dec 17/RUN

3.5 miles
under ford bridge and back
36 degrees
20% slick ice

An afternoon run. Mostly the paths/road/trail were clear but, because of yesterday’s thaw, there were random super slick patches. I didn’t slip, but I was more focused on the path than I’d like to be. Still, there were a few moments of freedom and forgetfulness, almost floating on the path, looking blankly ahead and just moving and breathing and being. Gray and overcast and heavy: thick air. It wasn’t that late, only around 3, but it was darkening fast and the road was crowded with cars. The river was light grayish white and empty and expansive. Encountered several runners, many walkers — any bikers? Yes, 1 or 2, at least one of them seemed to be commuting home from work. I remember watching their back light glowing red.

My favorite view: looking down at the graceful retaining wall then a ravine, then the river and the other shore.

morning ritual routine habit

My morning ritual has altered over the years since I’ve been writing in this log, but a few things have stayed the same: up earlier than anyone else with Delia-the-dog; coffee; quiet; sitting and reading. The reading has changed: it used to be articles about the academic industrial complex, then news headlines and poetry people on twitter. Now only poets.org, poetryfoundation.com, and poems.com. Oh, and my “On This Day” posts from that day between 2017 and 2024. Sometimes only 2 or 3 entries to revisit, sometimes the complete set. Today: 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 — what happened to ’23 and ’24? Today was an especially excellent day for poetry. Wow!

1 — The Sign as You Exit the Artist’s Colony Says “The Real World” / Aliki Barnstone (poets.org)

Just check out this amazing first stanza:

Quiet is not silence. Silence is absolute like never and forever. Quiet invites attention to cicadas, the warbling vireo on the wire, the cardinal’s whistle as it wings its brightness over the horizon of the Blue Ridge Mountains, then disappears amid the crape myrtles’ baroque blossoms.

I love this contrast between quiet and silence, and that would have been enough for me to want to spend more time with this poem, but then she continued with lines from Emily Dickinson, and I knew I needed to archive this poem. In her “About this Poem” in the sidebar, she writes:

All the quotations in italics are Emily Dickinson lines. I talk with her across time. 

Yes! I’ve been wanting to write with Emily Dickinson, to find different ways to engage with her words. I’ll have to try this one out. Writing this last bit, I just had an idea for a poem or a lyric essay or a hybrid form and a monthly challenge: My Emily Dickinson. It’s the title of a Susan Howe book, which I’ve read bits of and own. The lecture/chapter in Mary Ruefle’s Madness, Rack, and Honey, “My Emily Dickinson,” which I also own and love. And, “My My Emily Dickinson,” an essay in Kenyon Review by Meg Shevenock. I have the title already: My Eye Emily Dickinson, or My Eye and Emily Dickinson, or Eye: Emily Dickinson or My Eyes and Emily Dickinson, or M(e)y(e) Emily Dickinson? In addition to rereading the other “My Emily Dickinson” books/lectures/essays, I would revisit her lines that are about sight and vision and experiment with ways to describe their importance for me as I navigate losing vision. The experiments could include poems and essays and practices and whatever else I can think of. Oh, I hope this idea sticks; I love it!

2 — Last Century, Last Week: Holy Will (Ekphrastic)/ Ajanaé Dawkins (poems.com)

That first line!

What is it ’bout the river that makes even spirits sing? 

I love how this poem is about a river and that’s in a form that I want to practice more in early 2026 and that it embraces alliteration and the letter g. I will order her book: Blood-Flex!

