4 miles
minnehaha falls and back
55 degrees
Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;/lengthen night and shorten day; (Emily Brontë). Ran at noon because I got my hair cut this morning. A great time for a run, at least today. Sunny, calm, cool. I wore my bright yellow shoes and felt strong. Chanted in triple berries, then one of my Your Are Here poems:
Held up by the openness,
Not hemmed in by the trees.
Admired the golden leaves, but forgot to look at the river. Did I notice it even once? If I did, I can’t remember. I did notice the rushing creek and the gushing water fall. Saw a school bus, then heard some kids laughing at the playground by the falls. At my favorite spot, I stopped to look at the falls. Then I walked up the hill and put in Taylor Swift’s new album.
10 Things
- bright blue, cloudless sky
- the faint outline of the moon above a still green tree
- folwell bench: one person sitting there
- bench above the edge of the world: empty
- benches at the falls: all empty
- a runner behind me — were they catching up? for a few minutes I could hear their shuffling feet, then nothing — did they turn off somewhere, or was I just going faster?
- something on the bottom of my shoe was making as shshshsh sound as I ran. Stopped at a rock to rub it off
- the sweet smell of tall grass near “The Song of Hiawatha”
- a leashed dog spinning around and jumping up, then sitting calmly beside a human
- puddles on the part of path near the ford bridge — a result of last night’s rain
GGG — before the run
I think I’m getting closer to being done with this collection? One of the poems I still have to write is called “Everything.” It is two pages wide. In the upper left corner of one page is: I go to/the gorge/to witness. In the lower right corner of the second page is: everything. These lines are the rock walls framing the open space of the gorge above the water/ground. In the open space, I’m planning to fill it with things I’ve witnessed at the gorge, culled from the 10 Things I noticed lists I’ve been making for at least 5 years. Just now, a thought: what if I organize the things to reflect the seasons, so the upper right quarter = spring, lower right = summer, lower right = fall, upper left = winter. In theory it sounds good, but what will it look like?