5.25 miles
franklin loop
21 degrees/feels like 16
Getting colder. A few more layers: an extra pair of tights, a winter hat. I don’t remember breathing in the crisp, sharp air but I do remember seeing my shadow and the river through the forest. Smelled the sewer and wondered, how cold does it have to be before that stinky stench freezes–or does it smell more in the cold? My legs felt heavy and a bit sore. Forgot to check out the paved path down below in the east river flats. Thought I saw someone sitting under the railroad trestle on the east side but it could have just been a bush. On the east side, the trestle is much taller. Took a quick walk break on the final hill up past Meeker Dam because my right thigh was twinging occasionally. Saw some other runners, a mini peloton, some dogs and their humans. No Daily Walker or roller skiers or wild turkeys or eagles or coyotes or geese. Running back over the lake street bridge to the west river road, was dazzled by a single spot near the shore shining too bright in the sunlight.
It has been a while since I’ve seen my shadow. Where was she before today?
I Looked for Life and Did a Shadow See
BY JAMES GALVIN
Some little splinter
Of shadow purls
And weals down
The slewed stone
Chapel steps,
Slinks along
The riverrock wall
And disappears
Into the light.
Now ropy, riffled,
Now owlish, sere,
It smolders back
To sight beneath
A dwarfish, brindled tree
That chimes and sifts
And resurrects
In something’s sweet
And lethal breath.
This little shadow
Seems to know
(How can it know?
How can it not?)
Just when to flinch
Just where to loop and sag
And skitter down,
Just what to squirrel
And what to squander till
The light it lacks
Bleeds it back
And finds
My sleeping dark-haired girl —
O personal,
Impersonal,
Continual thrall —
And hammocks blue
In the hollows of her eyes.