3 — Wendell Berry’s Window poems (17 dec 2022)

4 — Liesel Mueller’s magical light in “Sometimes, when the light“ and her body in things in “Things” (17 dec 2021)

5 — How it Happens/ W.S. Merwin (17 dec 2020)

The middle of this short poem — a single line that continues a sentence of the lines before and after, but also answers the sky’s implied question (The sky said I am watching/to see what you/can make out of nothing):

I thought you

dec 16/RUN

5.25 miles
bottom of franklin hill
37 degrees
60% snow-covered

Above freezing today! Good, and bad. Good, because the snow on the path is melting. Bad, because it will freeze again tonight. I’ll take it, and the sun! and the warmth on my face! and the sound of wet, whooshing wheels. I ran to the bottom of franklin today to check out the surface of the river: completely covered with ice, a light grayish white. Almost all of the time, I felt strong. It was only after taking a break to check out the river, then starting again and running up the hill, that my legs felt strange. It took a minute to get back into a rhythm.

10 Things

  1. Looking up: powder blue sky, with streaks of clouds and sun
  2. something half-buried in a snow bank, 1: a lime scooter
  3. something half-buried in a snow bank, 2: a bike — not a rental — where is the owner of this bike, and why was it wedged in the snow and not put somewhere else?
  4. another runner, much faster than me, in a bright yellow jacket
  5. deep foot prints in the snow leading up to the sliding bench — someone must have sat here recently
  6. the view from the sliding bench: open, clear through to the snow-covered river and the white sands beach, which is just snow now
  7. someone at the bottom of the franklin hill, staring at the water
  8. a few honking geese down below
  9. cheeseburger cheeseburger — a calling bird — a chickadee, I think
  10. flowers for June in the makeshift vase of an uncapped railing under the trestle

Earlier today, while drinking coffee, I heard (not for the first time) Lawrence’s song, “Don’t Lose Sight” and I started to think about vision/sight/eye songs. Time for a playlist! I borrowed a title from someone’s spotify playlist that came up in a google search: Eye Tunes (groan). Came up with a long list of songs, then put a fraction of them in the list. I’ll keep fine-tuning it. I listed to the list during the second half of my run.

Eye Tunes

  1. I Saw the Light / Todd Rundgren
  2. Blinded by the Light / Mannford Mann’s Earth Band
  3. Eye in the Sky / The Alan Parson’s Project
  4. Eyes Without a Face / Billy Idol
  5. I Can See Clearly Now / Jimmy Cliff
  6. Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You / Ms. Lauryn Hill
  7. These Eyes / The Guess Who
  8. Eye of the Tiger / Survivor
  9. The Look of Love, Pt. 1 / ABC
  10. The Look of Love / Dusty Springfield
  11. For Your Eyes Only / Sheena Easton
  12. Eyesight to the Blind (The Hawker) / The Who
  13. Breakfast in America / Supertramp
  14. Don’t Lose Sight (Accoustic-ish) / Lawrence
  15. Total Eclipse of the Heart / Bonnie Tyler
  16. Double Vision / Foreighner
  17. In Your Eyes / Peter Gabriel
  18. Behind Blue Eyes / The Who
  19. Evil Eyes / Dio
  20. Stranger Eyes / The Cars
  21. Tell Me What You See / The Beatles
  22. My Eyes Have Seen You / The Doors

I listened up until Dusty Springfield’s “The Look of Love.” A few thoughts: I always think, anus curly whirly? when listening to “Blinded By the Light.” There is a LOT of vibraslap in “Eyes Without a Face” and, what does Billy Idol mean here? ABC’s “The Look of Love” is wonderful, and has some hilarious moments, especially the call and response section: Whose got the look? / If I knew the answer to that question I would tell you.

Back to Billy. Looked up the lyrics to “Eyes Without a Face,” and I think they mean that the person lacks humanity, is inhuman. Their look lacks compassion, grace.

Eyes without a face
Got no human grace
You’re eyes without a face
Such a human waste
You’re eyes without a face

And, I’ll end with ABC’s opening lines:

When your world is full of strange arrangements
And gravity won’t pull you through

That sounds like someone with vision problems (me)!

dec 15/RUN

4.2 miles
minnehaha falls and back
20 degrees
75% snow-covered

Much warmer today. Sunny, bright, low wind. My right glute/back/leg didn’t bother me. I felt strong and relaxed and very happy to be back out, beside the gorge. I took a week off from outside running; partly because of the extreme cold, partly the uneven paths, mostly because I was giving my body a break.

