Loopy Experimental Poetry

In a mystic loop,
This haiku contains itself--
And the universe.

Not Related to Thanksgiving

Every morning, usually around seven or eight A. M., this man runs by my apartment. He always wears the same thing: gray sweatshirt with hood pulled up tight over his head, old sweatpants, dark gloves curled into tight fists. Generally he’ll make two circumnavigations of the block on his route. I’ve never gotten a good look at him, but I’d say he’s about 48 to 52 years old.

Now, you might be wondering how I can confirm that this man runs by every day; I mean, isn’t it a little improbable that I would be looking out the window every time he passes by? It’s not like I spend hours staring outside. Nor would I say that my schedule is so routine that I am, say, always sitting and eating breakfast at the same time every morning.

No, I know this man runs by every morning because I hear him. I swear I am not making this up: the man barks as he runs. Sort of odd little panting yelps, not particularly loud, but perfectly audible in the early, low traffic quiet of the day. At first I thought he was running with a very rhythmic and vocal dog. Then I watched more carefully the next time and noticed that the man was completely alone. Just him, running and barking in time to his breathing and his footfalls.

I can not get my mind around this singularly strange character. I have hypothesized at length about the reasons why one might bark while running. Perhaps the man has some sort of respiratory condition that makes his breathing noisier than most. Still, I would think that such a condition would force him to run more slowly than the pace I observe. Perhaps this man seeks to channel the spirit of the wolf in order to maintain his stamina while running. (That reminds me of someone I knew in college who consistently wore a wolf tail everywhere. Quite normal when you talked to him and really and all around nice guy, but he always wore a wolf tail. And more often than not, a T-shirt with a print of a wolf on it. And sometimes, wolf ears. But he was clean-shaven, so I guess the wolf fetish did not extend to facial hair. I never really felt comfortable asking him about it.) Perhaps it is a psychological, rather than physical, condition that causes the barking.

Whatever. I’ll let you ponder the nature of this unusual, and quite unnerving aspect of my neighborhood.

Authentic Excerpt #1

“Years ago, biologist Bill McLarney was inventing some advanced aquaculture at the New Alchemy Institute in Costa Rica. He was stirring a tank of algae one day when a brassy lady from North America strode in and demanded, ‘Why are you standing there stirring that green goop, when what really matters in the world is love?’

Bill thought for a minute and replied, ‘Well, there’s theoretical love; and then there’s applied love’-- and kept on stirring.”
--Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, L. Hunter Lovins; Natural Capitalism

This may actually sum up why I’m in engineering.