Month: September 2019

3 miles
trestle turn around
72 degrees/ 85% humidity

1 2 3 4/1 2 3 4/1 2 3 4…counted to four over and over again to keep myself steady and moving forward in the heat and humidity (dew point: 69). In the gorge, it’s starting to look like fall even if it doesn’t feel like it. Leaves floating, then littering the ground. Saw some more slashes of red, a few blobs of orange, some yellow stripes. Greeted the Daily Walker and 3 or 4 other runners and walkers. Smelled the sewer pipes. Avoided squirrels.

Thought more about my project and what I’m trying to do with it. Today’s goal: play with some lines of text from the “Great River Greening Management Plan, 2002” and Chapter 2 of the Mississippi Gorge Regional Park Master Plan 2018/2019. Possibly a cento? I’m specifically interested in phrases describing the impact of humans on the gorge and plans for protecting the gorge from humans.

Currently reading Wilder by Claire Wahmanholm which I discovered yesterday. Love it. A mix of free verse with erasures (taken from Sagan’s Cosmos!), and prose poems (some based on a letter or the alphabet or an ongoing story she’s telling).

ALMANAC/claire wahmanholm

We head grown leaky. Our heads were full of fissures that wouldn’t seal no matter how tightly we claimed the vises’ jaws around our temples. Our scalps wept until only the present rattled in our ears, bone-dry and rabid. We walked around the corner or had been walking for years. We entered the same empty house at the end of the same dirt road. In every room I found a yellow almanac under the bed and read the same page, which told me the time Neptune would rise, the time civil dust would descend. I pressed the almanac to my head. What was time? What was descend? Whenever I left the house I would take the almanac with me. I put it under my raw-hide pillow, hoping that while I slept, my head would somehow mend. Every night I dreamed of frost spreading across a ragged field, knitting the furrows with its uniform white.

3 miles
trestle turn around
72 degrees/72% humidity/dew point: 65

Hot. Humid. Even though it was sunny, I don’t remember seeing my shadow. She was probably hiding in the cool shade down by the river. A squirrel, rustling in the brush, darted out right in front of me and then quickly ran back into the woods. At first I was listening to my audio book, but around the time I reached the Welcoming Oaks, I decided to turn it off and listen to my breathing, the traffic, the gorge. I counted to 4 over and over again. ONE two three four ONE two three four. Without headphones, I also managed to hear the loud cracks of acorns hitting the asphalt. Crack! Crack! Not one landed on my head or near my feet. And I heard at least one goose honking up above–were they confused by the weather. Is it summer or fall or what? As I write this I hear Scott annoyingly pointing out, “Technically, it’s still summer. Fall starts on September 21st.”

I copied this poem into one of my notebooks last year, but I don’t think I ever posted it on this log. I love how the oak tree says to only eat fruits and vegetables.

Elegy with Apples, Pomegranates, Bees, Butterflies, Thorn Bushes, Oak, Pine, Warblers, Crows, Ants, and Worms
Hayan Charara – 1971-

The trees alongside the fence
bear fruit, the limbs and leaves speeches
to you and me. They promise to give the world
back to itself. The apple apologizes
for those whose hearts bear too much zest
for heaven, the pomegranate
for the change that did not come
soon enough. Every seed is a heart, every heart
a minefield, and the bees and butterflies
swarm the flowers on its grave.
The thorn bushes instruct us
to tell our sons and daughters
who carry sticks and stones
to mend their ways.
The oak tree says to eat
only fruits and vegetables;
the pine says to eat all the stirring things.
My neighbor left long ago and did not hear
any of this. In a big country
the leader warns the leader of a small country
there must be change or else.
Birds are the same way, coming and going,
wobbling thin branches.
The warblers express pain, the crows regret,
or is it the other way around?
The mantra today is the same as yesterday.
We must become different.
The plants must, the animals,
and the ants and worms, just like the carmakers,
the soap makers before them,
and the manufacturers of rubber
and the sellers of tea, tobacco, and salt.
Such an ancient habit, making ourselves new.
My neighbor looks like my mother
who left a long time ago
and did not hear any of this.
Just for a minute, give her back to me,
before she died, kneeling
in the dirt under the sun, calling me darling
in Arabic, which no one has since.