10 Things

  1. a runner in an orange-y, pinky jacket
  2. a walker — or a worker? — in a bright yellow jacket, standing above the overlook at the falls
  3. the falls: silent
  4. the creek, looking: almost completely frozen, only a few streaks of dark, open water
  5. the creek, listening: a soft trickling sound
  6. beep beep beep a park vehicle with a plow on the path, clearing out more snow
  7. scrape scrape the sound of the plow blade as it hit bare pavement
  8. the river surface, all white, burning bright through the trees
  9. a car blasting music that was so distorted I could just barely identify it — I think it was “Kids” by MGMT
  10. the big boulder that looks like an armchair, with a lapful of snow

I, Emily Dickinson

I’m finally getting around to doing my write-ups for my monthly challenges in Sept, Oct, and Nov —I was distracted by my manuscript. I found something helpful from 1 sept that I had forgotten about:

Surely, the finest way to appreciate Niedecker would be to read her well. And then repeated reading, reading aloud, transcribing the vibrant phrases on to paper, oh and even framing them. But how to linger in the presence of this voice, and let it echo within oneself, make her a part of oneself? Perhaps by applying Niedecker to Niedecker, I would arrive at a new condensary. De- and re- constructing her poems, deleting words, conflating words, writing through her writing.  

Mani Rao and Writing “Lorine Niedecker”

How to let it echo within oneself? (it = a poet’s words, ideas, worlds). I’m thinking about doing this, writing around and with and through Emily Dickinson, especially in relation to her references to failed vision. To let it echo, listen for the echoes, create echoes. Two immediate thoughts: 1. memorizing and running with her words and 2. taking her poems to my quarry — which I’ve done with 2 already (see the 13th and 14th of December entries).

dec 14/SWIM!

1.5 loops
100 laps
outside: -5 degrees

I swam 3 times this week! Scott and I decided to go early, before the water aerobics class. For almost the entire swim, I had the lane to myself. In the last 5 minutes, a woman (I think) I shared a lane with earlier in the week joined me. I did my usual swim of continuous 200s, broken up by breathing, but I added a twist in the middle: for a 600, or maybe an 800?, I swam faster and kicked harder on the even 50s (when I was breathing every 4 and 6 strokes). It felt fun to go faster.

Today’s pool friends: shimmying shadows on the pool floor, making everything look strange and off-kilter; the older woman in the pale blue suit who is not particularly fast, but is a strong swimmer; a guy in black trunks who was also a strong swimmer; a guy in olive green shorts walking and stretching the length of the shallow end; my squeaky nose plug; a guy in black shorts with a belt on, aqua jogging in the deep end. No fuzz or unsettling floating things.

I tried to think about my echolocation hybrid piece, but I struggled to keep a thought in my head. Instead I counted strokes, and noticed other people, and turned off most of my conscious thought.

Earlier this morning, I quarried another Emily Dickinson poem: We Grow Accustomed to the Dark:

one syllable: We grow Dark when light put holds lamp Her step night then fit meet road those brain not moon sign star come out grope hit tree in but They learn see sight life straight

two syllable: away neighbor witness goodbye moment newness vision erect larger evenings disclose within bravest  little sometimes forehead either darkenss alters something adjusts itself midnight almost

three syllable: accustomed uncertain directly

my poem:

Brain alters —

gropes the Dark,
hits lamp light,

and meets night
directly.
Away moon!
Away stars!
Goodbye sight.
The moment
adjusts — they
learn larger
uncertainties,
witness newness
within, fit
vision into
the almost,
then meet the
evening erect,
but not straight.

The other day, I came across a powerful poem by Pat Parker on poems.com. Wow!

excerpt from One Thanksgiving Day/ Pat Parker

One Thanksgiving Day
Priscilla Ford
got into her
Lincoln Continental
drove to Virginia Street
in downtown Reno
and ran over thirty people.
Six of them died.

