3 miles
turkey hollow
71 degrees
Ran with Scott. Another hot, sunny morning. After a few minutes of warming up, I recited the latest poem I memorized for my list of 100 poems: Tony Hoagland’s “Summer Studies.” Later, near the end of the run, I recited 2 Emily Dickinson poems, “I felt a cleaving in my Mind” and “Hope is a thing with feathers.” Reciting the poems, then talking about them a little, helped distract us from our sweaty effort.
The big event of the run that Scott wanted to make sure I mentioned was the set-to between a small pileated woodpecker and a squirrel. We heard the squeak of a bird, then some rustling of leaves, then I saw a furry darting streak in the tree. Who won, I wonder? And why were they fighting?
Other bird events: A female cardinal flew out in front of Scott just as he was running around a tree ahead of me. I saw him flinch, but not the whirr of the brown bird in flight. A band or scold or screech of blue jays shrieked out across the grass between edmund and the river road, which prompted us to have a conversation about how much better crows are then blue jays. No turkeys in turkey hollow.
We ran past the house on edmund that posts a poem in the front window. A new one about sunflowers! I can’t remember what it’s called, or who wrote it. I’ll just have to run by the house again to figure it out. I don’t have strong opinions about sunflowers. Maybe that’s because I hardly ever see them.
Looking for water poems, I found something else, beside a water poem:
Here/ Robert Creeley
What
has happened
makes
the world.
Live
on the edge,
looking.
After our run, walking Delia the dog, Scott and I talked about Wordle, which I just recently started playing. I told him about my morning routine: a quick look at Facebook, then re-memorize a few poems, read the poem of the day at 3 poetry sites, then wordle. He suggested I try a new experiment: write a poem every day for a month inspired by the wordle that day:
The number of lines = the number of tries I have to make
Each line must include the word that I guessed
possible bonus = the theme of the poem is the correct word
Today: 4 tries: farce blame beads beast
What a farce
to blame the sun
for the beads on your brow
you, beast, were born to sweat.
I don’t really like this, but it’s a start. Maybe I’ll add one more rule: a 5 minute time limit?