Month: May 2022

may 17/RUN

4 miles
2 trails, the longer version*
60 degrees

*the longer version = south on the river road/enter Winchell Trail at southern start/north on Winchell, past 38th street steps, through oak savanna, up the gravel by the ravine to rejoin the paved path/tunnel of trees/over to edmund at 33rd/west on 32nd/south on 43rd. Eventually I might try the longest trail, which would involve returning to the Winchell Trail past the lake street bridge and taking it until it ends near Franklin.

Decided to listen to music for most of my run this morning. Before I headed out, I thought about how I’d miss hearing the birds, but then I thought about how I’ve been struggling on my runs lately. Time for distraction, I think. I put Taylor Swift’s Lover on shuffle. Years ago I was critical of her but I’ve come to enjoy her lyrics, especially her ability to tell a story. I think it was Evermore that did it for me.

Initially I was planning to write more about the songs I listened to by Swift, starting with “ME!,” and how my perspective on her has changed, but I think that would take up too much time right now, and I’d rather use her music as a needed distraction instead of an opportunity for critically reflecting on excess, parody, and what it means for a privileged white girl to (ironically or not) claim so much space. (psst: after writing this aside, and then working on the entry, it turns out that a critique of Taylor Swift’s ME! haunts this entry. Funny how that happens.

So, back to the run. I made sure to look at the river, which was difficult. Even lower down on the Winchell Trail the green is taking over. It was mostly sunny with a breeze, but I couldn’t see any sparkle on the water. Was it because of the trees? No rowers either.

Can I think of 10 things I noticed? It might be difficult, but I’ll try.

10 Things I Noticed

  1. at the start of my run, passed under the thick, horizontal branch of a sprawling oak tree and imagined it falling on my head…crack!
  2. a blue river
  3. many of the benches were filled, one person per bench, not sure if I saw any with two or more people
  4. running down to the start of the Winchell Trail, I passed somone sitting in the grass, facing the river, right next to the paved trail
  5. took my headphones out as I entered the lower trail and heard the kids on the playground above me and on the other side of the river road
  6. heard some bikers above me as I crested the hill after the ravine with the sewer pipe that gushes (as opposed to the one that drips) — I tried to make out their words, but couldn’t
  7. a mix of sounds near folwell: a leaf blower, the rushing wind, a bird*, cars
  8. parts of the winchell trail were muddy, but the part that is usually the worst — the stretch between 38th and the savanna — was mostly fine
  9. the dirt trail below the mesa, in the oak savanna, was mostly soft sand (limestone?) instead of packed dirt. Is that the consistency of this soil, or did they bring in more soil here to create this trail?
  10. at least 4 (was it more? I couldn’t tell) stones stacked on the ancient boulder

*hearing all these sounds together, I suddenly had a question which led to a wonder (or wander): when a bird hears a leaf blower, what are they hearing? That is, how do they process that sound? Do they connect it with humans? Is it a threat? A singing partner? Do they ignore it? I’m sure the answers to these questions are different depending on how close the leaf blower is, this one was far away. As I posed these questions in my head I started thinking outside, or beside, myself about how others hear and listen to sounds and what it might mean to listen without immediately making it all about me and how the sound affects me or, as Taylor Swift sung to me this morning, “ME!”

After climbing the short, steep hill, near folwell avenue, this thinking about ME! turned to Alice Oswald and how she works hard to try to look beyond the beauty and herself to see the world from the perspective of a weed or, in this case, a bird:

I’m just continually smashing down the nostalgia in my head. And trying to inquire of the landscape itself what it feels about itself. Rather than bringing my advertising skills — getting rid of words like picturesque…there’s a whole range of words that people like to use about landscape, like pastoral, idyll. I quite like taking the names away from things and seeing what they are behind their names. I exert incredible amounts of energy trying to see things from their own points of view rather than the human point of view.

full quote and source in March: Alice Oswald’s Dirt

At some point after folwell and before the steps up to 38th street, I thought about care and a class proposal I’m trying to put together for the fall about poetry and social transformation. Audre Lorde’s suggestion of “selfcare as warfare” and Sara Ahmed’s 2014 blog essay about it popped into my head. It would be interesting to put this into conversation with Taylor Swift’s ME! claim.