One Thanksgiving Day
Priscilla Fordgot into her
Lincoln Continental
drove to Virginia Street
in downtown Reno
and ran over thirty people.
Six of them died.

. . .

Priscilla Ford
got into her
Lincoln Continental
drove to Virginia Street
in downtown Reno
and ran over thirty people.
Six of them died
and now Priscilla Fordwill die.
The state of Nevada
has judged
that it is
not crazy
for Black folks
to kill white folks
with their cars.
Priscilla Ford
will be
the second woman
executed in Nevada’s history.
it’s her highest
finish in life.

dec 13/BIKERUN

bike: 36 minutes
basement
outside: 2 degrees / feels like -6

Feels like -6 isn’t too cold for me, but I’m still trying to be careful with my right glute/hip and the snowy, uneven paths seemed like a bad idea. So, I biked and ran in the basement instead. While I biked, I watched the Brooks High School Girls Cross Country Championships. Wow, those girls are fast! And mentally tough. The hills on that course look awful.

As I finished my bike, RJP came down the stairs. She comes over almost every day (from her apartment) to say hi and see Delia. I took a break and we had a great talk about her latest success with knitting and using breathing patterns in deciding how often to knit and purl and the value of small goals that are designed to be about cumulative success instead of one big achievement. I mentioned SWOLF and asked her if she had any good acronyms for it:

Swimming with octopi, looking for fish
Sara wishes October lasted forever

run!: 1.25 miles
treadmill

Last week, Scott tried the treadmill and the belt wouldn’t move, but it did today. Hooray! And I ran without pain during or after the run. Excellent. Did my old treadmill routine of listening to the first few songs of Taylor Swift’s Reputation as I ran. I listened to “Look What You Made Me Do” on my cool down walk and decided that it would be a good song to listen to on the track while doing some speed work. Moderate pace in the verses, much faster in the chorus. I’ll have to try it next week.

Echoes, a Quarry and hybridizing echolocations

A few hours earlier, I came across and wonderful submissions call for the journal, Waxwing:

 Send us your work that hybridizes, blends, resists the boundaries between fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and art.

Waxwing wants to publish fiction and nonfiction that can stand alongside poetry: stories and essays where language is the primary concern. We seek writing that is like the characters and creatures we named the journal after—Daedalus made something that had never before existed, Icarus joyfully dared to do what hadn’t been done, and the eponymous birds seem to be what they’re not. We’re interested in narratives that risk, that come close to failing but land on the other side, not in the sea, and like the red tips of feathers that look like sealing wax, we love flourishes. We’re not interested in virtuosity that pleases the masses, but we do crave intensity, and stories that feel a little dangerous. We seek to showcase the particular and the peculiar, the odd and the revelatory—we want to read stories and essays that make us feel like we are learning something, even if it’s something we can’t quite explain. 

Waxwing Submissions

I’m trying to put something together from my manuscript and my echolocation project. At the end of my draft, I have a piece titled, “Echoes: a Quarry.” It is a list of all of the one, two, and three syllable words from my poems. I collected them and used them to create my rock, river, and air echo/chant poems. I want to do some thing with sound (me reading the words altogether, and online — Scott said he could do write code that would scramble up the words to make new chants) and with visuals (a map locating the echoes. I’ll spend the rest of the day trying to think through it.

An experiment with quarrying words. Find all of the one, two, and three syllable words in a favorite poem. Turn them into a new poem that offers echoes of the original.

