2.5 miles river road, south/north 20 degrees 100% snow-covered
We got another dusting of snow last night, so the path was covered in an inch or two of soft, uneven snow. Harder to run through, but not slippery with my yak trax. A few times, I could feel the spikes digging into slick spots. It was beautiful and I would have loved to run longer if the surface had not been so uneven. Halfway through, I stopped to hike down to an overlook on the winchell trail. Quiet, white, too bright. I encountered a few other runners, 2 trios of walkers. A fat tire. Walking back, I saw a small kin on disc sled sliding down a hill in his yard.
10 Things
the rumble of a blue snow plow
a line of cars driving very slowly along the river
the dark curve of a retaining wall
heavy, white sky
the strong smell of weed coming from a car parked in the 44th street parking lot
a sheet of dirty snow on the road, stirred up and flung by the wheels of a mini-van
a kid sledding down a very small hill
no ice or puddles, only powdery white snow on the path and light gray ridges of snow on the road
empty benches everywhere
the vine with orange leaves on a neighbor’s fence, some of it had snow — little white spots of ice? snow? making patterns on other parts of the fence
vine with ice, snow, orange leaves, on fence / 30 dec 2025
This image is most vivid when I look at it on iPhotos. Is it because the quality is higher? When I noticed the white spots on the fence — directly, not through a phone or computer screen — these spots were only small white dots. In the photo, they look bigger and I can see small vince steps. Very cool and strange. I might make this photo my wallpaper!
With these 2.5 miles, I reached my goal of 950 miles for the year. I took some time off in May (because of my back) and I swam a lot more this summer, so I’m happy with 950. Next year, at least 1000 and the marathon again!
2025 cento: lines I love + lines I can relate to
It’s time for another cento created out of poems I gathered this year. First, I read through all of the poems and tried to pick out (at least) one line from each. Then I pasted these lines into a document, then printed it out. I cut out the lines, which took forever (and is very taxing on my eyes!).
favorite lines in a pile
Then I arranged the lines on a table, in no particular order:
2025 poetry lines
Now, it’s time to have fun! The first experiment: quickly divide the lines into 2 categories: 1. I love and 2. Does this happen to you?
an explanation: Each cut-out included the lines and the poem’s title and author in parentheses at the bottom. I tried carefully to make sure that the lines were always grouped with the title/author. But, on 2 occasions, I noticed lines that had no citation: I love and Does this happen to you? I decided to make those the titles of 2 different sections of the poem.
shovel: 30 minutes 12 degrees / feels like 0 bright sun
The official word is that MSP (airport), which is only a couple of miles away, got 5.8 inches of snow. It wasn’t too hard to shovel; thankfully it got a lot colder yesterday and overnight. No longer heart attack snow. Under the powdery stuff, there was some crust, but it didn’t seem too slippery either. I would love to go out for a run by the gorge, but I don’t think that’s a good idea for my glute/hip/back. It’s tough to resist.
10 Things
bright blue sky
warm sun on my face
fogged up sunglasses
an unsettling creaking noise above me: some frozen branches on our big maple in the front which seems to be dying (evidence: big branches have already fallen this fall + several woodpeckers have been drumming on the wood)
the whiny rumble of a snow blower in the distance
a cold spray on my face when the wind blew some of the snow I’d just shoveled
the recycling and trash can lids frozen shut
rabbit prints along the side of the house, near the garage
a sharp rumble nearby: another slow blower, closer and in the alley
sprawled branches of the crab apple tree, weighed down with snow and ice
bike: 35 minutes basement
Resisted the urge to go outside and run; biked in the basement instead. Almost finished the first episode of season 2 of Wednesday. Like in the first season, she attends a boarding school, Nevermore. Did I know that Edgar Allan Poe was the founder? Probably. Some outcasts are psychics or wolves, can control bugs or shoot electricity out of their fingertips. I can’t remember if there’s only one siren or more. This season has Steven Buscemi as the principal and a scar-faced crow. It was helpful to watch the episode with audio description on — such relief to actually see and understand and to not not know what is going on. Yes, that is a double negative, and yes, I meant to write it — the feeling of uncertainty is not knowing, so the relief is in not being in that state of not knowing: to not not know
walk: 20 minutes neighborhood 13 degrees
Managed to convince Scott to go outside for a quick walk around the block. It was cold, especially walking into the wind, but I had hand warmers in my gloves, which helped a lot. Scott did not, so he was very cold, and didn’t want to walk for long.
