Mark Spero
Running Down a Hill to Escape the Woods
Night arrived at its summer slumping speed.
I was bone tired from trying to prove
something to a boy and just when
I was giving up, he looked at me, said
Before we turn back and race down this hill—
letting the wind suck our spit to make mist, holding
our flexing hips above our bikes, feeling heart-stopping
air filling us up— we need to stop to smell a ponderosa pine.
Can you imagine? I’d never really smelled
a tree before, never stuck my nose
deep in a groove while pressing
my hands over rolling muscles.
It was molasses, thunderous and sweet.
It was a sickly hum, a death song so
small it couldn’t be real death at all, only
temporary, death’s cousin, a one night stand.
It took so much to reach that tree. My
muscles ached, my mind raced over
this boy, I’d climbed an endless hill to hold
one among millions, and the escape was
lightning, spreading down like a
delta, back to our town.
Mark Spero reads “Running Down a Hill to Escape the Woods”
Mark Spero (he/they) is a poet and essayist. They received the 2021 Madeline DeFrees Prize, selected by Phillip B. Williams, from the Academy of American Poets, and have received support from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Community of Writers, and the Minnesota Northwoods Writers Conference. Mark was a finalist for the 2023 Prufer Prize and won the 2024 Robert Watson Literary Prize. Their work can be found or is forthcoming in The Greensboro Review, Poetry Northwest, Pleiades, and elsewhere.