Before I got my eye put out/ Emily Dickinson

1

I
got
my

eye

put

out
liked
well
see
have
know
way
told
me
might
Sky
mine
tell
heart
would
split
size
stars
much
noon
take
could
birds
road
look
when
news
strike
dead
so
guess
just
soul
pane
sun

2

before
other
creatures
today
meadows
mountains
forest
stintless
between
finite
motions
dipping
morning’s
amber
safer
upon
window

3

incautious

My poem:

Today stars
are in 

motion, in-
cautious

of birds, Sun.
I see

my way split
before

the noon sky.
Tell me,
dead eyes (mine) —
finite,

dipping be-
tween soul’s

meadow and
heart’s forest —
when it
is safer
to look.

dec 12/SWIM

1.5 loops
100 laps
ywca pool

More swimming! Another day off from running because my glute is sore. I miss winter running, but I’m happy to get the chance to swim again. Today I put a set of 10 x 100 on 1:30 with 15 seconds rest in the middle of my continuous 200s. Was able to get the heart rate up to 166 for some part of it — average for the whole swim was 133.

Pool friends: more shadows, a guy in blue swim trunks next to me, swimming freestyle; a woman in my lane, in blue, swimming almost in the middle of the lane and swimming slow enough that I passed by her almost every other lap; 2 women aqua walking (too leisurely to be called aqua jogging), brainstorming Christmas gift ideas — the woman nearest to me was in a bright blue suit and had strong, graceful legs under the water. Lots of blue.

As always, I did a lot of counting strokes, but not laps, and flip turns. I don’t remember thinking about much. I wondered if my hip/glute would start hurting; it didn’t. I wondered how many laps I had done and when Scott would show up at the end of my lane.

For the last 5 minutes, the pool emptied out. I think there was only one other person swimming with me — they were in the far lane. Friday afternoon is a good time to come, I guess.

Before the swim, I proofread my manuscript — and found a few errors — and discovered that Ken Burns is doing a documentary about Thoreau. The whole thing will be out in March, but a small 22 minute preview is available now on youtube. Nice! I started watching it and thinking about the late 1800s — what was happening here in Minneapolis and St. Paul, what was happening with Laura Ingalls (Scott and I are watching the entire Little House tv series), and what was happening in the country — the Civil War, the Mankato 38, transcendentalism, romanticism, self-reliance, Emerson, Thoreau, Dickinson, Whitman. (I could add the rest of the world here, too). A couple of Christmases ago, I got the annotated Pioneer Girl and I think I’ll try to read it this spring. It’s helpful to put all of these dates together; it makes them seem less in the past, more part of a continuous present.

Ken Burns documentary, coming in March

After my swim, Scott and I were talking in the hot tub about the many layers of dating involved with the Little House stories: 1. the “actual” events, 2. the events as perceived/lived by Laura, 3. her telling of them in Pioneer Girl, 4. her re-telling of them with her daughter Rose in the Little House books, 5. the various generations of kids who have read/been obsessed with the books, 6. and the 1970s television show.

SWOLF

(added a few hours later): I almost forgot to write about SWOLF. It’s a new swimming metric on my Apple watch. Had to look it up because I had no idea what it meant.

SWOLF = swim + golf = measuring your efficiency by combining time for a lap with number of strokes taken (source) .

Just like you want a lower stroke count in golf, a lower number for your SWOLF is good and means your more efficient swimmer. I don’t understand (or play) golf, so I’m not sure how deep the comparison is. Is it just a matter of a lower number is better? Anyway, according to my watch, my SWOLF number is good, which means I am efficient swimmer, which I already knew. I don’t care that much about metrics — maybe because mine are good (not great, but also not bad) and I don’t need to worry about them — but I might try to find some fun ways to experiment with SWOLF in my poetry — as an acronym? A different portmanteau? — and my training — are there sets I can do to decrease my number? I’d like to play around with the idea of efficiency — an efficient machine — and the benefits and harms of increased efficiency, in swimming, in writing, in life.

SWOLF = soon we open like feathers / She wants only laughing fools / Sara washes out last fall / sassy Waynes orchestrate loud frolics / sick waterways often lack freedom / sleet: winter’s other liquid form / some wedding officiants lack feeling / sharks want our love finally / swimming while on life’s feather (FWA) / stinky wet owls like fish (FWA) / sipping whisky on lingering flowers (FWA) / slender wisps organize lavish festivals

dec 11/SWIM

1.5 loops
104 laps
ywca pool

Hooray for swimming! My right upper glute still hurts — not all of the time; it’s very localized, but when it hurts, it hurts. Thankfully swimming doesn’t bother it. Biking didn’t either, yesterday. I’m not sure if running would, but I’m not willing to try and risk making it even more sore.