Post-run, I’m thinking about nature poetry and birds. I randomly came across this amazing poem on Ours Poetica. Wow!

Where Every Bird is a Drone/ Tarik Dobbs
Where Every Bird is a Drone/ Tarik Dobbs

I also just started reading Tommy Pico’s Nature Poem. He writes:

I can’t write a nature poem
bc it’s fodder for the noble savage
narrative. I wd slap a tree across the face,
I say to my audience.

—

Let’s say I literally hate all men bc literally men are animals—
This is a kind of nature I would write a poem about.

may 16/RUN

4.1 miles
top of franklin hill turn around
65 degrees

Wow! What a morning! In less than a week everything has turned green and fragrant and summery — not spring because spring in Minnesota is cold and snowy/rainy/muddy. This run felt much better than yesterday’s. Was it the oatmeal I ate today but didn’t yesterday? Before runs, I used to eat cheerios with a banana and walnuts. I even wrote about it on here. But now I eat oatmeal with walnuts, 1 cup of wild blueberries, raisins, and vanilla yogurt. I eat it partly because it tastes good to me, but I also because my almost 48 year old body needs it. It’s so fiddly getting old. Such a need for deliberate, careful attention to the body so it continues to work.

Right after returning home I remembered: I forgot to look at the river. Or, I forgot to remember what the river looked like when I looked at it. This distinction between not looking versus looking but not remembering or putting into words (or images or feelings) what I looked at is something I’ve been thinking about this morning. These two things, 1. looking and 2. remembering/taking note of the looking are things we (can) consciously do. Add to that, something we aren’t aware of: the way the brain filters out visual data and decides what we register as seeing. I’ll stop there, but I have more to write about the brain and vision and attention. Of course, it is also possible that I didn’t even see the river because it was blocked by all of the green!

Speaking of green, I recited Philip Larkin’s wonderful poem The Trees. A great poem to recite while running. I thought briefly about green as grief. For some reason, I struggled to remember the first line for a few minute — “The trees are coming into leaf” — and when I did remember it, I remembered it wrong — “The trees are turning into leaf”. I thought about this transformation in spring, from a rough, gnarled, bare Tree to a soft, filled out, collection of leaves.

Before my run, Scott and I were talking about how some new cars seem to shut off when they’re stopped, and then start up when they begin moving again. I’ve been telling Scott about this phenomenon for at least a year now. I always hear it when I am approaching a stop sign at the beginning of my runs. He would never hear it. We joked that I was doing something to cars that made them stall. I have a reputation for making some things not work — like watches or phones. This morning, while driving RJP to school, they both heard it happen several times. He looked it up and discovered that some new cars are designed to do this now. It saves gas, I guess. I said to him that I heard it because I notice things; I’ve been training for years to give attention to the world, and to notice (and register and wonder about) the things I notice. During my run, I thought about our conversation, and a thought occurred to me: attention is magic. It enables us to witness impossible things — or things that seem impossible to us. I feel like I might be forgetting part of this thought; there was more to this idea of attention and magic that I’m forgetting right now.

10 Things I Noticed (and remembered I noticed)

  1. Mr. Morning! mornied me
  2. no stones stacked on the ancient boulder
  3. some green on the welcoming oaks
  4. an empty over-turned clear plastic cup in front of the porta-potty under the lake street bridge
  5. a strong floral scent
  6. received at least 2 or 3 waves from other runners
  7. several walkers with dogs
  8. at least 2 strollers
  9. the tunnel of trees is completely filled in with green leaves
  10. running straight into the wind, up a hill, 2 bikers were biking so slow behind me that it took forever for them to pass

During the run, I was thinking about spring and winter and stories we tell about how the seasons came to be. I thought about greek myths and Persephone and how many of these explanations involve violence towards women and I wondered about myths from other traditions, like Skywoman as told by Robin Wall Kimmerer in Braiding Sweetgrass.

The other day, I discovered Louise Glück’s Averno and this poem about Persephone:

Persephone the Wanderer/ Louise Glück

In the first version, Persephone
is taken from her mother
and the goddess of the earth
punishes the earth—this is
consistent with what we know of human behavior,

that human beings take profound satisfaction
in doing harm, particularly
unconscious harm:

we may call this
negative creation.

