1 loop
lake nokomis open swim
85 degrees
water temp: 81 degrees*
*measured on 6 july, so probably warmer today, almost a week later
Today the goal was to take it easy on my shoulder. It had been feeling better by the end of this week, but I’m thinking about my bigger goal for the summer: swimming one day (24 collective hours) in august, so I didn’t want to overdo it. Just past the first orange buoy, my shoulder began to ache a little and then ached, dully, for the rest of the loop. I think I can still swim; I just need to do less as I rehab it — strengthening exercises + RICEing it — well, mostly IIcing it: icing and Ibuprofen. It’s a bummer that my shoulder still hurts, especially since I was looking forward to July being a big month of swimming, but I’m not too upset. It could be a chance to approach my open swims differently, maybe spend more time going slow or stopping in the middle of the lake!
When Scott and I arrived at the lake, I noticed all the glittering on the surface. My first thought: wow, that looks so cool. My second thought: all that glitter means the surface is not smooth and that means the water is choppy. And it was. Also, warm — so warm! I liked the choppiness. It wasn’t rough — no big waves were crashing into me. Instead it was constant — wave after wave after wave, making me rock from side to side.
It was fitting that there were waves, because I’m working on revising/condensing a poem about waves (literal waves at open swim and waves of grief after my mom died). Hopefully today’s swim can serve as inspiration.
10 Wave Things
- stirred-up water below the surface with lots of sediment floating in front of me, 1: difficult to see anything, like my hands or bubbles or fish
- stirred-up water below the surface with lots of sediment floating in front of me, 2: water color was a mix between pea soup green and lentil dahl yellow
- stirred-up water above the surface, making it difficult to see buoys
- the surface: all glittered up
- no white-caps, but lots of spray flying high in the air
- an increased amount of breaststroke by other swimmers
- more breathing on one side, 1: in the first half of the loop, I breathed mostly to my right
- more breathing on one side, 1: in the first half of the loop, I breathed mostly to my left
- the yellow safety buoy tethered to my torso was bobbing vigorously
- I did not feel like I was fighting the water, but that it was holding me and reminding me it was there
Do I remember the sound of waves? No, I don’t recall the sloshing sound of the water as it rushed over my ears. I bet it was loud.
Found this poem when I searched, “waves” on poets.org. It’s a golden shovel poem, where the last word in each line comes from a different poem. The original golden shovel was Terrence Hayes creating a poem that ended each line with words from Gwendolyn Brooks’ “We Real Cool.”
[Waves rolling up] ii. / Kimiko Hahn
After Tada Chimako
If I don’t taste the complicated waves—
if I only see the rolling,
only hear the roiling up
or smell those waves
—then I will tumble
head over
stance. Then I spring
up, drenched in partisan sand.
I’d like to try something like this with my waves poem to suggest another meaning. I could either use words from a poem about grief or moving water. For grief, maybe Emily Dickinson, for water, Niedecker or Oswald? Maybe one of my favorites?
several hours later: 6:04 / 90 degrees, feels like 94
a reminder when experimenting with my wave poem: don’t try to force it — find some poems I like about waves or grief and see what happens
Sitting under my crab apple tree, where it is much cooler than on the deck, I reread an interview with Alice Oswald in the winter 2026 Paris Review. I’ve posted bits from it already. Today, since I’ve been thinking about spiriti visivi and insects, I wanted to post these lines:
1
. . . the contracts you make with the natural world that allow you to be in a place, the feeling of living somewhere you don’t own.
(But don’t you own the house?)
Yes, but it’s very clear that it’s really the insects who own it, and the river that comes right up to the garden. The rain comes through the ceiling. It’s interesting, the way the dead and the natural world are sort of exchangeable. That might sound theoretical, but ancient Greek lament, and lament from everywhere, has always used birds and plants as intermediaries for communicating with the dead. And I feel, when I’m here, a deference toward my uncle and my father, who once looked after the house, that’s kind of interchangeable with the deference I might feel toward a bird or an insent.
2
[after discussing the sound that flies and grasshoppers make, the interviewer asks: Is it the choral sound that you love?]
And the fact that they don’t speak with their mouths. I love the way insects speak with their wings or legs. For a
Interview with Alice Oswald
After the interview were 4 new poems from AO, including this one about the fly. 3 fly poets I immediately think of: Emily Dickinson, Aracelis Girmay, and Alice Oswald.
Fly-play/ Alice Oswald
Enter a fly
no sooner nowhere than here
wiping her rear-view eye and
tapping the world
with one foreleg
What is it you wish for Fly?
She merely glitters to me of silence
tapping . . . tapping the world
walks backward . . . refers me to her myth
and exits . . .
The scene is summer
Enter a yellow curtain:
One servant dressed simply as the sun
going in and out with a beam of dust
one fly . . .
WHAT IS YOU WISH FOR FLY?
She merely rotates for me her mask
as if to bring something
born in one world back in another
Then round and round with her weak voice
pleading that her one belonging is her life
which lasts but a day . . .
But you know full well, Fly, it takes
400 insect years for me to lift my ahnd
and by the time it lands
I too will be mute, I too will be you
glitter / silence / tapping
refers me to her myth? what is the myth of the fly?
Here’s another fly poem from AO: Flies