feb 22/RUN

3.1 miles
ford bridge and back
23 degrees

Feels like spring today! Birds! Warm sun! Melting and dripping snow! It is supposed to warm up all next week. The path wasn’t that crowded, which is surprising because it’s so nice and it’s Saturday. I don’t remember much from my run, other than wondering if my back was hurting (occasionally, a little) or if I should stop to tie my shoelace (I did). Can I remember 10 things?

10 Things

  1. 3 or 4 fat bikes on the dirt rail that is on the other side of the river road and runs alongside Minnehaha Academy, lower campus and Becketwood
  2. a biker and a bike stopped at the bench across from Folwell
  3. the rounded shadow of the light part of a lamp post
  4. a thick layer of snow on the walking path between folwell and 42nd
  5. three runners ahead of me evenly spaced across the whole path
  6. my dark shadow ahead of me as I ran north
  7. the clanging of an unseen dog collar
  8. a walker talking loudly on her phone as she walked, her voice echoing through the neighborhood and then above the oak savanna
  9. a runner in a bright blue jacket turning onto the trail from 42nd
  10. the river, all white, all covered in snow

I listened to voices as I ran south, the mood: energy playlist on the way back north.

the purple hour

1:35 am / dining room

Listened to Monica Ong’s “Lavender Insomnia.“

7:55 am / dining room

The poem of the day on Poetry Foundation is First Fig. Figs can be many different colors but are often associated with purple. Since I’ve posted this well-known poem about a candle burning at both ends before, I decided to find out if Millay had written any other fig poems.

Second Fig/ Edna St. Vincent Millay

SAFE upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand:
  Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!

First Fig and Second Fig are from Millay’s 1922 collection, A Few Figs from Thistles. Is her use of figs and thistles a reference to Matthew in the Bible?

Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.

Matthew 7:16-20 King James Version (KJV)

Speaking of thistles, my mom often had globe thistles in her garden. After she died, I recall wanting to grow them in her memory, but I can’t remember why. Is it because butterflies like their round purple flowers, or because I do?