Today’s swim friends: shadows on the pool floor; slashes of orange everywhere (mostly signs indicating which lanes were for lap swimming); a small clump of hair; chlorine; a guy in black swim trunks doing a combo of swimming near the bottom, aqua jogging, and freestyle; a woman in a blue and green suit swimming freestyle then backstroke, her arms sweeping so wide they went under the lane line and brushed against my arm in the next lane; a woman in a pale blue or white suit sharing my lane, swimming freestyle and breaststroke and backstroke and some strange hybrid of butterfly on her back.

A nice swim, I didn’t count my laps, just my stokes. Halfway through I did a breathing ladder, by 50s: breathe ever 2/3/4/5/6/7/6/5/4/3/2. I also did a set of 2 or 3 200s in which I breathed 3/4/5/6 and kicked harder on the even breaths.

Just before we left, I (think) I finished my manuscript. It’s 79 pages and I’m very proud of it. I’ve officially been writing these poems for 4 years, but they build off of attention work I’ve been doing since I started this log in 2017. I’ll submit it to a contest this month, and if I don’t win that (these things are always very competitive and based on many factors that don’t have anything to do with the quality of the work), I’ll send it out to other places.

dec 10/SHOVELBIKE

60 minutes
4 inches
22 degrees

Not sure why 4 inches took almost an hour to do, but it did. The snow was light and dry and easy to push around but I had a lot of area to cover: a front sidewalk, back sidewalk, side sidewalk, small driveway and a deck. All with a shitty shovel. Now, I’m tired. But I don’t care. While I shoveled, I listened to a musical I’ve never heard before — or only heard one of its songs: 3 Bedroom House — Bat Boy. I liked it, well, most of it. One thing that stood out to me: the songs actually told the story. Usually, if I’m listening to a musical and I don’t know the whole story, the songs don’t help, or they give me some of the story but leave crucial bits out. Camelot, I’m talking to you.

A few minutes later, talking to Scott about the musical, I realized how fitting it is to be listening to it — bats! The title of my manuscript is Echo | | location!

10 Things

  1. a group of young kids — in elementary school, I think — walking to school, laughing, calling out, stopping to throw snowballs at each other
  2. 2 women (moms?) pulling occupied sleds towards a school (1.5 blocks away), then empty sleds back again a few minutes later
  3. a burnt coffee smell
  4. a car with an engine that needs a tune-up pulling up to the daycare next door — sputtering
  5. a little girl getting out the car, trudging through deep snow
  6. robins bursting out of our crab apple tree in the backyard
  7. a thick slab of snow on each of our three garbage cans (organics, trash, recycling) looking like vanilla frosting
  8. a neighbor down the alley starting a snow blower
  9. the sharp, scratchy scrap of the metal tip of our bright green shovel on bare sidewalk
  10. the creak/groan of our wrought-iron gate

more manuscript

Thanks to past Sara who left the tab open . . .

the kids next door just came out to play in the front yard — SNOW!, one kid yelled. They’re completely covered in snowsuits, with their hoods up — I used to be annoyed by these kids, but I’ve grown to really like them. They’re always so kind to RJP and FWA when they see them. HAPPY SNOW DAY — a woman called out to them. HAPPY SNOW DAY!!! — one girl replied.

. . . who left the tab open on the computer to an entry in which I talk about daylighting, I remembered that I wanted to write a poem about it, that is, the effort/desire to bring buried creeks aboveground again. Yes! And I’ll put it in the river section, which needs at least one more poem. Before shoveling, I had the idea to take lines from different descriptions of these creeks/springs/ghost rivers and turn them into a cento.

