant Voigt, Another Sonnet

I went to the gym after work this afternoon. I ran on the treadmill for half an hour.  It actually wasn't as horrible as I thought it was going to be.  After I overcame my absolute dread, I actually felt good about myself, until I got home and realized that I was so chafed my thighs felt like they'd been dipped in acid.

Aside from that, I still feel good about myself.  I don't know if I'm going to the gym tomorrow.  If I move my legs together, I think they may set my pants on fire.  Perhaps a leisurely walk is more appropriate.

I do have another Kyrie sonnet.  I must say it's difficult to get a good sense of this collection from individual sonnets.  In my opinion, it's really a book-length poem. 

However, Saint Marty doesn't have time to type all 75 pages tonight.

from Ellen Bryant Voigt's Kyrie:

After I'd seen my children truly ill,
I had no need to dream that they were ill
nor in any other way imperiled--
no more babies pitching down the well,
no more watching from shore as my boy rolls
like a kicked stone from the raft, meanwhile
Kate with a handful of bees--
                                               when I was a girl,
I practiced in the attic with my dolls,
but Del went out of right mind, his fingernails
turned blue, and Kate--no child should lie so still,
her small excitable body held enthralled. . . .
After that, in order to make it real
I dreamed them whole.

I'm getting a standing ovation