What did I notice? One neighbor had put salt down on their sidewalk (boo). Most of the sidewalks were shoveled. The street 2 blocks over had lights strung up from one end of the street to the other. I never see these lit up, because I don’t walk this way at night. A friendly woman greeted us halfway down another block — hello! / hi!. She was giving treats to a cute dog. Anything else? I can’t remember.
Translated from the Swedish by Kira Josefsson with Judith Kiros
is it only words. On and on. If you shook up the words. On a particular shade of purple being extracted from spiraling shells. If the repetition had less to do with the broken-apart sea, see my skin and my arms rippling like a wave, on and on again, I’ve dyed them navy. On receiving a gift in your childhood, a purple doll with foaming skirts, beneath them nothing, between her legs nothing, what a perfect wave of black nymph. On violet. Or on lavender. On being lowered into an ocean of colors. On your head being pushed beneath the surface, on and on again, to the tune of seashells knotting their purple insides. Don’t give yourself up for free; there is a point in talking back to the sea. On a particular shade of vague purple. On the way a shadow struts, violet, across the page.
a particular shade of purple: tyrian purple, made from snail shells violet, lavender, being lowered into an ocean, pushed beneath the surface: this makes be think of Alice Oswald and Nobody and Odysseus and his purplish-blueish cloak
I like the idea of being lowered into an ocean of colors shade of vague purple
My favorite: the way a shadow struts,/violet, across the page
Also discovered this morning: Fragment Thirty-six / HD and the reading guide by Dan Beachy-Quick — I’d like to return to this some other day, when I have time.
one final note: I have posted a log entry, either running or biking, on this day every year that I’ve written in this log: 2017-2025. Tomorrow, I’d like to experiment with mashing up or combining or erasing or scrambling or cutting up the words in these entries to make a new piece of writing — most likely, a poem.
Winter storm warning today. Heavy, wet snow, up to 8 inches possible. It’s supposed to snow all day, but there was enough of a break for me to get outside and clear some of it away. In the middle of shoveling, it started snowing again, but now, less than hour later, it has stopped again — or, at least slowed.
This snow is the bad kind — not powdery or soft, but heavy and wet. Heart attack snow. Branch breaking snow. Power lines going down snow.
While I shoveled, I wore one of Scott’s mom’s winter coats and RJP’s Christmas present: a crocheted neck warmer, in light green with purple trim. So well made — very warm and comfortable!
No running today. My glute/hip pain is back. It aches sometimes when I sit for too long. I need to run 1.7 miles to reach my goal of 950 miles, but I have until Wednesday, so I won’t push it!
a few hours earlier
Looking out the window above my desk and watching the snow fall, I discovered this poem:
Nowhere but in the occasional dream can I know again with certainty those hills, the dead-end road,
the solace of so often walking— with such little thought as to where time was leading me—
to the place
where the asphalt gave way to stone, dust, and an amber imbroglio of manzanita.
No longer fluent in my primal dialect, the tones rising with the sap of the blue eucalyptus, I can only recall
that I thought like a child. And reasoning like a child, I thought it best to keep secret
the certainty of my love
for the aromatic leaves,
the strips of bark day by day
peeling back to expose
the radiant layers: a gesture
toward the desperation to be known.
more time with the safari reading list
1 — an interview with Fanny Howe (FH) in the Kenyon Review (KR) / bewilderment, openness, fear, and secularizing belief
KR: But a tinker, a traveler, is often a searcher, and as you’ve said, lyric is searching for something that can’t be found. In one of your essays you describe a “poetics of bewilderment” which is very intriguing to me: “An enchantment that follows a complete collapse of reference and reconcilability.” To me that sounds like a frightening state of being. Not a little mess, but a big one! Is that frightening to you?
FH: I think it is frightening. Staying completely open to what might happen and trying not to prefigure what is coming at you is frightening. The imagination is in jeopardy. Belief is bold. There’s a philosopher I like called Gianni Vattimo and he’s written a book called Belief (he is a nihilist) and in it he talks about the secularization of belief and turns it into a positive event, being the collapse of hierarchical structure; and he says that Christ was attempting to secularize belief, to return it to the ground. And one of the terms he uses is infinite plurality, that the relations and contingencies that mark your movement through time are always taking place in ways that are outside judgment and imagination. That is sort of where I would like to stand, without being terrified. It involves an openness.
