What does it feel like after you win the Olympics,
drink champagne carried aloft on the arms of manic frenzy,
begin to inhale deeply again, then stretch your winning body
in an unfamiliar bed a thousand miles from home, still the same
flesh and blood who emerged from your mother so many years ago?
How do you roll when, no matter how ideal a thing can be,
you understand there is a next moment, a next decision,
a next sunrise, breakfast, going on as normal soon enough
(the day your medal is encased and mounted on the den wall)
and it’s only in the fraction of a second you get to decide,
at every ordinary turn of time, how beautiful it all may be,
every slender hour behind the scenes.