Persephone’s initial
sojourn in hell continues to be
pawed over by scholars who dispute
the sensations of the virgin:

did she cooperate in her rape,
or was she drugged, violated against her will,
as happens so often now to modern girls.

As is well known, the return of the beloved
does not correct
the loss of the beloved: Persephone

returns home
stained with red juice like
a character in Hawthorne—

I am not certain I will
keep this word: is earth
“home” to Persephone? Is she at home, conceivably,
in the bed of the god? Is she
at home nowhere? Is she
a born wanderer, in other words
an existential
replica of her own mother, less
hamstrung by ideas of causality?

You are allowed to like
no one, you know. The characters
are not people.
They are aspects of a dilemma or conflict.

Three parts: just as the soul is divided,
ego, superego, id. Likewise

the three levels of the known world,
a kind of diagram that separates
heaven from earth from hell.

You must ask yourself:
where is it snowing?

White of forgetfulness,
of desecration—

It is snowing on earth; the cold wind says

Persephone is having sex in hell.
Unlike the rest of us, she doesn’t know
what winter is, only that
she is what causes it.

She is lying in the bed of Hades.
What is in her mind?
Is she afraid? Has something
blotted out the idea
of mind?

She does know the earth
is run by mothers, this much
is certain. She also knows
she is not what is called
a girl any longer. Regarding
incarceration, she believes

she has been a prisoner since she has been a daughter.

The terrible reunions in store for her
will take up the rest of her life.
When the passion for expiation
is chronic, fierce, you do not choose
the way you live. You do not live;
you are not allowed to die.

You drift between earth and death
which seem, finally,
strangely alike. Scholars tell us

that there is no point in knowing what you want
when the forces contending over you
could kill you.

White of forgetfulness,
white of safety—

They say
there is a rift in the human soul
which was not constructed to belong
entirely to life. Earth

asks us to deny this rift, a threat
disguised as suggestion—
as we have seen
in the tale of Persephone
which should be read

as an argument between the mother and the lover—
the daughter is just meat.

When death confronts her, she has never seen
the meadow without the daisies.
Suddenly she is no longer
singing her maidenly songs
about her mother’s
beauty and fecundity. Where
the rift is, the break is.

Song of the earth,
song of the mythic vision of eternal life—

My soul
shattered with the strain
of trying to belong to earth—

What will you do,
when it is your turn in the field with the god?

may 15/RUN

5 miles
veterans’ home loop + extra
56 degrees

A beautiful morning, a difficult run. Not sure why, but I feel tired, fatigued. It might be allergies or warmer temperatures or low iron? Whatever it is, I found it hard to keep running in the second half. I stopped a few times to walk. Oh well, still great to be out there (somewhat) early, absorbing the gorge.

10 Things I Noticed

  1. the green is filling in, the view is disappearing
  2. heard some noises below me, in the ravine by the 44th street parking lot. Was it people camping down there now that it’s warm? I didn’t see any tents
  3. the hollow knock of a woodpecker’s beak, echoing out over the gorge
  4. the falls, gushing and roaring, spilling over the limestone ledge
  5. 2 people stopped at the stone slabs etched with Longfellow’s “Song of Hiawatha.” Were they reading the lines?
  6. crossing the small bridge just above the falls, 3 kids taking a selfie and a biker next to his bike
  7. running past the wrought-iron green benches sprinkled along the trail, I noticed the sun illuminating one half of each bench — perfect for a pair where one person wants sun, the other shade
  8. heard the fake dinging of the recorded bell on the train as it approached the station
  9. running over the high bridge that leads to the Veterans’ home, I could hear the fast moving water in the creek
  10. a runner was doing hill training at the locks and dam no. 1 — maybe I should try that?

I don’t remember noticing the river — was it sparkling in the sun? Also, didn’t see any regulars or roller skiers or big groups of bikes with their whirring wheels sounding like drones. No irritating bugs (yet) or path hoggers or big packs of runners — the most I saw was 4 who ran single-file as they encountered me. No radios blasting out of bike speakers or TED talks/MPR out of smart phones. No fragments of conversation to wonder about. No sewer smells or big fallen branches to hurdle. No surreys. Not even one good morning to anyone.

