Post-jogging

With hills like this you’d be silly not to make yourself

some playlists, put some headphones on and go running,

or at least on fast walks that make your face go red,

they’re even better, I think, the big heart pumpers:

you can do it, you can do it, you think maybe

you might buy a proper Nike t-shirt one day, proper gear,

clean white trainers, this must be helping me, it must be

but back home, post-jogging, this is the hard bit

they don’t talk about this on the wellbeing podcasts -

they send you out there to do all the good things

and now you’ve had a shower and you’re exhausted,

not in a buzzy way but in a right … I’ve done that …

what next?’ kind of way. You sort of wish

you hadn’t started but it’s good. It’s good,

jogging is good

and the bills are so beautiful,

the views of the buses taking people to work and to cafés

and to appointments, sometimes you phone people

you barely knowto talk about how blue the sky is.

We need to get this last bit right.

The bit after the good thing.

Let’s keep going jogging.

I used to have such good intentions.

I nearly bought a treadmill once.