5.3 miles
ford loop
65 degrees / steady drizzle
Thought the rain wasn’t coming until later today so I got ready for my run — changed into my running clothes, stretched, put on my running shoes — then opened the door to drizzle. Decided to go anyway. At first, it was intermittent drizzle, but halfway through it became a steady, soft rain. Not enough to soak my shorts but enough to cool me off and to inspire a chant:
drip drip drop
drop
drip drip drip
drop
drop drip
drop drip
drop drip
drip drop
drip drip drip
drop drop drop
drop drop drip
drop drop drip
drop drop drip
drip
I continued my 9 minutes of running, 1 minute of walking plan and was successful. In the last mile, my left started to hurt a little, then my left calf, and my foot. It’s fine, but to be safe, I stopped at 5.3 miles. The run was never easy, but it also wasn’t hard to keep going, knowing that I had a walk break coming.
10 Things
- a soft green everywhere
- an empty river
- new trees wrapped in plastic looking like wild turkeys
- a dark tunnel of green with a bright circle of white at the end
- on your left / thank you!
- front yard tree with a giant boulder just in front of it
- empty benches except for the one near folwell: 2 people not sitting, but standing behind it
- the rumble of planes sounding like thunder
- the sharp clang of a mailbox lid falling shut
- chains from a trailer rattling and scraping on the rough road
green haze: Running on the east river road, quick glances over to the gorge — a soft green and silver view of trees and sky
I was delighted to discover halfway in that the poem-of-the-day on the Poetry Foundation is about rust! The entire poem is wonderful, but it’s long, so I’ll only post most of the rust part:
excerpt from “Que Sera Sera”/ A. Van Jordan
Like when a song gets so far out
on a solo you almost don’t recognize it,
but then you get back to the hook, you suddenly
recognize the tune and before you know it,
you’re putting your hands together; you’re on your feet—
because you recognize a sound, like a light,
leading you back home to a color:
rust. You must remember
rust—not too red, not too orange—not fire or overnight
change, but a simmering-summer
change in which children play till they tire
and grown folks sit till they grow edgy
or neighborhood dogs bite those not from your neigborhood
and someone with some sense says Down, Boy,
or you hope someone has some sense
who’s outside or who owns the dog and then the sky
turns rust and the streetlights buzz on
and someone’s mother, must be yours, says
You see those streetlights on don’t you,
and then everybody else’s mother comes out and says
the same thing and the sky is rust so you know
you got about ten minutes before she comes back out
and embarrasses you in front of your friends;
ten minutes to get home before you eat and watch
the Flip Wilson Show or Sanford and Son and it’s time for bed.
And it’s rust you need to remember
when the cop asks, What kind of work you do?
It’s rust you need to remember: the smell
of summer rain on the sidewalk
and the patina on wrought-iron railings on your front porch
with rust patches on them, and the smell
of fresh mowed grass and gasoline and sweat
of your childhood as he takes a step back
when you tell him you’re a poet teaching
English down the road at the college,
when he takes a step back—
to assure you, know, that this has nothing to do with race,
but the rust of a community he believes
he keeps safe, and he says Have a Good One,
meaning day as he swaggers back to his car,
and the color of the day and the face behind sunglasses
and the hands on his hips you’ll always remember
come back gunmetal gray
for the rest of this rusty afternoon.
Rust — I’ve been wanting to write a poem about rust for some time. Is this a sign that I should try today?