FH: To . . . everything . . . it’s like seeing the future coming at you instead of yourself walking into the future. It’s a reversal of the time relationship, so that you have to welcome it because it’s approaching and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. That’s the best way I can describe it. It is definitely anticontrol.
currently watching
Scott and I are currently making our way through “Little House on the Prairie.” Last night’s episode was about Laura and Mary, and their sexist/idiot friend Carl, getting stuck on a runaway caboose. It was awesome, especially when Pa ripped some dude off of his horse so he could “borrow” a fresh horse to catch up to the train. As great as that episode was, it couldn’t compare to the one the night before in which Ma is trapped in the house, alone, with tetanus. She’s losing it — passing out in the rain, passing out on the floor — but still has enough wherewithal to heat up a big knife and cut out the infection before passing out again. Damn. This show is dark, and I love it.
Also watched: Die Hard as our Christmas movie, which was also excellent, and The Thursday Murder Club, with a fabulous cast.
several hours later: Still snowing. Decided to do a quick bike ride before Scott took over the basement to record. Not much of a workout, but it felt good to move my legs and get my heart rate up a little. Finally started watching the new season of Wednesday — season 2. I can’t remember when it came out — last fall?
5.25 miles bottom of franklin and back 38 degrees humidity: 90%
Even more wet today than yesterday. I was prepared for these conditions because I asked FWA, when he got back from walking Delia and before I went out for my run, what it was like outside and he said, like yesterday but wetter. Yep. Today I ran north instead of south. Puddles everywhere. Like yesterday, I tried to avoid them, and like yesterday, I was successful until I wasn’t and then I squished squished squished for the remainder of the run. Even though they were wet, my feet weren’t cold. In fact, I was warm — dripping sweat. Saw and greeted Daddy Long Legs twice. Hello!
For the first 4 miles, listened to the gorge. For the last mile, Sight Songs (originally titled “Eye Tunes” but that name was too confusing for Siri), on shuffle. The song I remember the most was “Breakfast in America” and the twisted return of the opening lyrics:
Take a look at my girlfriend
and
Don’t you look at my girlfriend
10 Things
the surface of the river, closer up, under the I-94 bridge — glossy, looking like the surface of the ice skating rink at Longfellow on a warmer day
the not-quite-frantic, unsettled? call of a bird under the franklin bridge — one note, repeated
a wall of snow on a curb, white speckled with grayish-brown, subdued cinnamon sugar
a biker speeding down the franklin hill
another biker powering up it
a small patch of bright pink graffiti on the underside of the franklin bridge
misty, foggy, thick gray air
an empty sky with an occasional bird flying through it
voices all around — talking, laughing
a vine on a neighbor’s fence with orange leaves
vine, orange leaves on fence / 27 dec 2025
on walking
Discovered and read a beautiful essay about walking this morning: On Walking / Ira Sukrungruang.
1 — connected to place
Walking barefoot as a monk was a constant reminder of how we humans are always connected to the earth, bound by gravity, ever aware of the heft we carry—some of us more than others. It made me feel the mechanics of movement: muscles and tendons stretching and contracting, propelling the leg forward. It made me aware of the ground we walked on, the dirt and tar and tufts of grass in cracks, the unevenness of the pavement, the changes in terrain. This was spiritual walking, a bringing of awareness to our breath and our steps.
I am reminded of a line from my poem, “Girl Ghost Gorge,” it begins here, from the ground up: feet first, following
2 — an awareness of a changing climate
The environmental destruction we humans have enacted on this earth is obvious, but I didn’t take it in, I didn’t feel it, until I started walking.
Yes! Since starting to run above and beside and around and with the gorge (almost 9 full years and more than 8,500 miles), I have become more aware of the outside world and its shifts from season to season: when the leaves change and the acorns fall and the snow arrives (or doesn’t) and the floodplains are flooded and the sidewalks are cracked and the sun is covered in wildfire smoke and the bluff and a bench on its edge slowly slide into the gorge.
3 —eyes forward, ears open
After two weeks I came to look forward to taking the same path, seeing the same people. I was coming to understand devotion and repetition and humility. When a monk walks, his eyes should not look too far ahead, but neither should they be at his feet. They should be ten yards in front of him. And a monk’s ears should listen to the land waking up—the creaks and groans of the earth. The land is alive. It communicates. This earth, this world, is more than shape and matter.
