3.1 miles
2 trails+
61 degrees / humidity: 73%
I thought about doing my 10 mile run today but I wondered if it might be too much for my sore hip since I ran 5 miles yesterday. I decided to run a 5k instead, and, to make it more relaxed, to stop at the benches I’m writing about for my poem, “Haunt: the benches.”
It was a beautiful morning. Sun, light wind, good air quality, a few more red trees. Just before I started, I listened to the sharp thud of acorns hitting the asphalt. At the end of the next block, city workers were repairing the sewer: lots of orange vests and loud talking and trucks beeping and banging.
Running south, I stayed above on the paved trail near the road. At the Horace Cleveland Overlook, I turned down and entered the southern entrance of the Winchell Trail. The river was sparkling, the sewer pipes in the ravines were dripping, the cars were steadily heading north. Near 42nd street, I noticed that they had patched all the cracks on the trail that had been marked with orange paint last week — strips that looked like toilet paper criss-crossed the path, covering the patches.
the benches
1 — the bench made out of an ancient boulder
This was not one of the benches I was planning to write about, but as I ran near it, I realized I wanted to. The bench made by time and pressure. How long did it take to make it, I wonder. And, what type of rock is this dark gray/black boulder? Is it taconite (imported from up north) or limestone or what?
2 — the WWDD bench (what would dow do — rachel dow)
The view in front of this bench is blocked by small trees, one of them a memorial tree for Rachel Dow. The bench is made from wooden slats, quite worn, and concrete studded with gravel.
3 — the bench at the edge of the world
In an early draft this morning, I wrote about standing beside this bench to look down at the trail below and out at the river, but that’s not quite true: I’m not standing beside it, I’m standing several feet in front of it. Running under this bench, on the edge of the world, I wondered if I should add an additional verse — I mention fall and winter; I could bring in spring or summer, too.
Yesterday, reading the latest issue of The Paris Review thanks to my local library, I discovered this wonderful poem by one of my favorite poets, Diane Seuss:
She is good at curving/ Diane Seuss
against the constellation
of lilies
of the valley, and good
at making a nest
where the watercress
meets the skirt
of the stream and hems
it, and in the green
where the deer dream.
They say she’s playing
dead but
she’s not playing or
if she’s playing she’s playing
living or something in between.
Oh, so good! The line breaks, the quiet rhymes, the idea of someone not playing dead but living.