I Used to Race the Sun

I used to race the sun.

Honest, I did.

I was twelve years old and delivered the morning newspaper. In temperate weather I rode my faithful old bike in easy morning air to a small shack and picked up my newspapers for delivery. A darkling, a gray hanging hush in hesitating light and stars without number and the moon just drifting idly there, I imagined myself a brave adventurer discovering new worlds. In winter I bundled up tight and walked the two miles, trudging through wind and driving snow, my little heart growing wide with fantasies of noble quests and dangerous pursuits. One time the snow was so high and blizzard so violent, I got stuck in a snowdrift for a while, but I wiggled free.

My day began early in the solemn still of lingering night and myriad pulsing twinkle stars overhead. I would race to deliver my papers before the sun gave me a peek over the smoldering lip of the world. That was our arrangement. Delivering them all as fast as I could, before his golden eye found me out. It was my daily challenge to beat the sun at his game. Throughout autumn and winter, I won every day. Yet with spring coming, the sun was moving up fast on my heels, and I was winning by less and less.

Eventually I lost.

A slumbering earth had stirred with an equinox of a sigh and I did not yet know it.

I was only twelve.

Featured image by Dillon Wheelock.

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Henry Lewis

Henry Lewis is a poet, novelist, and essayist living in the Minneapolis area with his lovely wife. He is a dawn-watcher, a night-sky-gazer, and a sojourner in a strange land.

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