Every day, I try to take at least ten thousand steps.<\/p>\n
Every hour, when I’m writing, I get up from my hard chair,
\nmeasure time with the clock
\nand the laps through the great room, down the long hall,
\nand back again.
\nThe scientist in me measures everything, including how many laps
\nin an hour.<\/p>\n
In the before time, there was a huge treadmill
\nfilling the space between the sitting area and kitchen.
\nIt’s rumbling noise bothered the dogs and
\nmade it hard for the man to listen to the television
\nas I let the machine do the counting, miles,
\nmiles per hour, the daily hour
\nwhile I read from the tablet in front of me.<\/p>\n
I read a lot of books that way, carving out time
\nfor two tools in my self-care kit.<\/p>\n
Then, when everything shut down,
\nwhen I had more time than ever,
\nthe treadmill quit.
\nJust like that.
\nI ordered the mother board from Amazon,
\nbut we never got it set just right.<\/p>\n
We hauled the treadmill to the thrift store,
\nset it on the covered porch,
\nand drove away.<\/p>\n
The house felt bigger.
\nThere was space to move,
\nand I worked out my route.<\/p>\n
I had less time to read,
\nbut more time to think.<\/p>\n
Today, in the sixth hour of writing,
\nI measure my laps
\nbefore sitting to write again,
\nand guess what the prompt is,
\nwhat I’m to write about.
\nTell me without saying the word.
\nYour turn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Every day, I try to take at least ten thousand steps. Every hour, when I’m writing, I get up from my hard chair, measure time with the clock and the laps through the great room, down the long hall, and back again. The scientist in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":665,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1136],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-half-marathon-poem","category-official-marathon-prompts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/665"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92090"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92090\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92405,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92090\/revisions\/92405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}