Listening to the land speaking, open to how it communicates. Not staring, studying, dissecting it with our gaze.
4 — looking up and waving at a gargoyle
One afternoon in Exeter, walking to pick up Bodhi from school, I noticed how hunched I had become. It had been four months since our move, which meant I’d made that walk more than three hundred times by then, but only on this day did I notice a gargoyle staring down at me from above.
I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk to look up at it. Such an odd sensation to straighten and tilt my head back. It was a rare sunny day in Exeter. I shielded my eyes with my hand and felt like a flower willing itself through the ground. Then I waved at the gargoyle. I don’t know why. Cars whizzed by. People walked on both sides of the street—parents like me, getting their kids from school. The steeple of St. Leonard’s Church was in the distance, a beautiful marker of how far it was to Bodhi’s school. I headed toward it, my head high, learning a new way of being.
This ending paragraph and the looking up and waving at the gargoyle, reminds me of a favorite poem I read early on in this log (in a july 4th, 2019 entry I mention that I’ve been trying to write about this poem for years, but I can’t find an earlier entry with a mention of it, so I’m not sure when I first discovered it):
of these old trees. Raise your heads, pals, look high, you may see more than you ever thought possible, up where something might be waving back, to tell her she has seen the marvelous.
I love her use of pals — I’ve tried to (unsuccessfully) use it in my own poem. I often think of these lines whenever I stop to look up at a tree. Have I ever waved at one? I can’t remember, but probably not.
a year in poetry
Searching this my log for mentions of pals, I encountered a cento I wrote back in 2019, out of lines from all of the poems I gathered in 2019. I like it, and I want to do this again for 2025! I love centos and putting others’ words into conversation with each other!
Here’s the “finished” draft of the 2019 cento: I’m not Asking for Much — I’m hoping that I identified where the lines came from in some document because I’m not sure I could do it now! And here’s an earlier draft: Listen
While reading through my poems gathered in January of 2025, I came across an essay — We Could Just Gaga Our Grammar — and an idea for playing with words:
Find two or three random paragraphs from two sources and copy and paste the paragraphs into a word scrambler. From this jumble of found text, draft a poem. This activity is inspired by Dodie Bellamy’s Cunt Ups.
I’m thinking of a variation on this; instead of using a word scrambler, putting the paragraphs into my word quarry — grouping all the 1, 2, and 3 syllable words and then turning them into a new poem or chant or sentence based on rock (2-syllable/1-syllable words) river (3 1-syllable words) and air (1 3-syllable word) formations.
also: Looked up Cunt Ups and was reminded of William S. Burrough’s cut-ups. Found a book about it, and requested it. Now I’m thinking about cut ups and Lisa Olstein and then Henri Matisse and cut up forms and the cutting prow.
So many ideas! It is fun to let my mind wander again, after 6+ months of structured writing, first about open swim, then about haunting/being haunted at the gorge.
So good — when you cut into the present, the future leaks out. Also — the idea of the tape cut-ups and taking a phrase and scrambling the order until it means something else: I want to try that with my rock river air chants. And, the idea of taking different entries of this log — maybe entries from one day, different years — and cutting it up, or finding the same words, or picking a phrase from each entry . . .
4.45 miles minnehaha falls and back 36 degrees humidity: 90%
Moist, thick, big puddles everywhere. I tried to avoid them, but I couldn’t avoid all of them and by my last mile I could hear my one shoe squish squish squishing. Since it was warm, it didn’t bother me. Oh — just remembered — my shoe/sock got wet at the falls — the cobblestones near the falls were full of puddles. There were a few slick spots, but mostly it was just wet.
For 3 miles, I listened to the wet wheels, whooshing, crows cawing, and people calling out to each other as I ran. For the last mile: TSwift’s Life of a Showgirl
10 Things
the small patches of snow on the trail or the road, seeping murky gray-green-dirty white liquid
the rusty orange leaves, dead, still clinging to the trees
calmly letting a walker know I was approaching from behind — right behind you/thank you! I meant to say, you’re welcome, but didn’t, then lamented my failure to exchange the you until I realized I had with my right behind YOU –if I had said, the you would have been traveled 3 times: from the-walker-as-you when I said, right behind you, to me-as-you when she said, thank you, to the walker-as-you again with, you’re welcome
overheard: a man leaving a group of people at the falls, calling out, I’m going back to pay the meter!
clusters of people — 6-8 at the overlook just above the falls, and at the overlook close to “The Song of Hiawatha”
a clump of something not moving ahead of me on the trail — dead leaves? A darting squirrel. I studied it closely to make sure it didn’t run in front of me
a distant thumping, heard when stopped to put it my headphones — nearing, another running plodding along
seen with peripheral vision: some frozen crystals on my cheek
the trail on the bike side of the double bridge was mostly wet ice with 2 narrow strips of bare pavement that narrowed even more until not even my toe could fit in their groove
crows! just before starting my run, they were gather in the trees above me. when I stopped to start my workout on my watch, they cawed furiously, as if to say, keep moving!
