nov 2/RUN

4 miles
north to the trestle, south to R Dow bench
60 degrees
drizzle

It has been raining all day, but when Scott said he was going to go out for a run anyway, I decided I would too. We didn’t run together, but did see each other on the trail not too far from the trestle. A fine run. Early on I stepped in a puddle — squish! I didn’t care. I thought about 2 winters ago and running through puddles so big and numerous that they felt more like a lake. That water, which was melted snow, was much colder than the water today.

The most irritating thing about the run were the squirrels. So many squirrels, darting out in front of me. Why do squirrels do that — wait to cross until you are right in front of them?!

I saw lots of red and orange and yellow, some of it in a soft glow reflecting off of the water on the road. There were on stones stacked on the ancient boulder. The river, high above the south edge of longfellow flats was covered in a thin mist. How muddy is it down there, deep in the gorge? I wondered this as I passed the breaks in the trees where an unofficial trail leads down to the gorge.

The benches were empty. Most of the people I saw carried umbrellas. One walker had his hood cinched tight.

a cracked bowl? a net? what kind of container is the gorge?

Yesterday, I started condensing my manuscript into chapbook size to submit for a contest. I decided to focus on the gorge part of its girl and ghost and gorge. To condense it even more, I’m focusing on the gorge as open (not empty) space that holds the river and all who seek it (from my poem, “West River Parkway”). I’ve picked the poems I want to include, but I’m stuck on a title that ties it together. What is the best metaphor for gorge as container? Almost immediately, I thought of bowl — and Jane Hirshfield’s poem, “The Bowl.” Didn’t I write about rediscovering this poem a few weeks/months ago? Yes, I found it: 9 sept 2026. In this entry, I begin the thread with some of my own, not-yet-used lines, then some AR Ammons, then Hirshfield:

Looking through my notes from an oct 2025 Girl Ghost Gorge document, and I found these lines:

her concern
was the edge
and the making
of a form
out of the
edgelessness
that dwells be-
yond that edge

These lines, written by me, reminded me of some lines from AR Ammons in garbage that I found in another GGG document:

one thinks, slapping down the lines, making time
with eternity, one will thrive beyond the brink but

beyond the brink is no recollection but a wide
giving way into silver that filters farther away

into nothing 

I took these lines and put them into my breathing

beyond the
brink, a
wide giving
way in
to silver
filtered
farther a
way into
nothing 

The edge I am referring to is not the edge of life (death), but the edge of the bluff. And, beyond that edge is not a silvery nothing, but a river, floodplain forests, another edge: a gorge. And, the gorge, I thought as I read the lines, is not a formless nothing, but a container, a bowl. I remembered that Jane Hirshfield wrote a poem about a bowl. 

Maybe I’ll try writing a few lines this late afternoon about edges and bowls that look empty but aren’t.