Yesterday I began listening to an old On Being interview with Braiding Sweetgrass author Robin Wall Kimmerer. Here are a few great passages so far:

1

Kimmerer: One of the difficulties of moving in the scientific world is that when we name something, often with a scientific name, this name becomes almost an end to inquiry. We sort of say, Well, we know it now. We’re able to systematize it and put a Latin binomial on it, so it’s ours. We know what we need to know.

But that is only in looking, of course, at the morphology of the organism, at the way that it looks. It ignores all of its relationships. It’s such a mechanical, wooden representation of what a plant really is. And we reduce them tremendously, if we just think about them as physical elements of the ecosystem.

2

…attention is that doorway to gratitude, the doorway to wonder, the doorway to reciprocity. 

3

What I mean when I say that science polishes the gift of seeing — brings us to an intense kind of attention that science allows us to bring to the natural world. And that kind of attention also includes ways of seeing quite literally through other lenses — rhat we might have the hand lens, the magnifying glass in our hands that allows us to look at that moss with an acuity that the human eye doesn’t have, so we see more, the microscope that lets us see the gorgeous architecture by which it’s put together, the scientific instrumentation in the laboratory that would allow us to look at the miraculous way that water interacts with cellulose, let’s say. That’s what I mean by science polishes our ability to see — it extends our eyes into other realms. But we’re, in many cases, looking at the surface, and by the surface, I mean the material being alone.

But in Indigenous ways of knowing, we say that we know a thing when we know it not only with our physical senses, with our intellect, but also when we engage our intuitive ways of knowing — of emotional knowledge and spiritual knowledge. And that’s really what I mean by listening, by saying that traditional knowledge engages us in listening. And what is the story that that being might share with us, if we knew how to listen as well as we know how to see?

4

…science asks us to learn about organisms, traditional knowledge asks us to learn from them. 

may 13/RUN

2.5 miles
austin, mn
68 degrees

Last run in Austin before Scott’s parents move. I will miss running through the town, past the SPAM museum, then getting coffee from Kyle at the Coffee Place. Scott was feeling nostalgic and told me stories about many of the places we passed as we walked back home after the run. A good and necessary move for aging parents with health problems. A little sadness, but mostly relief.

may 12/RUN

4.5 miles
Veterans’ Home loop
65 degrees
humidity: 90%

It felt much warmer than 65 degrees. The humidity, my nemesis! I felt drained and decided to walk a few times after reaching the falls. Speaking of the falls, they were gushing. We had a intense storm last night, with tornado warnings and severe weather sirens going off at least twice. Everywhere I looked this morning, I witnessed the aftermath. Nothing too bad, just small branches on the ground, water gurgling out of the sewer pipes, dirt and mud washed up on the sidewalk, leaves piled up on the path.

Someone posted an excerpt from a Louise Glück poem on twitter the other day that made me stop scrolling. I liked it, but wanted to find where it came from: her poem, “October,” in Averno. I particularly wanted to know what happened to Beauty. Here’s the excerpt from twitter:

What others found in art,
I found in nature. What others found
in human love, I found in nature.
Very simple. But there was no voice there.
Winter was over. In the thawed dirt,
bits of green were showing.
Come to me, said the world. I was standing
in my wool coat at a kind of bright portal—
I can finally say
long ago; it gives me considerable pleasure. Beauty

And here’s the larger (more complete) excerpt from “October“:

3.
Snow had fallen. I remember
music from an open window.
Come to me, said the world.
This is not to say
it spoke in exact sentences
but that I perceived beauty in this manner.
Sunrise. A film of moisture
on each living thing. Pools of cold light
formed in the gutters.
I stood
at the doorway,
ridiculous as it now seems.
What others found in art,
I found in nature. What others found
in human love, I found in nature.
Very simple. But there was no voice there.
Winter was over. In the thawed dirt,
bits of green were showing.
Come to me, said the world. I was standing
in my wool coat at a kind of bright portal—
I can finally say
long ago; it gives me considerable pleasure. Beauty
the healer, the teacher—
death cannot harm me
more than you have harmed me,
my beloved life.

