2 miles
edmund south/river road, north
45 degrees / drizzle
Election day. Read an accurate description of how today feels: like we all are waiting for the results from a biopsy. I’m hopeful.
Did a quick 2 miles with Scott before the rain started. Throughout we felt drizzle but it wasn’t until we reached our alley that it began to rain. Everything gray and heavy. Most of the leaves on the trees have fallen — except for the one in front of our house — full and green. We talked about a color video that Scott had just watched. Texture and wine dark seas and having no names for blue but many for green were discussed.
My favorite view: bare trees means more open air and the other side visible! I admired the tree line on the east side of the river. It gave off the feeling of being a straight line stretching across. Of course, nothing is completely straight for me; it’s all approximation.
10 Things
- a cluster of headlights — stuck behind a slow-moving street sweeper
- a thick trunk pushing through the bottom of the fence above the ravine
- running past Dowling, hearing faint laughter from kids somewhere
- the water was a blueish-gray, the sky almost all white with gray smudges
- stopping at the overlook, noticing how uneven and slanted the paving blocks have become
- a house on the corner, all black or dark green or dark something, no contrasting trim, difficult for me to see anything but a hulking shape or a dark void, absent of color
- running past a water fountain and wondering if it was still turned on
- the welcoming oaks have lost all of their leaves
- passing above the savanna, seeing something white below — was it a hiker in a white shirt or the information sign?
- something remembered from yesterday: the sound of chainsaws in the savanna
Working on a section of my haunts poem tentatively titled, And. It’s inspired by a line from the first section: a gap grew/between girl and world. I realized that the and here is the gorge, and it’s more than a gap; it’s the place that be/holds girl ghost here there now then water stone. It’s also the absence around which I orbit. It’s not empty but filled with open air and possibility. Anyway, I was reminded of a Community clip from Troy and Abed:
Here I’m reading Troy’s and as making more space for the story Abed is telling. I love how Donald Glover delivers the ands.
I’m also thinking about this bit from a wonderful Maggie Smith poem:
If I list everything I love
about the world, and if the list
is long and heavy enough,
I can lift it over and over—
repetitions, they’re called, reps—
to keep my heart on, to keep
the dirt off. Let’s begin
with bees, and the hum,
and the honey singing
on my tongue, and the child
sleeping at last, and, and, and—