As I shoveled and listened to a line in Bat Boy: the Musical about being let into the light, I had a flash of a thought and a line:

Being outside —
less the light
more the air

I was thinking about how I want to move away from reinforcing the idea that light = good, and dark = bad. Sometimes, with my vision I want/need more light, and sometimes it’s too bright, too much. I don’t mind the dark. I was also thinking about how much I crave/need fresh air. But — maybe for the underground streams it is not a need of air, but space, the room to flow naturally over the topography instead of being buried in a concrete coffin.

okay — these kids are too cute. They just said hi to FWA (as he walked by with Delia) — HI! Have a good day! And now they’re greeting everyone as they walk by, and everyone is returning their greeting with enthusiasm. Hi! / Hi! Are you having fun in the snow? / Yes! . . . FWA came back from the walk and I asked him about the kids. He told me that they said they liked his dog and then the littlest one said something he couldn’t understand — blah blah blah named Soda. He said, What?, and she repeated, blah blah blah named Soda. FWA replied, oh, you have a dog named Soda? That’s cute!

exhumation of streams from underground and reintroduction of them to the surface

exhuming
of bodies —
buried streams
coffined creeks
returned to
the surface
not only
to light, but
open space
and their place
of origin
(or open space/and their source)

Today, I’ll start with these sources for inspiration:

Reaching the Light of Day
“The Urban Mile: The Subterraeam Streams of St. Paul in Subterraean Twin Cities
Daylighting Phalen Creek
 Bridal Veil Falls

(hours later) I read the above sources, and fit some phrases into my triple (berry) chant form. I think I can some of these and shape them into a poem!

urban

waterways

the same path
but below,
under our
feet, under
the ground

natural
waterways —
flow through top-
ography

of a landscape

collective
memory

water, un
ruly, will
not be man-

aged
refuses

to obey

cities, planned
neighborhoods
rooted, creeks
rerouted

caverns, sink
holes, passage
ways deep in

archive of
memory
reflection
on all that
has been lost

she wonders
what a day-
lighted world
could look like

a pipe — the
container
for a
muted stream

not lost, but
forgotten
hidden from
view, walled-in
yet 
flowing still

down here it’s
difficult
to trace the

pedigree
of a pipe
to unearth
its stories
to trace its
influence,
on a place
its people

a creek, its
meadows and
woodlands re-
placed with new
neighbors: streets,
tunnels, pipes,
ditches, wells,
basements for

new houses.
once mighty
waterway
turned from creek
to brook to
rill to no
thing that could
be seen.
industry
buried the
creek that fed
the falls

from a
300
acre wet
land that fed
a creek that
followed
a bank that
spilled over
a ledge and
into a
river, lots
platted, a
street grid
 laid,
a railroad

arrives, ponds
filled, a
freeway built,
neighborhoods
developed

Some things I’d like to remember from what I read: some of the falls/springs/creeks by the river have dried up, no longer exist, others are not lost, only buried, housed in sewer pipes, flowing through massive underground tunnels. In Subterranean Twin Cities, the author — Greg Brick — mentioned how difficult and costly it would be to even attempt to get rid of these waterways altogether. Burying these creeks privileges a particular set of values over other values, comes at the expense of certain communities, cuts people off from their histories, their connection to a place, their waterways.

echoes of the past, of the still-present waterways: seeps, springs, sewer pipes — the dripping or trickling or flushing gushing rushing of water in ravines — it’s all around, and always there when she runs.

bike: 25 minutes
basement

After sitting for much of the day and feeling a twinge in my right glute (maybe) because of it*, I decided to do a short bike ride in the basement. I watched a short feature on a triathlete I like, Taylor Spivey. It felt good to move and get my heart rate up a little — avg. of 120 — from my resting rate of 54. My range = 49-142. All the running and swimming has given me a very fit heart, I think.

*either reasons why I have a glute twinge: overdid the 1/2 pigeon pose in my yoga session yesterday or a delayed reaction to the uneven snow-covered paths.

