Category: Running Log

dec 26/RUN

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

  1. the small patches of snow on the trail or the road, seeping murky gray-green-dirty white liquid
  2. the rusty orange leaves, dead, still clinging to the trees
  3. 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
  4. overheard: a man leaving a group of people at the falls, calling out, I’m going back to pay the meter!
  5. clusters of people — 6-8 at the overlook just above the falls, and at the overlook close to “The Song of Hiawatha”
  6. 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
  7. a distant thumping, heard when stopped to put it my headphones — nearing, another running plodding along
  8. seen with peripheral vision: some frozen crystals on my cheek
  9. 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
  10. 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.

from A Beautiful House with a Hot Tub and Pool/ Jason Schneiderman

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.”

2 — a no-one rose

from Psalm/ Paul Celan (trans. John Felstiner )

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.

Queer Bubbles

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.

Queer Bubbles

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:

(un)certainty

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….

I want to buy here 2018 chapbook: a wonderful catastrophe and this, Celestial Timpani from Yavanika Press

dec 25/WALK

30 minutes
neighborhood
34 degrees / mist-drizzle

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.

Ode to Gray/ Dorianne Laux

Mourning dove. Goose. Catbird. Butcher bird. Heron.
A child’s plush stuffed rabbit. Buckets. Chains.

Silver. Slate. Steel. Thistle. Tin.
Old man. Old woman.
The new screen door.

A squadron of Mirage F-1’s dogfighting
above ground fog. Sprites. Smoke.
“Snapshot gray” circa 1952.

Foxes. Rats. Nails. Wolves. River stones. Whales.
Brains. Newspapers. The backs of dead hands.

The sky over the ocean just before the clouds
let down their rain.

Rain.

The seas just before the clouds
let down their nets of rain.

Angelfish. Hooks. Hummingbird nests.
Teak wood. Seal whiskers. Silos. Railroad ties.

Mushrooms. Dray horses. Sage. Clay. Driftwood.
Crayfish in a stainless steel bowl.

The eyes of a certain girl.

Grain.

Ode to Gray/ Dorianne Laux

Oh, and the absolute first thing I have saved on my reading list is a wonderful poem from Tomas Tranströmer (love his poetry!):

After Someone’s Death./ Tomas Tranströmer

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!

dec 24/RUN

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:

The Lichens/ Talvikki Ansel

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—

                                               how beautiful they were, and useful.

dec 23/SWIM

1.5 loops
100 laps
ywca pool

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.

dec 22/RUN

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

  1. bright sun reflecting off the windows of a house
  2. the very strong smell of week near the 44th street parking lot
  3. the creek was moving, but the falls was not
  4. lots of walkers, a few runners, at least one fat tire
  5. a walker moving over to let me pass on the cleared bike path in the park — thank you! / you betcha!
  6. near the oak savanna, a little kid’s voice floating up from below
  7. at least one bright yellow jacket
  8. the river: covered with ice and snow
  9. 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?
  10. 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.

dec 20/RUN

3 miles
ywca track

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.

dec 20/BIKERUN

bike: 30 minutes
run: 1.5 miles
basement

Windy, icy, cold, so I decided to stay inside. Finally began watching The Thursday Murder Club while I biked. I like it; especially with audio descriptions. Listened to my new audiobook, Tommy Orange’s Wandering Stars, while I ran.

No great thoughts or images on the bike or the treadmill. Just a chance to be distracted from difficult feelings — frustration, worry, regret, sadness — felt as I try to help FWA figure out his future.

a fun experiment

For many years now, I’ve been thinking about how I might be able to use a text that’s been meaningful to me in my thinking and writing about the Mississippi River Gorge: a 2002 Gorge Management Plan prepared by Great River Greening. In writing about the gorge, I’ve often referred back to this 140 page document for information about the geography, geology, ecology, and cultural/social history of the area. And I’ve thought about using its text in some way. An erasure poem? A blackout? Those are the two types of found poetry that I’m most familiar with. Today, reading an interview with Lisa Olstein about her new collection, Distinguished Office of Echoes, I was reminded of a third type of found poetry: cut-outs. Here’s an excerpt and another from the book. My first reaction: yes, I should try this! But then, as I (tried to) read Olstein’s examples, I realized that these poems aren’t accessible and are almost impossible for me to read. I don’t want to write in a form that I can’t even read myself. But, maybe I can think about/think through another version of found poetry that is accessible to readers (like me) that have low vision or no vision.

A first thought: find phrases or one syllable words that can be made into chants/running rhythms.

Another thought: expand the words I’m using to include original sources from Horace WS (William Shaler) Cleveland. Maybe, find something in here?

