(Some people say I’m “off” all the time…)

I’m in New Orleans with Laure Ferlita, attending Imaginary Trips’ first “Imaginary Trips Made Real” artist’s painting holiday. In between sketching on location, we’re exploring the history, culture and food of the Crescent City.

Hope you have a great week, and I’ll report in soon!

This morning, I read this article about getting fit with your horse. The author detailed how many calories can be burned doing many common horsey activities, and it got me to thinking about some of the many other ways having a horse can improve your fitness level. For example, you can get your heart rate up (cardiovascular exercise) by chasing him around his paddock while trying to catch him (Tank doesn’t help me out here—he usually meets me at the gate); getting excited (or scared) by trying something new on horseback; or riding through a spook. If that doesn’t get your heart rate up, I don’t know what will!

You can also develop a great strength training program with horses. Aside from the obvious hauling of hay or bags of feed, or shoveling manure, there’s always carrying your saddle (especially if it’s a western saddle—those things are heavy!), or attempting to hold up your horse as he leans on you while you clean his feet. Posting a trot and riding without stirrups are excellent exercises for the thigh muscles as well.

Don’t forget the fitness benefits of relaxation. Being around a horse, at least for me, provides a way to lower my blood pressure. Just looking at horses, stroking their soft coats and smelling that warm barn smell makes me feel calmer.

By all rights, I should be a lot thinner than I am after burning all those calories at the barn. (Maybe it has something to do with the chocolate one of my barn buddies gave me…hmm…)

Have you found any unusual ways to get fit?

Pet, friend, therapist, and now personal trainer?

Lots of contemporary poems are anecdotal, a brief narration of some event, and what can make them rise above anecdote is when they manage to convey significance, often as the poem closes. Here is an example of one like that, by Marie Sheppard Williams, who lives in Minneapolis. [Introduction by Ted Kooser.]

Everybody

I stood at a bus corner
one afternoon, waiting
for the #2. An old
guy stood waiting too.
I stared at him. He
caught my stare, grinned,
gap-toothed. Will you
sign my coat? he said.
Held out a pen. He wore
a dirty canvas coat that
had signatures all over
it, hundreds, maybe
thousands.
            I’m trying
to get everybody, he
said.
            I signed. On a
little space on a pocket.
Sometimes I remember:
I am one of everybody.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2006 by Marie Sheppard Williams. Reprinted from “The California Review,” Volume 32, no. 4, by permission of Marie Sheppard Williams and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006.