2.5 miles
river road path, north/32nd st, west/43rd ave, south/38th st, east/45th ave, north
43 degrees
Deaths from COVID-19: 121 (MN)/ 37,708 (US)
A short run in the sun and the wind. Heard at least one woodpecker. I think I remember seeing my shadow. Got a brief glimpse of the river. Breathed in fresh outdoor air. It feels like spring is coming back. I bet the trails will be very crowded in a few hours. (update, 3 hours later: yes, they were very crowded. Went walking with Scott and Delia the dog and the path was packed with bikes, the road jammed with cars).
Found a thread on twitter about abecedarians. I love abecedarians. Here are two with interesting takes on the form that I’d like to try.
1 ABC/ Robert Pinsky
Any body can die, evidently. Few
Go happily, irradiating joy,
Knowledge, love. Many
Need oblivion, painkillers,
Quickest respite.
Sweet time unaffected,
various world:
X=your zenith.
I like how this poem only has 26 words, each starting with a letter of the alphabet in order. I also like how each letter is not on a separate line.
2 Disorderly Abecedarian 2: Return/ Devon Miller-Duggan
Fainting sky today pulls at the
ground, trying to find color.
Why is saw blade made?
Zig-sag of teeth against
my grain, my gain, my rain, my rein.
Nailing words on trees in the forest, leaves
sursurrate like pages, but can’t read for themselves.
Trembling upward, wing-over-wing, all the birds called home,
Halving the music, having it fly upward with them, they
bother the stratosphere with all warbling and winging—
quilling sky.
Xanthic eyes
pored over every memory of you. Poured myself. Poored my own memory
operating away from itself.
Kindling catches, but there’s no more wood for this fire. This fire
exacerbates the cold,
cakes itself all over these hands
until they’re not hands.
Re-enter. Something can be worked out.
Justification by feint, by faint, by fifth, by filth.
Love me past
and forward, but not now. Now I’m a
demon for saw-teeth and nails
instead of words. When we were
younger we read poets, we were bright
versions of our jaundiced selves.
I like how this poem has 26 lines, each starting with a different letter of the alphabet, but they’re not in order. This could be fun to try.