3.1 miles
43rd, north/32nd, east/river road trail, south/42nd, west/edmund, north
29 degrees
My first run since last Sunday, partly due to travel, partly feeling sore. A great winter run. Cold, with layers, but not too cold. And no ice or snow or bad trail conditions. Before we went out for our run, Scott put together his marathon plan for this year — we’ve decided to try again. My goal: to make it to the start line next October, healthy. Should I come up with some sort of a plan? If I did, I imagine it would combine running, walking, and poetry.
As we ran, we talked about how the river road stops being red at certain points where the county or city or state (I can’t remember what Scott said) takes over. In those spots the road is black asphalt. Then I mentioned that we had had a very similar conversation 2 or 3 years ago. Then we talked about time looping and repeating yourself and when it’s ritual, when it’s being stuck in a rut.
10 Things
- open, brown river (no ice or snow)
- a scratching noise — not roller skier poles but the drum beat on a rap song that 2 white women were blasting as they ran by — wow
- one or two patches of ice on the sidewalk by edmund
- a runner in a bright orange sweatshirt or jacket, glowing in the gloom
- a light grayish-blue sky, everything darker — not feeling like day or night, but some in-between time
- a few flurries
- pothole 1: what started as a small hole has gotten bigger and deeper every year. 2 years ago they tried to patch it, but it didn’t work. The orange spray paint they used to outline a few years before that has faded, near the oak savanna
- pothole 2: at the spot where the bike and walking paths separate, less a pothole, more a deep gash 3 or 4 feet long. Every year they circle it with white spray paint — the shape of paint resembles a tube sock
- passing a woman who swung her arm out awkwardly like Dave — wasn’t sure for a minute — could it be Dave? no
- looking down at the floodplain forest, pointing out the clear view of the forest floor to Scott. He said if he looked he might faint: vertigo
Winter Song/ Wilfred Owen
The browns, the olives, and the yellows died,
And were swept up to heaven; where they glowed
Each dawn and set of sun till Christmastide,
And when the land lay pale for them, pale-snowed,
Fell back, and down the snow-drifts flamed and flowed.
From off your face, into the winds of winter,
The sun-brown and the summer-gold are blowing;
But they shall gleam with spiritual glinter,
When paler beauty on your brows falls snowing,
And through those snows my looks shall be soft-going.
I like the focus on winter colors in this poem and the idea of snow as flamed and flowing and shift from sun-brown and summer-gold into spiritual glinter and how his looks are soft-going. I might need to use that expression for how I see: soft-going.