Far too much snow for outdoor walks,
Which leaves me with, instead, the treadmill.
Club windows open on a view,
The XTERRA view, of the parking lot,
Its gray macadam graveyard calm.
Our town’s snow clearance has heaped up
A sky-high cumulus of sunlit
Meringue, right in the fitness maven’s
Line of vision—so much like
The peaks and glacier-azure shadows
Of a fierce Mont Blanc, an Everest.
Slacker, get moving! Keep striding on
This black conveyor belt and work
The lagging heart rate till it reaches
Its proper zone, where frozen billions
Of diamonds dazzle a red parka
Slogging upslope in the scramble
For oxygen, and, pulse gone snow-blind,
Wonders where Sherpas have slipped off to.
No matter. The slow-mo millipede
Procession climbs into a fainter
Atmosphere, hallucination
Shearing down subzero light
To avalanche them off the track
To their rest above, beyond the snow.