I posted a different section from this poem 2 or 3 years ago. It’s a beautiful poem, so I decided to request the collection from the library.

may 10/RUN

5.15 miles
franklin loop
70 degrees

Ugh. Beautiful weather, but a more difficult run. Not sure if it was the pollen or the sun or my sore legs, but I struggled in the last 2 miles. Even so, it was wonderful to be out beside the river. I was able to greet Dave the Daily Walker and Mr. Morning!. I have decided that like me, Mr. Morning! has (at least) 2 versions: Winter Mr. Morning! and Summer Mr. Morning (mine are Winter Sara and Summer Sara). Winter Mr. Morning! heads south on the river road trail and wears a parka and a stocking cap. Summer Mr. Morning! heads north on the river road trail and wears shorts and a button up short-sleeved shirt. Both versions are enthusiastic in their greetings and wear transition lenses, or maybe just sunglasses. I often wonder, is Mr. Morning! that enthusiastic with everyone, or just people like me that he encounters a lot, all of us regulars?

Speaking of regulars, I have a new one: an older male runner with white hair who shuffle-runs — or does a combination of walk-running or run-walking — and is very friendly. I recall seeing him probably half a dozen times over the last 5+ years. The thing I remember most about him, other than his great spirit, is his greeting. One time it was, “Happy Fourth of July!” and today it was, “Happy Spring!”. I think I’ll call him Mr. Holiday.

Other things that happened: I greeted all of the welcoming oaks (in my head); noticed there were no stones stacked on the boulder; marveled at how quickly the leaves have filled in below me in the floodplain forest; looked for, but didn’t find, any rowers on the river; noticed how the river was blue as I ran west, and brown as I ran east; watched a plane slip through the clouds above me; didn’t see an eagle perched on the dead limb of the tree near the lake street bridge; and wondered how flooded Meeker Island Dam dog park was as I ran by a sign that read, “closed due to flooding.”

may 9/RUN

3.3 miles
trestle turn around +
65 degrees / humidity: 70%
wind: 18 mph / gusts: 30 mph

So much wind! As I neared the river, a surprise gust swept through and ripped my visor off my head. Luckily, that was the worst thing the wind did. No knocking down thick branches onto my shoulders. No pushing me off the edge of the gorge. Just a few big gusts, and a wall to run into after I turned around at the trestle.

The wind and the humidity distracted me from noticing much else. Did I even look at the river? One thing I do remember noticing: the green in the floodplain forest is thickening. Already the view through to the river is gone in that spot. I also noticed the welcoming oaks. They’re still bare and gnarled.

Near the end of my run, when I had one hill left and wanted to be done, I chanted some of my favorite lines from Emily Dickinson again: “Life is but life/Death but death/Bliss is but bliss/Breath but breath.” It helped!

10 Things I Noticed While Running*

*4 thoughts that distracted me from noticing + 6 things I still noticed despite the distractions

  1. my left hip is a little tight
  2. it is very humid
  3. I hate my sinuses and allergies; I wish I could breathe fully through my nose
  4. I wish I had worn a tank top. I’m so glad I didn’t wear that sweatshirt I almost put on because I was cold in the house!
  5. an intense floral scent — lilac, maybe?
  6. only a few big branches down near the trail
  7. a woman walking and pushing a stroller, a dog leash in one hand, a dog stretched across the trail
  8. several walkers dressed for winter in coats and caps
  9. an inviting bench perched at the edge of the gorge, taking in the last of the clear view before the green veil conceals it
  10. the creak of some branches in the wind: another rusty door opening!

This final thing I mentioned noticing, the door, made me want to find another door poem, so I did:

Doors opening, closing on us/ Marge Piercy

Maybe there is more of the magical
in the idea of a door than in the door
itself. It’s always a matter of going
through into something else. But

while some doors lead to cathedrals
arching up overhead like stormy skies
and some to sumptuous auditoriums
and some to caves of nuclear monsters

most just yield a bathroom or a closet.
Still, the image of a door is liminal,
passing from one place into another
one state to the other, boundaries

and promises and threats. Inside
to outside, light into dark, dark into
light, cold into warm, known into
strange, safe into terror, wind

into stillness, silence into noise
or music. We slice our life into
segments by rituals, each a door
to a presumed new phase. We see

ourselves progressing from room
to room perhaps dragging our toys
along until the last door opens
and we pass at last into was.

may 8/RUN

5k
double bridge + tunnel of trees
53 degrees / light rain

It’s raining most of the day, but I managed to get out to the gorge and run without getting too wet. For the first time in 2 months (I checked my log entries), I listened to music: Beck, Nur-d, Harry Styles, ACDC, Billie Eilish. An excellent distraction.

