5.25 miles
ford loop
60 degrees
Shorts, tank top, sun! Only one rower on the river. Under the bridge the water was sparkling — was it because of the sandbar? There was some sort of informal running event — no signs, but a stream of people, adults and kids, running and people on the edge of the trail cheering.
I ran on the soft dirt trail beside the pave path a lot. Gritty and fun to slide on — not slide as in slip but as in glide.
Encountered other runners, walkers, one rollerblader who kindly said, on your left, as he passed me. I could hear the metallic clunking of his wheels before and after he passed.
Birds, of course. The run began with the haunting coo of a mourning dove. I don’t hear mourning doves that often. I didn’t know, or if I did I forgot, that they are also called turtle doves. Also heard some black-capped chickadees. At the end of the run as I walked back home through the neighborhood, I heard a little kid call out, bird!, and the adult with him say, sparrow.
Lots of shadows: tree trunks, leaves, fence railings, birds, me, beside rocks, under benches. My favorite shadow was mine — running close to the railing, overlooking the gorge and the river on the east bank, my shadow was way down in the trees, near the water. I kept moving closer to the railing, trying to get my shadow in the water. I never got close enough for her to swim.
Another memorable shadow: the sidewalk was almost all gray shade, with just a little light, where the leaves hadn’t filled in it. I imagined doing an erasure poem that mimicked this form. Most of the text shaded out with just a few words sprinkled around — dappled? I want to try it! Speaking of dappled, the other day I was describing all of the shadows in my plague notebook (vol 20!). I noticed the speckled light under the crabapple tree and wrote: crabapple dapple. Told Scott about it and he responded, ugh!
Almost 4 miles in, on the ford bridge, I stopped to put in my “I’m Shadowing You” playlist. Put it on shuffle: “The Shadow Knows,” “I’m Beginning to See the Light,” “We Will Become Silhouettes,” and then a song I haven’t heard yet while running: “Shadows and Light”/ Joni Mitchell. I’ll have to think about her lyrics some more.
Here’s a poem that mentions shadow, and is about questions! Last year, I listened to a wonderful podcast with Alabi: Kemi Alabi vs. Divinity. It’s not available right now; is it because the hosts are protesting Poetry Foundation’s refusal to make a statement against the genocide in Palestine?
44 Questions to Ask While Bingeing/ Kemi Alabi
After Benji Hart
- How many hands have touched this food?
- What were their intentions?
- How vast is the range?
- What makes them hands at all?
- How many seeds survived their birth for this?
- Did you count yourself?
- From sprout to pluck, how many breaths old was the oldest?
- What’s become of its homeland?
- How many breaths will it add to yours?
- Or is this a thing that takes?
- Which things were born dead for this?
- Did you count yourself?
- Which born free?
- Which born food?
- Is there a state in-between?
- How old was the well of that answer?
- If governments and their signed scrolls are Plato’s cave wall shadows, where is the real sun?
- What’s become of its homeland?
- How many generations removed from the land are you?
- What floor takes its place?
- What is it built on top of?
- Are the people who tended that place still alive?
- Are there any living descendants?
- Is their language still spoken on earth?
- If you heard it, would your feet twitch?
- Or does dead mean gone?
- How many gone things in your place?
- Did you count yourself?
- What does your body and the day it makes cost?
- What is its price, in gone things?
- Is this sustainable? Better—regenerative?
- Or will this make you the most gone thing alive?
- Is god or the human the cave wall shadow?
- Who says the shadow is nothing at all?
- Are you still eating?
- Who?
- What for?
- What have you grown in its place?
- How much is enough?
- Is enough a place or a count?
- Is there a state in-between?
- Or does enough mean gone?
- Did you enough yourself?
- In the language of the oldest gone thing, how do you say devour?
Who says the shadow is nothing at all?
Did you enough yourself?
So good!