Running in the 2012 ING NYC Marathon

I'm running in the 2012 ING NYC Marathon, my first (I'll be 36), both for myself and to help support Hope for the Warriors, a great 501(c)3 nonprofit dedicated to enhancing "quality of life for U.S. service members and their families nationwide who have been adversely affected by injuries or death in the line of duty. Hope For The Warriors actively seeks to ensure that the sacrifices of wounded and fallen warriors and their families are never forgotten nor their needs unmet."

Help a disabled vet and join me in supporting Hope for the Warriors by donating here.

They Flee From Me

No posts for a long month: finished courses, bike accident, revised the war novel (now: Strange Hells) so my agent could get it out to editors, then writing a paper on George Oppen. Plus... what else? Suspiciously warm January. That's about all I got for the moment, but this--a poem by Thomas Wyatt, that Oppen recalls repeating to himself while he lay wounded and bleeding in a foxhole in Germany after being hit by shrapnel from an 88mm tank round. Enjoy.

They Flee From Me

They flee from me that sometime did me seek
With naked foot, stalking in my chamber.
I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek,
That now are wild and do not remember
That sometime they put themself in danger
To take bread at my hand; and now they range,
Busily seeking with a continual change.

Thanked be fortune it hath been otherwise
Twenty times better; but once in special,
In thin array after a pleasant guise,
When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall,
And she me caught in her arms long and small;
Therewithall sweetly did me kiss
And softly said, “Dear heart, how like you this?”

It was no dream: I lay broad waking.
But all is turned thorough my gentleness
Into a strange fashion of forsaking;
And I have leave to go of her goodness,
And she also, to use newfangleness.
But since that I so kindly am served
I would fain know what she hath deserved.

--Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503–1542)