5.3 miles
franklin hill turn around
58! degrees
Overcast, but much warmer today. I wore shorts and a short-sleeved t-shirt. Excellent. Greeted Dave, the Daily Walker, passed Daddy Long Legs. Noticed the river was all white foam and milk chocolate — or, did it look more like a latte? I’m breaking in a new pair of running shoes. My old ones (worn for 9 months, about 750 miles) died, that is, on both shoes, at the widest part of my foot where my bunions are, the shoe has ripped away from the rubber bottom. I remember feeling like something was flopping in my shoe when I was running 6 miles at the beginning of the week. At home, after the run, I checked. Yep. RIP black Saucony Rides. My new ones, which are also Rides, are white with bright blue laces, red tongues, and orange stripes. They look a bit dorky, but they were 1/2 the price of the other options, so I don’t care. With my vision, I can’t see color that well anyway.
peripheral vision
Straight on, the gorge looked gray, brown, green so dark it didn’t look green but dark gray or black. But out of the corner of my eye, I could see pops of bright green. Green at my feet: little sprouts shooting up. Green by my ear: new slick leaves unfurling. Green everywhere whispering hello.
Speaking of color, here’s a few I noticed: a runner in a bright blue pullover, another runner in a glowing bright yellow shirt.
River update: the river road in the flats is still closed, but the water seems a little lower, with more open road. How long will it be closed, I wonder?
Listened to woodpeckers and sizzling sand under my feet running north. Put on my “summer 2014” playlist running up franklin hill and heading south.
Yesterday, I memorized Sylvia Plath’s wonderful poem, Mushrooms. Why was it so difficult to memorize? I found a youtube clip of her reading it, which helped, especially with the lines, so many of us/so many of us. In her reading, she stresses the of. What a difference! Without her guidance, I would have stressed the so.
Ammons’ garbage
Returned to Ammons yesterday afternoon and this morning. Here are some passages from sections 17 and 18 that I’d like to remember:
from 17
poetry is itself like an installation at Marine
Shale: It reaches down into the dead pit
and cool oil of stale recognition and words and
brings up hauls of stringy gook which it arrays
with light and strings with shiny syllables and
gets the mind back into vital relationship with
communication channels: but, of course there
is some untransformed material, namely the poem
itself; the minute its transmutations end, it
becomes a relic sometimes only generations or
acts of countrywide generations can degrade:
a real stick in the fluencies: a leftover light
that hinders the light stream: poems themselves
processing, revitalizing so much dead material
become a dead-material concentrate time’s
longest actions sometimes can’t dissolve: not
to worry: the universe is expected to return
and the heat concentrate then will ashen wispy poetry
wispier: actually, the planet is going to
be fine, as soon as the people get off:
from 18
you can’t classify except by
breaking down: some people say some things are
sacred and others secular and some say everything
is sacred or everything is secular: but if
everything is sacred (or secular), then what is
that: words, which attach to edges, cannot
represent wholeness, so if all is all, the it
just is:
accepted!
Returned from my run to discover that 2 mood ring poems I submitted earlier this week for a journal have been accepted! Also this week, a fun poem I wrote about the swan boats at the lake is coming out. What a wonderful dream to be a published poet, especially with poems that are so important to me. I’ve had 5 snellen chart poems published and now 4 mood rings. Hopefully, I can get some colorblind plates ones published soon too.