Just before the run, I got an email about one of the chapbook contests I entered — back in July. I didn’t win, but I got, along with 4 other poets, an honorable mention. I’ll happily take that! The chapbook I submitted included earlier versions of several of the poems that I revised for my manuscript. I think the poems are even better now.
In the last mile of my run, a sudden thought: I should submit something for tiny wren lit’s tiny zine series. It says they’ll open again in early 2026: submit a tiny zine
safari reading list, review:
1 — contentment
Found a poem about contentment while reviewing my Safari Reading List. I’m partial to the words satisfied or enough or still, but contentment works too.
Yes, I can be content anywhere, but alas sadly: No. It’s not true. I can’t be content here in my uncomfortable present, in my uncomfortable chair, on the uncomfortable subway, at this uncomfortable desk, in this uncomfortable classroom. But oddly, I am content to visit the past, to say Hello everything I’ve lost, to say I wish you could come here to the present, my lost companion trees. I wish you could meet everything I’ve found.
about this poem: “Making peace with the past has been a common theme in my work, so I decided to try to write about making peace with the present.”
Blessèd art thou, No One. In thy sight would we bloom. In thy spite.
A Nothing we were, are now, and ever shall be, blooming: the Nothing-, the No-One’s-Rose.
I love this bit of Celan’s poem and the No-one’s-Rose! No One — a someone who is No One: what type of sight do they have? We were, are, shall be nothing, blooming. I want to use this — maybe as a breathing with poem — in a collection* about the gorge/gap/bling spot.
*maybe not a collection, but a series of attempts, orbiting around the idea or feeling or experience of the Nothing in the gorge and in my vision.
Speaking of orbiting: Last night, I was trying to name/remember something, but I couldn’t, quite. I kept almost getting the right name, but I was off, approximate. As I talked, I moved my hands around in a circle, as if to indicate I was circling around the name. I called out, I’m orbiting it! I do this a lot. I wish I could remember the exact example, to make this story more understandable, but I can’t.
3 — CAConrad’s Queer Bubbles
There are some great bits in this article about Conrad and their rituals in The Paris Review:
“I love being inside the ritual,” he says. “It’s like speaking in tongues. It’s not just automatic writing … Every nuance, every adjustment to the ritual, alters the language that comes out of me.”
Exercises like these are nothing new in poetry—Conrad cites Bernadette Mayer and Charles Olson as two practitioners of similar methods—but he insists that his rituals are chiefly inspired by his childhood, specifically the Pennsylvania Dutch Country where his grandmother taught him to meditate and where he took an interest in the occult, from local water diviners to the hex signs painted on barns. But as much as his work owes a debt to Boyertown, it is a deliberate rebuke to the bigotry, violence, and oppression he found there.
I’m familiar with B Mayer’s work — a class on her list is what led me to poetry! — but I don’t know that much about Charles Olson. I should look into him more, like his archeology of morning (on a site that offers footprints not blueprints, which reminds me of my old academic slogan for my ethical/pedagogical approach: an invitation to engage, not a how-to manual) and the polis / Polis is This:
Polis is This
In his two books of (Soma)tic rituals and poems, A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon and ECODEVIANCE—a third collection, While Standing in Line for Death, will be published this September—the rituals and resulting poems appear opposite one another. Because the rituals are written in the second person, at times the books read like the world’s most bizarre and inventive self-help guides, manuals for what you might call acute mindfulness. One ritual starts like this: “Eat a little dark chocolate before getting on the subway. Sit in the middle of the car … Then close your eyes, and as the car rolls on its tracks make a low hum from deep inside you … As soon as the car stops write 9 words as fast as you can before the train moves again … Repeat this humming and writing for 9 stops.” He credits his rituals with lifting him out of depression and grief.
