I was never much of a runner (though I was captain of the soccer team, & was on the track squad for a while, & was indeed one of Al Franken's wrestling partners!). But something in me (call it "Pegasus") starts racing toward the finish line of these long poems. It happened with Stubborn Grew, with Grassblade Light, with July... & though I was not thinking or planning or expecting it all, it happened again with #8 of this final section of Fontegaia. & it's a wonderful feeling, when something leaps into place - as if it were there all the time, just waiting for you. Rivers play a big role in these poems - & it feels exactly like - suddenly a new tributary of fast, fresh water slams into my regular, slow, meandering, ruminatin' river... I suppose a mundane psychological explanation is that I'm anticipating the end of all this inching laborious composition... maybe so, I don't know. But I did indeed want Fontegaia to run clear - & fast - at the end. & I had no clue as to how that was going to happen, until one evening a few days ago, sitting in the back yard after work, #8 just started tearing along.