Last week, Scott tried the treadmill and it wouldn’t work at all. I decided to see if, magically, it had fixed itself. Yes! It was working. I only walked today, but it’s nice to know that if I’m snowed in, I could run in the basement again.

dec 8/RUN

5.25 miles
the flats and back
20 degrees / feels like 5 / snow
100% snow-covered

2 days ago, I mentioned that my next run should be to the flats so I could study the river surface. So that’s where I went this late morning and into the early afternoon: the flats. Unfortunately, there was no surface to study, only white. I had a late start to the run because I was trying to put my yaktrax back on. I might need a bigger size. How long did it take me to finally get them on? 10 maybe 15 or 20 minutes. That’s a long time to be sitting inside wrapped up in all my winter running layers!

Almost everything outside was white. White sky, white ground, white rock, white river. There were a few strips of worn down snow on the path, but a lot of it was lumpy and soft. I twisted my foot/ankle at least once on the uneven ground, but not hard enough to cause a problem. The conditions made it harder, but I didn’t mind too much. It was so quiet and calm and beautiful beside the gorge.

10 Things

  1. another running in a bright orange jacket — encountered them twice
  2. the bright headlights from an approaching bike
  3. under the I-94 bridge, 1: a few streaks of open water
  4. under the I-94 bridge, 2: honk honk honk — some gathered geese, gabbing
  5. heading north, no notice of the wind
  6. heading south, wind in my face
  7. approaching a woman — I was heading north, her south, I could see the snow flying up around her feet from the wind
  8. the bells of St. Thomas chiming and chiming and chiming at noon
  9. brightly colored (I can’t quite remember the colors — maybe pink and orange and blue?) graffiti under the bridges
  10. as I approached the franklin bridge from below, the wind picked up and I felt the arctic air, under the arch, a shopping cart

mental victory of the run: Even though I wanted to stop to rest my legs, sore from the uneven terrain, I kept going until I reached the bottom of the hill.

I had some success writing drafts for my m//other and g||host poems this morning before my run. During and just after the run, on my walk home, I had some thoughts about the third poem, t here involving the dotted line on the map that runs through the middle of the Mississippi River on the map indicating the dividing line between Minneapolis and St. Paul. Here’s a draft that I spoke into my phone. It needs some work!

if you look
on the map
between the
here of this
side and the
there of that
side, a dotted
line was drawn to
represent
that moment
mid-river
when one city
becomes the
other. Do
you think, if
you were to
swim across,
you could feel
this shift, could
find this place
where a there
becomes a
here and a
here becomes
a there? I’m
willing to
believe it
exists, this
space where both
here and there
dwell, a place
where both are
possible.

dec 7/SWIM

1.25 loops
90 laps
ywca pool

Swimming on a Sunday morning is always risky. 4 out of the 6 lanes are closed to lap swimmers and open for a water aerobics class. Today I got there about 10 minutes before the class began and the pool was almost empty. Slowly it started filling up, mostly with people taking the class. For a big chunk of my swim I was still able to have a lane to myself. I liked watching the people doing water aerobics — mostly women, at least 1 or 2 men — especially their sassy legs. I described them to Scott as sassy because I couldn’t think of a better word for the way, exuberantly and with attitude, they jumped or pointed their toes or lifted their legs. They were feeling good, which was fun to witness. I love how happy people are when they get to move more freely through water.

note: I had a good swim. I felt strong and powerful and I enjoyed watching the class, but I was also irritated by some other swimmers and my own inability to see. I’ll mention it here, but I’d rather remember the good parts of the swim.

locker room encounters

Exiting the shower, encountering a friendly woman who said, you still have some soap on your face. I replied: oh, thanks for letting me know!

an older (late 50s or 60s?) woman in a swim suit looking confused as she entered a section of lockers. She looked around, then left, then entered another set of lockers and stopped in front of one, hesitated, then put her key in the lock confidently.

another woman, older than the older woman, returning to her locker from the shower. Wheezing in a high-pitched and pained way, almost sounding like she was whispering, help me help me