The use of You — a bizarre self-help manual or how-to on mindfulness!
the blind ring project returns to haunt this log
Doing some reading about lit journals that accept visual poetry, I was introduced to the amazing erasures of Colette LH. So beautiful and wonderful. Here’s the first one I experienced:
Then I saw this one, Brain, and I started thinking about what I could do with my blind spot black-out ideas, and now I’m wondering about doing something with my peripheral. These white trails above, in (un)certainty are making me think about movement and direction and motion as it relates to my peripheral vision. Hmmm….
An afternoon walk with Scott and Delia. Gray, mild, misting. Some ice on the sidewalk, few cars on the road. Walking on Lena Smith Boulevard, looking over the hill and down into the gorge, I said, that looks so pretty, then realized it probably didn’t to anyone else. The view was gray sky, brown trees, rusted leaves, and the feeling of a river beyond it — a flash of a car or a runner traveling through the tunnel of trees. Scott said, it’s peaceful, but I wouldn’t call it pretty. At first I agreed, but then I decided it did look pretty to me.
A low-expectations Christmas. RJP made gifts for all of us: for Scott, a dark gray hat with yellow trim; for me, a neck warmer in green with a purple stripe; for FWA, light gray mittens. Beautifully crafted. We had a nice dinner, then watched Die Hard for the first time since it came out in 1988. Loved it — even though I could only see about half of it. Scott and I agree: a new tradition.
in the morning
Another Christmas is here. I’m sitting at the dining room table while everyone else is still asleep or hiding out in their rooms. Looking for something, I decided to search through my Safari Reading list — it’s the main way I save links. Found Dorianne Laux’s “Ode to Gray” at the bottom. Very cool! I love this poem and the idea of creating a list of all of the things of a certain color that are meaningful to me.
Once there was a shock that left behind a long, pale, shimmering comet’s tail. It shelters us. It makes the TV images fuzzy. It settles in cold droplets on the power lines.
You can still shuffle along on skis in the winter sun through groves where last year’s leaves hang on. Like pages torn from old telephone books— all of the names swallowed up by the cold.
It’s still pleasant to feel the heart beating. But the shadow often seems more real than the body. The samurai looks insignificant beside his armor of black dragon scales.
it makes the TV images fuzzy / you can still shuffle along on skis / last year’s leaves / the shadow often seems more real than the body — so many lines that speak to me!
4.25 miles minnehaha falls 33 degrees 10% slick ice
Great weather for a run. Only needed one pair of gloves and no jacket. For the first mile, I didn’t encounter anyone, but as I neared the falls, more walkers and runners. I tried to greet everyone I encountered with a wave or a good morning. There was some ice, but I only slipped once or twice. The creek was flowing and I could hear the falls falling behind the thick ice columns. Running up the hill and on my way out of the park I heard voices below in the part of the park that is both the bottom of a massive sledding hill in the winter and a wading pool in the summer.
On my way home, I stopped at the bench above the edge of the world and admired the open view to the river below and the other side. Beautiful. Heard more people down below, on the winchell trail.
late night blind spot revelations
Last night, another thought: I’d like to take a break from structured writing that is shaped by a larger project. Time to experiment more instead. Also: time to add to my “How to Be” project, do my year-end summary, and edit my writing experiments list. Oh — and read some more of the poetry books I bought this year.
Discovered this poem the other day and wanted to remember it, especially for how it incorporates research about lichens into the poem:
Crinkly-thin, the perfect marriage of algae and fungi, furbelowed and curled.
venerable ancestors: strange as vellum, an onion poultice, leather jerkin
Johann Dillen’s portraits of 1741: the ‘Strange Charactered Lichen, Black Dotted Wrinkled Lichen, Leprous Black Nobb’d Lichen, Crawfish Eye-like Lichen.’
the youngest occupy a wicker couch, eavesdrop on the aunties’ tales, wonder why so aged-looking, their skin?
‘Wanderflechten’—those who traveled on deer’s hooves, birds’ feet, hot air balloon baskets over arid land.
travel’s allure, the turquoise ring, scarab bracelet
Those who embraced the seductions of moths’ wings, gave their bodies to the hungers of the ‘Brussels Lace Moths, Beautiful Hook-Tips, the Dingy Footman.’
when can we stay out past dawn?
