2.5 miles
lake nokomis
70 degrees / dew point: 59
Warm, again. More summer attire: shorts, orange tank top. Tomorrow it is supposed to be cooler.
Scott and I ran around Lake Nokomis together. Strange to be sweating so much while running over so many fallen leaves. Summer air, fall ground.
As we ran, we talked about the wet bulb temperature and the flag system for determining when a race should be cancelled.
10 Things
- the little beach covered in honking geese
- the low rumble of a plane flying overhead
- cracked, uneven pavement
- a fishy, lake-y smell near the dock
- a wonderful view of the water from the small hill between the bridge and 50th
- an empty, buoy-less swimming area
- a memorial hanging from a fence with bouquets of flowers — was this for the girl who drowned in August?
- watch out for the pumpkin guts on the path, they might be slippery!
- a woman sitting on a bench, listening to the news on her phone, then a song with a driving beat that I suggested (to Scott) would be good to run to
- blue water with small ripples, sparkling in spots from the sun
In September, I did my own variation on wordle, which I called birdle. The first word had to be a bird. This month it’s boo-dle or spooky wordle or something like that. The first word must be a spooky word. So far I’ve done: ghost, witch, ghoul
This poem was the poem-of-the-day on poems.com on Sunday:
Dorothy,/ Garth Graeper
Trees, light, weather, people
Millions of warm vibrating chords
Chance threads woven together in coordinated movement
I close my eyes and try to feel my blood pumping
Instead I feel you, walking miles, melting into hills and flowers
The simple power of circling a lake
You knew how to lose yourself, how to leave space
Walking to find a way to be whole
Bird song, leaves rustling
I fall into this moment, my atoms spun just so
This heartbeat is not mine alone
Two bodies walking
Two layers of sound in motion together, hundreds of years apart
Words stored deep in muscle-memory
Carried in hunger, in bruises
Reflected back by grass, branches, rocks
How do I get this voice out of me?
Love this poem. It makes me think of Thomas Gardner and his discussions in Poverty Creek Journal about running with the ghost of his dead brother. It also make me think of my early poem about running with my mom. And, the first lines — trees, light, weather, people — makes me think of Georges Perec and his attempt at exhausting a place by focusing on what happens when nothing happens — weather, people, cars, and clouds.
Reading Graeper’s bio, I found this very interesting bit:
Explorations of place—real, remembered, escaped, imagined—are at the core of his poems. Graeper created a site-specific, handmade Park Book series based on places like New York’s Central Park and Battery Park, which he distributed surreptitiously.
I did this too; I just didn’t distribute it to anyone. Maybe I should? First I need to record myself reading the poems and set up the audio tour.