gold.

For years, every morning
you rose before dawn to the urgent alarm
of the dreams you refused to defer,
a jaw-clenching race against sunrise you won
with a groggy insistence, to swallow again
the bittersweet pill of the grueling routine,
routine,
routine,
routine.

Time's shown that focus and fear are not foes,
but cooperate, honing your will
with the iron-soft skill of a potter,
to take and embrace
every step of this painful endeavor.

The prize was a journey of thousands of moments
of miniscule milestones, rote repetitions,
the hanging of hopes
and the failures of fantasies,
meets that meant missing the movies,
the gut-churning trials of trials.

—The camera's turned toward you now,
the way that your subconscious sometimes imagined it:
those fleeting moments when scenes lingered lucid
before the unkind interruptions that jolted
your sixteen-ton eyelids apart
with the wrench of an unyielding schedule.

The sounds, too, are new.
It's more than the quiet approval
you're used to,
the echoing claps from the half-empty stands,
the back pats and high fives,
the wet-eyed exuberance
glowing from coaches and parents
and teammates back home
in some galaxy long, long ago, far away—

They're here, still, but now
every sound has been drowned
by the crowd.

They've read out the numbers and everything's bright.
The whole world's a dancing mosaic of light.

And you think to yourself, as you think on the past
while the smile on your face holds unshakably fast,
as the breathing returns and the aches dissipate
and they're playing a song that your heart resonates,
as you think of the agony, anger, and fear,
the bleak disappointments and frustrated tears,
the social diversions you couldn't afford,
the practices void of apparent reward—
you visit unglamorous chapters untold
as nations, transfixed, watch your story unfold:
deterred but determined, beleaguered and broken
but bold—

You've mined through the minutes
and sifted the hours
and struck gold.