3.3 miles
2 trails
51 degrees
humidity: 91%
Yesterday it rained all day. Today it was wet and gray and leaf-littered. For the first mile, I heard a squeak squeak each time I stepped on the wet leaves. Saw and good morninged a regular: Mr. Walker Sitter. Heard kids yelling at the school playground. Smelled the sewer gas. Avoided city workers and roofers and bikers almost over the white line. Admired the “edge of the world,” now open and looking even more edge-y. Worried about slipping on the wet leaves and falling down the steep slope. Dripped sweat in the humid air. Counted drops falling from the sewer pipe in the ravine. Wondered if the distance/pace was not working properly on my watch. Forgot about everything else.
The color of the day is YELLOW.
- tunnels of yellow leaves above me
- piles of yellowed leaves under me
- yellow cross walk signs glowing in the gloom
- a runner’s bright yellow running shirt
- (writing this entry): a neighbor’s yellow tree outside my window,
- yellow leaves on the hydrangea bush
- a stretch of yellow trees, just past their peak, beside me near Folwell
- a yellow entrance to the Winchell Trail
The yellow I see is mostly bright. Not gold, but with hints of orange and green.
Before I ran I memorized A Rhyme for Halloween. Then I recited lines from it as I moved. Never all at once, but every so often.
As I was searching for another poem to post I thought about how many poems I’ve already posted and why I keep posting more when I hardly have time to read the ones I’ve already posted. So today, I decided to revisit a poem that I posted on October 25th, 2020: Beginning/ JAMES WRIGHT. Beautiful. Reading it right now, I love the opening:
The moon drops one or two feathers into the field.
The dark wheat listens.
Be still.
Now.
I love the idea of the moon dropping feathers and the dark wheat listening. And now, as I read the third line, Be still. I’m thinking of it less as a command to not move (to be still), and more as an invitation or a plea to continue to exist (be, still). And then I’m connecting that idea to the last 2 lines of the poem:
The wheat leans back toward its own darkness,
And I lean toward mine.
Perhaps my darkness involves an impossible wish, that my mom and Scott’s parents were still alive.