And, I’m realizing that this idea of writing something with Cleveland’s words is leading me a project I’ve been thinking about for a few years: ekphrastic poems + how I see + writing about the gorge/gorge management as a work of art as ekphrastic + anti/anti-pastoral poems. Just the other day I was thinking — maybe I wrote about it, too — about 2 directions I could go for 2026: M(e)y(e) Emily Dickinson, on ED’s vision poems and their importance for me, and How I See — ekphrastic/pastoral/visual art.

dec 19/SWIM

1.5 loops
101 laps
ywca pool

Another swim! Today the pool was not that crowded, and by the time I was done, it was almost empty. Then, after Scott and I got out of the hot tub, it was completely empty. I almost wanted to get in and swim some more. I probably would have if we didn’t need to go shopping. Scott commented on how calm and still it was.

The swim felt good — mostly. At the beginning, a little harder to breathe, but as I warmed up, it got easier. The woman next to me also had an open swim club cap on; I would have said something to her, but I was afraid I was seeing it wrong. She was a strong, slow swimmer. She swam freestyle with some snorkeling and breaststroke mixed in. Many new friends in the other lane: first, someone in black swim trunks, kicking furiously as they swam freestyle for a 50, then stopping, then breaststroke, then a break. They lasted 5 or 10 minutes. Next was someone in an orange suit, doing a slanted breaststroke. After them another fast-ish freestyler. My favorite friend: the shadows dancing on the pool floor. Everything looked almost animated — like a cartoon, not quite real, and also hyper-real.

Continuous 200s again. A ladder of 50s: breathing 2/3/4/5/6/7/6/5/4/3. A set of continuous 100s, with the second fifty faster and more kicking — a 6 beat kick?

In the hot tub, I asked Scott if he wanted to increase his mileage to make his workout longer, so that I could swim longer. I’d like to increase my average per workout from 1.5 to 2 loops/miles. He said yes! I need to figure out some fun writing/attention/imagining/thinking experiments as I swim for January.

This past Tuesday, during the community jazz band rehearsal in which I don’t play, I read more of Jana Prikyl’s Midwood. Some of it I like, much of it I don’t understand, which could mean I need to read it several more times, or that I just don’t like it. Here’s a poem I copied into my plague notebook that spoke to me immediately.

Another Visit/ Jana Prikyl

A flock of Boy Scouts dispersing early morning
from the summits down into the valley
while I looked from the window of another
visit to that city, considering the bus routes
I’d sew together along the rim of the hills
and the park tucked under the shoulder of a slope
I mean to see but never do, made of transparencies
that dropped their leaves on top of leaves
description falls, it’s there without me

dec 18/RUNBIKERUN

run: 1.7 miles
neighborhood / river road trail
29 degrees
50% very slick ice

Not ideal weather for a run. Were there any other runners out there? I can’t remember; I do recall seeing one walker. A lot of the sidewalk, road, trail was fine — not slick at all — until it wasn’t. Every so often, a slippery spot, some I could see, some I couldn’t. I skittered several times, having to take little half-steps. No sense that I was almost about to fall. I think I was lucky today that I didn’t twist or strain or break anything.

My body didn’t tense up in anticipation of sliding or falling, but I also wasn’t relaxed. Constantly trying to see or feel the ice. Did I notice anything else?

10 Things

  1. flitting birds, emerging from trees
  2. rusted orange in the floodplain forest
  3. the loud scraaaape from a neighbor’s shovel
  4. na ice-covered river
  5. a strong wind — not heard or seen but felt, burning my ears and my face
  6. car wheels losing traction on snow/ice, turning around in the middle of the street
  7. puddles on the path
  8. the edges of the road, dry then super slick then wet
  9. puddles on the sidewalk, not in the usual spots — the house on the next block, the house past 46th — but just around the corner
  10. noisy trucks near a school, doing some sort of repair work involving banging and backing up and scraping and pounding — heard, not seen

bats!

Reviewing old entries, as part of my On This Day morning ritual, I encountered a poem with the great line,

Fix your gaze upward and
give bats their due,
holy with quickness and echolocation
(Abecedarian for Dangerous Animals/ Catherine Pierce

Give bats their due. Yes! This line led me to other bat poems — last year or the year before I created a bats tag — and to these wonderful lines which I’ve written about before:

Think of it—to navigate by adjustment, by the beauty
of adjustment. All those shifts and echoes.
(Threshold Gods/ Jenny George)

To navigate by adjustment, shifts, echoes. Can I do something with these lines, add them to my echolocated poem at the end, Ringing Still, or another poem in the final echolocated section? Hmmm….echolocated is about being located/found by others. The (current) title of this collection is echolocate || echolocated. There’s a gap/tension between locating and being located, the one doing the locating and the one being located. In past years, I’ve imagined these two subjects (the locater, the located) as one Sara (the Speaker) trying to located another Sara (the reader), a You and simultaneously an I. No. Too much explanation. There’s is a swirl of something in my implied speaker addressing a You which is not me, and also me, and my consistent reference to the person going to the gorge and running and noticing (which is what I am doing) as the girl or she — which, if I haven’t already mentioned it is an actual girl — me, age 8:

Sara, age 8, in my soccer team uniform.