10 Things I Noticed

  1. someone in shorts (like me), running fast and effortlessly
  2. 2 women running slow and steady and spreading across the walking path
  3. a runner with a dog
  4. a walker with a dog
  5. an older man, half running, half walking
  6. the big cracks in the asphalt from the savanna to 44th street, have rings of white spray paint around them that have recently been redone. The crack with the ring that looks like a tube sock seems to have shifted a bit farther from the walking path, closer to the bike path
  7. 1 stone stacked on another, a 3rd stone beside them on the ancient boulder
  8. more light green leaves on the trees in the floodplain forest
  9. no headlings on the cars driving on the river road
  10. an older man, slowly jogging on edmund. As I approached him, I waved. He said something but I couldn’t hear it with my headphones on

It’s Mother’s Day, and ever since my mom died in 2009, I haven’t liked this holiday. But yesterday, Scott and I went to Gustavus to take our son out for lunch (hooray for warm weather and patios!) and to pick up some of his stuff before he moves out of his dorm and returns home in two weeks, and he was so happy and kind and smart and excited about life that I’m not sad today but grateful and hopeful. What a wonderful human he is! His energy is infectious and inspiring and makes me want to be my better, happier, hopeful self, even in the midst of so much terribleness in the world. Such a great gift for Mother’s Day!

Speaking of energy I need, I want to be the believing bird in this poem:

For the Bird Singing before Dawn/ Kim Stafford

Some people presume to be hopeful
when there is no evidence for hope,
to be happy when there is no cause.
Let me say now, I’m with them.

In deep darkness on a cold twig
in a dangerous world, one first
little fluff lets out a peep, a warble,
a song—and in a little while, behold:

the first glimmer comes, then a glow
filters through the misty trees,
then the bold sun rises, then
everyone starts bustling about.

And that first crazy optimist, can we
forgive her for thinking, dawn by dawn,
“Hey, I made that happen!
And oh, life is so fine.”

may 6/RUN

5.2 miles
bottom of franklin hill and back
60! degrees

60 degrees this morning with lots of sun and birds and budding trees! As Scott laments (or jokes, or both), this is our one week of spring. Next week summer begins. Greeted Dave the Daily Walker. Counted 3 stones stacked on the big boulder. Noticed the green creeping in below, in the floodplain forest. Running north, the river was blue, south brown. I think I heard some rowers, but never saw them. Greeted the river at the bottom of the franklin hill. It was moving swiftly. Ran, then walked, then ran again back up the hill. Decided to try something different by heading down to the Winchell Trail. This stretch, between franklin and the white sands beach is steep and slanted. I stopped running and walked carefully, as far from the edge as I could.

10 Things I Noticed

  1. running in the neighborhood, nearing the entrance to the river road trail at 36th, I watched as a truck sped through the 3 way stop without even a pause. Glad I wasn’t a few feet closer!
  2. lots of black-capped chickadees calling out, “Fee bee/fee Bee”
  3. I think Mr. Morning! mornied me
  4. the water near the franklin bridge had streaks of foam
  5. a mix of sounds: a dog barking, my feet striking the ground, my breathing — not completely relaxed, but not labored either, a saw buzzing, car wheels whooshing, quiet thoughts in my head echoing
  6. a person on a hoverboard (is that what they’re called?) whizzed past me near the lake street bridge
  7. people sitting on the benches dotting the rim of the gorge
  8. one of the oak trees near the old stone steps was shrugging its limbs at me
  9. a bug — a bee? a fly? — bounced off of my baseball cap
  10. running above the gorge, I noticed some people below me slowly making their way up the steep slope — what did I notice? Not whole people, just a head or a hat or a flash of something that made me think, “people are down there on the steep slope”

I’m working on a blog post about this log to promote my summer class at the Loft. As I ran, I thought about how much the gorge and this habit/practice of running + noticing + writing about it has transformed my life. Almost all of my writing, and much of my joy, has been because of it. It has opened so many doors into other worls, or back into worlds I once inhabited but left, or which I was forced out of. I’ve found poetry and birds and layers of rock and water and a way back to teaching. All of these thoughts came in a quick flash, along with a deep sense of gratitude.

