It was 1978, Mary Jane was all afro, eyes gray

lit with jive. My friend smoked pot all the time.

Her soul-sway to music and groove, taught me

laughter and she always made up her mind.

Mocking the fact she was half-white with a voice

that shook like thunder, like flocks of doves over

the harsh desert we lived, she ran in a blue-gold

singlet, barefoot and thin. Her gait like a woman

ball player before her time, a dancer on Broadway,

there in a Texas barrio. Mary Jane loved her name

as she toked, thin fingers sexy, and she left one day

Olympic bronze, athletic want. She ran hurdles lean

and stretched over white fences, few falling beneath

dark thighs. A metaphor for the future on the black

track, its oblong circle going nowhere, 400 meters

of beating energy, the journey all sweat, all harsh

breath. Our coach ran in Mexico City in 1968,

all butch deep-voiced hell. Unforgiving, a worshiper

of pain. Mary Jane, a tall god pummeling the burning,

laughing it all to hell. Coach's black-glove fisted way.

The coach from Watts, and here it all comes down

in Flint Michigan, the Bayou - it comes like dilapidated

homes, wood-rot, laughter, how the fastest burn better,

longer. Call it smokin', like a gun. It walks like Moses

leading his people out, like Jesus on the Mount. Mary

Jane's voice to soul music in 1978, all resolution,

knowing - this world, a place the poor burn hunger

that was meant to be deprived. Like a greyhound

on the track, after a mechanically pulled rabbit.

The chase always hard, and the audience distracted

by bids, dollars everywhere, women primped in stands,

hands moving in the empty air, how they cheer and cheer

the sweaty beasts, the muscles from work and work,

and everyone says it's genetics, some difference, and all

the while runners sweating and burning for years

in the obfuscating smoke.