4 miles
marshall loop
71 degrees/ dew point: 64
It felt hot and humid this morning. Overcast. Ran up the marshall hill without stopping until I reached the bridge steps. It was hard, but I didn’t stop. A good mental victory. Heard some rowers on the river and the coxswain directing them. Crossing back over the bridge, I stopped to read a few small pink signs affixed to the bridge. One was about hope making anything possible, another about how one road block shouldn’t stop you. The other day, as STA and I crossed the bridge in the car, we noticed that the entire bridge was covered in these signs, now only these 2 are left. STA thinks the wind might have blown them off.
Near the start of my run, descending the hill and entering the tunnel of trees, it was a dark, impenetrable green, made darker by my vision. It looked like I was running into a lightless smudge. Very cool–not scary at all. Once I was in the dark green, there was light and trees and thick air. Noticed the 4 fences I’ve written about and the stone wall framed by trees, remembering the time I saw someone perched in one of these trees–hiding? spying?
Now, after the run, I feel sore. I often feel sore in the summer. Not injury-sore but doing-more-exercise-especially-swimming-sore.
Erosion/ Linda Pastan
We are slowly
undermined. Grain
by grain . . .
inch by inch . . .
slippage.
It happens as we watch.
The waves move their long row
of scythes over the beach.
It happens as we sleep,
the way the clock’s hands
move continuously
just out of sight,
but more like an hourglass
than a clock,
for here sand
is running out.
We wake to water.
Implacably lovely
is this view
though it will swallow
us whole, soon
there will be nothing left but view.
We have tried a seawall.
We have tried prayer.
We have planted grasses
on the bank, small tentacles,
hooks of green that catch
on nothing. For the wind
does its work, the water
does its use work.
One day the sea will simply
take us. The children
press their faces to the glass
as if the windows were portholes,
and the house fills
with animals: two dogs,
a bird, cats–we are becoming
an ark already.
The guess will follow
our wake.
We are made of water anyway,
I can field it in the yielding
of your flesh, though sometimes
I think that you are sand,
moving slowly, slowly
from under me.