Yesterday I listened to another great VS. podcast episode. This one was with Shira Erlichman. Early on, she said this:

I like in my day to have those boundaries and boundlessness. Like, okay, if I just have five minutes before I go mail a letter down the block, like, what can I squeeze into that time, or if I’m about to meet with a student, and I have 15 minutes, let me go edit a poem, because I’m going to be urgent as hell, while I edit that poem in that boundary, you know?

Then, today as I waited, as I always do, for my teenager to finish getting ready, come downstairs, go out the door, and off to high school, I had the idea of applying Erlichman’s limited minutes to my situation. My minutes — these excruciating minutes, sometimes 5 or 10 or 15 or more — are terrible. Reminding my daughter of the time, threatening her with punishment, attempting to reason never work. Her ability to resist time is impressive and often feels like it’s slowly destroying me. What if I used those minutes to try and write some lines of poetry? This fits with Erlichman’s idea and also with Bernadette Mayer’s suggestion in Please Add to this List to “attempt writing in a state of mind that seems less congenial”.

And here’s a great poem by Maya C. Popa:

Love: “Never the yellow,
hula hooped in black, little engine left running late
into the darkness.”

may 4/RUN

3.25 miles
trestle turn around
58 degrees

Ran in the early afternoon today. Warm enough for shorts and a short-sleeved shirt. Spring! Already feeling too warm. I remember where I was when I stopped to look at the river — just past the railroad trestle, down the recently replaced steps — but I don’t remember what it looked like, other than blue and calm. Heard lots of birds, my feet striking the ground in a dull thud, a funky baseline spilling out of a car window, a few fragments of conversation — one of them had something to do with the weather? — and a dog collar clanging.

After looking at the river, I kept walking on the dirt path below the paved one. I felt almost, but not quite, removed from everything, but still part of it too. Beside it. I thought again about how stepping only a few feet off of the main trail enables you to have some space, to feel left alone. This space beside below next to everything else is not outside, or even on the threshold. Is it on the front stoop, or the front yard? Not sure what it is exactly or even that it needs a fixed name. An image: a dirt trail beneath my feet, mostly dry with a few muddy spots, perched on a steep edge. To the right: a few tree branches, open air, the river down below. To my left: a small hill with wood railing at the top. An occasional voice traveling down, evidence of the paved path above.

This morning, I read a wonderful interview with Jorie Graham on Lithub. It’s from 2018 and about her book, Fast. This title made me think of its opposite. In her interview with David Naimon for Tinhouse, Graham said a few times, “Pay attention! Slow down!” I kept thinking about what slow might mean for me. Not just moving slower, but moving less efficiently or productively. Moving without purpose or a fixed goal. Moving with ease (and without haste) through open space, not crammed with appointments or tasks or destinations.

It is exciting to find great poets with amazing poems and wonderful advice and reflections on how to be. I really like Jorie Graham. Looking through another one of her collections, Erosion, I found this great poem:

Still Life with Window and Fish / Jorie Graham (recording)

Down here this morning in my white kitchen
along the slim body
of the light,
the narrow body that would otherwise
say forever the same thing,
the beautiful interruptions, the things of this world, twigs
and power lines, eaves and ranking
branches burn
all over my walls.
Even the windowpanes are rich.
The whole world outside
wants to come into here,
to angle into
the simpler shapes of rooms, to be broken and rebroken
against the sure co-ordinates
of walls.
The whole world outside….
I know it’s better, whole, outside, the world—whole
trees, whole groves–but I
love it in here where it blurs, and nothing starts or
ends, but all is
waving, and colorless,
and voiceless….
Here is a fish-spine on the sea of my bone china
plate. Here is a a fish-spine on the sea of my hand,
flickering, all its freight
fallen away,
here is the reason for motion washed
in kitchen light, fanning, gliding
upstream in the smoke of twigs, the rake
against the shed outside, the swaying birdcage
and its missing
tenant. If I should die
before you do,
you can find me anywhere
in this floral, featureless,
indelible
surf. We are too restless
to inherit
this earth.

I want to do something with that last line, I think. Something about my own restlessness.