Lichens who gave sustenance, grew thin, flailed against famine, lichen packed in the bodies of mummies.
these have an aura, a blue-mauve cloud we can’t imagine the ribs’ furrows
Erik Acharius, 1808, the “father of lichenology,” fastens samples onto herbarium sheets, lichens’ filaments and flakes suspended.
nice—but not our father, who is spores and fragments
A thin cord anchors lichens to rock, small bits chip off, wear of paw pad and fur, take hold elsewhere.
we hear the wind caressing bark
Lichens swept up by grazing reindeer, hot breath devouring, rub of meaty tongues, meat toxic to herders— radioactive fallout the lichens never meant to harbor.
ghostly stalks of trees, an ashy forest we can barely look
A single spruce hosts a rare green and red-lobed lichen.
the odd one out, the one no one ever set eyes on
Lichens in the armpits of marble statues differentiated from lichens on the thighs, eaten by snails on moonless nights.
moonglow, something we don’t know here, no one’s talking
A hummingbird’s nest, its outer layer shingled gray-green with lichen flakes, a point of pride, see—
Swimming! For almost 10 years, I’ve been swimming with a nose plug, after picking up an allergy during open swim one year. Today, I wondered what would happen if I swam without it. I lasted 200 yards, then put it back on. My nose felt tingly and irritated from the chlorine. Hopefully it won’t close up tonight. My favorite pool friends were the bright patches of light with their prism of color streaming in from the windows. Other friends: a few fuzzy-somethings, some crud on a tile, the slightly shaking shadow of the lane line, a woman a few lanes down swimming fast and using hand paddles, another woman in the next lane using a kick board, a guy with a pool noodle, several people in dark full-body swim suits, hanging out in the far lane — standing, first evenly spaced down the length of the lane, then huddled together at one end. The recreation pool and the slide were open, so I noticed kids climbing up the slide steps for much of my swim.
locker room encounters
an older woman with a young kid. The woman had her suit pulled up, with the straps down. The kid asked why she didn’t pull her suit up all the way. The woman —because I have to go the bathroom and I’m lazy. (I do this too)
another older woman in a pale blue swim suit, muttering oh, then stopping in the middle of the room, fishing in a bag and pulling out flip flops
blind spot
For the second night in a row, I woke up, got out of bed, stretched, then had an idea for my blind spot experiment. It was inspired by reading the last text box I did before I stopped yesterday:
One glance to shoot down the albatross / Two glances to hold back the landscape at the river´s edge / Three glances to turn the girl into a kite / Four glances to hold down the train that falls into the abyss / Five glances to relight the stars blown out by the hurricane / Six glances to prevent the birth of the aquatic child / Seven glances to prolong the life of the bride / Eight glances to turn the sea into sky / Nine glances to make the trees of the wood dance / Ten glances to see the beauty that shows up between a dream and a catastrophe / What is the difference between a glance and a glimpse? To glance to glimpse to study to stare to look to see to ? The best way to get a vivid impression and feeling of a landscape, is to sit down before it and read, or become otherwise absorbed in thought; for then, when your eyes happen to be attracted to the landscape, you seem to catch Nature unawares, and see her before she has time to change her aspect. The effect lasts but for a single instant, and passes away almost as soon as you are conscious of it; but it is real, for that moment. It is as if you could overhear and understand what the trees are whispering to one another; as if you caught a glimpse of a face unveiled, which veils itself from every willful glance. The mystery is revealed, and after a breath or two, becomes just as great a mystery as before.
note: the second half of this passage is a quotation from Nathaniel Hawthorne, which I posted and discussed on 20 august 2022
I typed up some notes which don’t totally make sense this morning, but here’s the gist: the key: landscape. Playing around with/disrupting the idea of seeing land as capturing it, owning it with a glance. Add in pastoral poems, like the one by Forrest Gander. How we see a scene, where scene = the land. Also: glance versus glimpse
See 13 april 2021 for a discussion of Forrest Gander’s “Pastoral” — the idea of seeing/scene emerging fully formed versus the work of seeing and processing and making sense of half-formed images
See also, 10 october 2025 for a review of past entries/poems discussing the pastoral
Writing and reviewing all of this, I am again thinking about my blind spot in terms of the gorge — the gap, openness, a gash, a space like JJJJJerome Ellis’ clearing.
4.25 miles minnehaha falls and back 38 degrees 10% ice and 30% puddle-covered
Waited until the late afternoon to go out for a run; too icy this morning. This afternoon (at 3), there were lots of puddles and sun and not much ice. A good run. Even though I think I caught FWA’s cold, I had plenty of energy while I was running and felt great.
