Praise for Mr. Plumstead, Running

Sun on the mist drift, rising, vague, finds the brisk morning runner by the shore, up with the early gulls, face clearly pleased, sweatshirted in the chill, each foot articulate. His whole experience, step by flicking step, like earth's protracted rolling, greatly imperceptible, quietly momentous; or else like sparrow's eggs, shaping in their shells, beneath the tiny heat of mother's down. His multicolored shoes pat on the path; the breathing of his thought is elsewhere, mulls a purposeful and lengthy muse, progressing through itself, deliberately, along the trails of reason, leaps of insight, implications traced, accrued thought-distances, reflections scanned and seen together, unified and dazzling, like all the sunstruck underplumes of a sky-washed, free, clean pelican. He is a tall man, running in his tennis whites, bigger than his day, bright in a bright landscape, contemplation's vagrant, fruitful self where poplars seed the birded, light-crisp air.