Instead of spelling this out, I’d like this to haunt this collection. Does it?

bike: 30 minutes
run: 1.3 miles
basement

Scott and I were planning to go to the y, but it started sleeting and snowing, and the wind was blowing, so we didn’t. Instead I went to the basement and biked. I started watching a documentary that I’ve been wanting to watch for more than a month: Come See Me in the Good Light. It’s about the poet, Andrea Gibson. Beautiful.

Then I got on the treadmill and ran while listening to my new “Eye Tunes” playlist on shuffle:

  1. Breakfast in America/ Supertramp
  2. Double Vision/ Foreigner
  3. See You Again/ Miley Cyris
  4. Tell Me What You See/ The Beatles
  5. Eyesight to the Blind / The Who
  6. Eye of the Tiger / Survivor

Open up your eyes now, tell me what you see
It is no surprise now, what you see is me
(Tell Me What You See/ The Beatles)

tell me what you see, I can’t wait to see you again, take a look at my girlfriend, not seeing straight, she’ll give eyesight to the blind, he’s watching us all with the eye of the tiger.

look at/stare/gaze/encounter/watch/stalk

dec 17/RUN

3.5 miles
under ford bridge and back
36 degrees
20% slick ice

An afternoon run. Mostly the paths/road/trail were clear but, because of yesterday’s thaw, there were random super slick patches. I didn’t slip, but I was more focused on the path than I’d like to be. Still, there were a few moments of freedom and forgetfulness, almost floating on the path, looking blankly ahead and just moving and breathing and being. Gray and overcast and heavy: thick air. It wasn’t that late, only around 3, but it was darkening fast and the road was crowded with cars. The river was light grayish white and empty and expansive. Encountered several runners, many walkers — any bikers? Yes, 1 or 2, at least one of them seemed to be commuting home from work. I remember watching their back light glowing red.

My favorite view: looking down at the graceful retaining wall then a ravine, then the river and the other shore.

morning ritual routine habit

My morning ritual has altered over the years since I’ve been writing in this log, but a few things have stayed the same: up earlier than anyone else with Delia-the-dog; coffee; quiet; sitting and reading. The reading has changed: it used to be articles about the academic industrial complex, then news headlines and poetry people on twitter. Now only poets.org, poetryfoundation.com, and poems.com. Oh, and my “On This Day” posts from that day between 2017 and 2024. Sometimes only 2 or 3 entries to revisit, sometimes the complete set. Today: 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 — what happened to ’23 and ’24? Today was an especially excellent day for poetry. Wow!

1 — The Sign as You Exit the Artist’s Colony Says “The Real World” / Aliki Barnstone (poets.org)

Just check out this amazing first stanza:

Quiet is not silence. Silence is absolute like never and forever. Quiet invites attention to cicadas, the warbling vireo on the wire, the cardinal’s whistle as it wings its brightness over the horizon of the Blue Ridge Mountains, then disappears amid the crape myrtles’ baroque blossoms.

I love this contrast between quiet and silence, and that would have been enough for me to want to spend more time with this poem, but then she continued with lines from Emily Dickinson, and I knew I needed to archive this poem. In her “About this Poem” in the sidebar, she writes:

All the quotations in italics are Emily Dickinson lines. I talk with her across time. 

Yes! I’ve been wanting to write with Emily Dickinson, to find different ways to engage with her words. I’ll have to try this one out. Writing this last bit, I just had an idea for a poem or a lyric essay or a hybrid form and a monthly challenge: My Emily Dickinson. It’s the title of a Susan Howe book, which I’ve read bits of and own. The lecture/chapter in Mary Ruefle’s Madness, Rack, and Honey, “My Emily Dickinson,” which I also own and love. And, “My My Emily Dickinson,” an essay in Kenyon Review by Meg Shevenock. I have the title already: My Eye Emily Dickinson, or My Eye and Emily Dickinson, or Eye: Emily Dickinson or My Eyes and Emily Dickinson, or M(e)y(e) Emily Dickinson? In addition to rereading the other “My Emily Dickinson” books/lectures/essays, I would revisit her lines that are about sight and vision and experiment with ways to describe their importance for me as I navigate losing vision. The experiments could include poems and essays and practices and whatever else I can think of. Oh, I hope this idea sticks; I love it!

2 — Last Century, Last Week: Holy Will (Ekphrastic)/ Ajanaé Dawkins (poems.com)

That first line!

What is it ’bout the river that makes even spirits sing? 

I love how this poem is about a river and that’s in a form that I want to practice more in early 2026 and that it embraces alliteration and the letter g. I will order her book: Blood-Flex!

3 — Wendell Berry’s Window poems (17 dec 2022)

4 — Liesel Mueller’s magical light in “Sometimes, when the light“ and her body in things in “Things” (17 dec 2021)

5 — How it Happens/ W.S. Merwin (17 dec 2020)

The middle of this short poem — a single line that continues a sentence of the lines before and after, but also answers the sky’s implied question (The sky said I am watching/to see what you/can make out of nothing):

I thought you