3.1 miles
trestle turn around
60 degrees

Saw my shadow, a roller skier, groups of runners, bikers, squirrels, dogs, the river. Heard the doppler effect on a runner’s radio and some rowers yelling on the river. Counted to 4: 1 2 3 4/ 1 2 3 4 Didn’t think about anything except running and breathing. Heard some people raking leaves in their yard across the boulevard. Lots of people–including me–wearing blue shirts.

Doppler Effect
Arthur Sze – 1950-

Stopped in cars, we are waiting to accelerate
along different trajectories. I catch the rising

pitch of a train—today one hundred nine people
died in a stampede converging at a bridge;

radioactive water trickles underground
toward the Pacific Ocean; nickel and copper

particulates contaminate the Brocade River.
Will this planet sustain ten billion people?

Ah, switch it: a spider plant leans toward
a glass door, and six offshoots dangle from it;

the more I fingered the clay slab into a bowl,
the more misshapen it became; though I have

botched this, bungled that, the errancies
reveal it would not be better if things happened

just as I wished; a puffer fish inflates on deck;
a burst of burnt rubber rises from pavement.

Doppler effect (noun):

a change in the frequency with which waves (as of sound or light) from a given source reach an observer when the source and the observer are in motion with respect to each other so that the frequency increases or decreases according to the speed at which the distance is decreasing or increasing. [Merriam Webster]

3.2 miles
ford bridge and back
59 degrees

Another good run, squeezed in between rain drops and thunder strikes. Strange weather today. It’s supposed to start storming soon. Ran south towards the falls this morning, partly for a change of pace, partly to check out if some of my favorite fall color trees have turned yellow yet, and partly to avoid running under all the thick tree limbs I encounter when heading north. Listened to my breathing instead of an audio book. Spent a lot of time counting to 4 as my feet struck the ground. No chants or spells today. Heard the water gushing! out of the sewer pipe below me. Thought about descending to the lower path and checking it out, but decided that running on the muddy trail would be the end of much of the white of my too white shoes. Encountered a few squirrels smart enough to not dart in front of me. Heard the wind howl, my shoes squeak on some wet leaves. Saw a few people walking. No roller skiers or runners or bikers.

For the past week, I’ve been hearing geese honk as they fly south. Not sure why, but I’m really enjoying these honks this year. I’ve probably posted this poem before, but I’m doing it again because I love it. A few years ago, I memorized it. I’ve lost some of the words, but never forget the harsh and exciting geese:

Wild Geese/mary oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

5 miles
franklin loop
64 degrees
light rain

What a run! I haven’t run 5 miles in months. Loved running in the rain. At first, I was listening to my audio book, but after hearing the water gushing through the sewer pipe near the 36th street parking lot, I decided to listen to the rain instead. Not too long after I started running, I began making up little poems/chants. I did them in 4/4 because I wanted to get into a rhythm with a strong downbeat on my right leg. I kept doing them for most of the run. Here’s what I remember:

I am running
in the ra-in (which then became: in the cold/warm/soft rain)
will it stop now?
never again

Rain is falling
on my shoulder
rain is falling
on my knee

Rain is falling
on my elbow
and it’s dropping
from that tree

pitter patter
pitter patter
pitter patter
drip drip drop

pitter patter
pitter patter
drip drop drip drop
drip drop drip drop

There were more, but I can’t remember them now. I guess I should have stopped and recorded them on my phone. It was interesting how the verses shifted and become more rhythmic as I ran longer. Really cool and so much fun. No brilliant poems, but who cares?!

Today I noticed some leaves changing color. Just off the railing near the lake street bridge I spied some red–or was it orange? I’ll have to check–peeking through. On the St. Paul side, approaching Marshall, I noticed some more reddish-orange/orangish-red leaves blazing near the ground. The grayish light and the wet pavement made the colors seem more vivid, especially the bright orange construction sign.

I don’t think the rain ever stopped, which was fine with me. Very refreshing. Just a fine, steady drizzle–only a little more than a mist.

When I was done running, as I was walking through the tunnel of trees, I noticed a person perched up in a tree. Nestled in among the leaves, hovering above me, wedged in by the wooden fence. So strange. What were they doing there? Had a flash of panic, wondering if they would pounce on me, but they were content to stay hidden (and silent) in the tree.

I love how this poem is constructed entirely out of lines from a few different articles. I’d like to experiment with this form. Maybe something taken from the Mississippi River Gorge materials?