4.6 miles
veterans home
63 degrees
Ran to the falls. Every day, my legs are feeling stronger. Will I be ready to run almost 8 miles next week? Yes! I listened to all the walkers and bikers and roller skiers and runners out by the gorge as I ran south, my “color” playlist as I ran north. I stopped a few times to record some ideas about my blue poem. Yesterday was indigo, today it’s blue.
10 Things
- roots
- sky
- roar
- flags
- voices
- bikers
- Sawyer
- horns
- picnic
- honks
Near the end of my run, I ran on the grassy boulevard between the river road and edmund. There were a lot of them, but I managed to not trip over any of the roots popping out of the dry dirt.
The sky was a cloudless blue, sometimes bright, sometimes pale.
At the park, I didn’t run near the falls, but I could still hear its roar as it rushed over the edge.
Memorial Day. At the Veterans home, the road was lined with flags.
Crossing over the creek on the high bridge, I could hear kids’ voices below, laughing and calling out to each other. I couldn’t hear any splashing, but I could tell by their tone that they were in the water.
The path was thick with fast moving bikers.
No — Sawyer — no! Two adults called out to their toddler when he tried to follow me as I ran by.
Running down the steep hill near locks and dam no. 1, I heard horns on the ford bridge. Was it in support of memorial day? Against a war or a dictator? (update, minutes later: Scott ran too. He saw someone walking through the park with a sign that read, Democracy dies in silence.)
At Wabun, a dozen or more people were having a picnic under one of the pavilions.
About a mile into my run, a cacophony above the trees. Geese! I followed their honks up into the sky and witnessed a wedge heading north.
blue
Today, I’m thinking about blue and trying to write a sonnet about it. As I ran, some ideas flashed in my head, so I stopped to record them:
after mile 1: inspired by the cacophony of honking geese, I thought about blue as an action, a verb, a phenomenon, not a noun or a pigment. Also: unfenced water, scattered sky.
after mile 2: Thinking about me as blue — as sparkling and shimmering and scattering and flinging waves of light all around. Blue as a happening that is not solid or tangible but imagined, a trick of the light, a “real” that we create for ourselves out of desire. Blue cannot capture the color, the feeling, the happening that blue is.
after finishing the run: The blue sky is not smooth or seamless. I see the scattering, the static, the pixels — the veil that hides the illusion of sight and seeing color, has been lifted.
Searching through my archive for thoughts about blue, I came across this fact, which inspired my thinking about scattering:
Like all other blue birds, Indigo Buntings lack blue pigment. Their jewel-like color comes instead from microscopic structures in the feathers that refract and reflect blue light, much like the airborne particles that cause the sky to look blue.
All About Birds