10 Things
bright sun reflecting off the windows of a house
the very strong smell of week near the 44th street parking lot
the creek was moving, but the falls was not
lots of walkers, a few runners, at least one fat tire
a walker moving over to let me pass on the cleared bike path in the park — thank you! / you betcha!
near the oak savanna, a little kid’s voice floating up from below
at least one bright yellow jacket
the river: covered with ice and snow
a line of cars waiting at the stop sign on the road coming out of wabun park and the veterans home — did a shift just end?
the clip clip clip of another runner’s ice cleats
blind spot
Yesterday I wrote about re-finding my blind spot and doing a series of erasure poems with it. Last night, I woke up with a vague idea about writing a hybrid piece (possibly to submit to a journal’s call for submission — Waxwing) that involves using and applying and reflecting on my blind spot. This morning, I’ve been spending more time thinking about it, wandering and wondering how and what to do with these ideas. Just now, a thought: even as I use a cut-out or an image of my blind spot and apply it to text, as if to demonstrate how I see, the resulting poem/prose piece/fragment can’t properly convey how it is that I do or don’t see. The difficulty with my failing/failed vision is that I can’t really see it. Well, sometimes I can see it, like when I’m talking to someone and their head is only a fuzzy, empty blur, but often I can’t. It’s more of a feeling, or sometimes it’s not anything; I don’t realize I’m seeing wrong or that I’m not seeing until it is pointed out to me. How do you convey that?
But, even if the dark outline of a blind spot doesn’t effectively represent my vision, it does do something. So I’d like to use it.
As I write this, I’m looking out my window, into the bright white and blue of the sun and snow and sky. The image is shaking or shuddering or unsettling constantly. I see pixels shifting. The entire image is not unstable — I see solid forms that aren’t moving — like a red car parked across the street, or the straight hulk of a tree trunk — but the feeling of all of it is movement and being unfinished, unsettled, or buzzing? Visual buzz?
Earlier today I was working on a movie musicals puzzle. I’m constantly amazed that I can still work on it, that I can see enough to fit pieces together, but I can. In fact, with the small bit of central vision I have left, right in the middle of the middle of my eye, I often see small details — a tiny face or eyes, a finger pointing — and can recognize where they go. Sometimes I can’t fit it in exactly, so I give it to Scott and he finds the exact spot. Vision is so strange.
several hours later: Right now, I’m starting to look through the entries I tagged, vision. I have 20 pages of them. Already with the first one, I have an idea. On jan 30, 2020 I posted the poem, Natural Forces/ Vicente Huidobro. Since then, I’ve spent a lot of time with this poem — analyzed it, memorized it, recited it while I was running. To me, it’s a great example of the myth of the power of sight. Could I fit it in an amsler grid-sized box, and apply my blind spot to it?
I tried. Made a text box the size of grid. Fit the poem in the box as many times as would fit. Printed it out. Traced my blind spot on an Amsler grid, then cut it out and placed it over the poem. Not sure I like it, but it’s a start.
blind spot experiment #1
I wonder what it would look like if I only wrote the poem once, and made it a horizontal band across the box? Maybe make the font size smaller too? What if offered a few different versions, some with larger fonts, some with smaller so a reader could see what I can/and can’t read. I’ll have to try that next time.
Ran instead of swam today at the y. Not too crowded. The woman who walks with her head tilted to the side was there. Mostly walkers, 1 or 2 other runners, someone biking by the window, someone else doing battle ropes, and someone in a red sweatsuit doing squats and twists on the edge of the track. Below, kids were playing ball — was it soccer or basketball? I think it was soccer. Lots of squeaking shoes, one coach whose voice could cut through everything. Rounding the far corner — every time — I smelled something salty and meaty and over-spiced or over-seasoned. It did not smell appetizing. Taco meat?
found poetry
Thinking more about cut-outs and erasures, I remembered that Mary Ruefle likes to do them. Almost every day according to this article: Erasure Notebook by Mary Ruefle. And here’s another article with examples from the exhibit.
A sudden thought: what about applying my blind spot to a reading? I’ve tried this before, but didn’t stick with it; instead, creating my mood rings.
my blind spot over text from Georgina Kleege’s Sight Unseen
Yes! I’d like to try this again, but with text about the gorge! I need to go back to the wall and see if/how much my ring has grown. I could try it with old books I can no longer read anymore, or with typed-up text.
