Category: Running Log

april 24/RUN

6 miles
ford loop
40 degrees

Hooray for sun and low wind and clear paths! Ran the entire food loop without stopping to walk. My legs were sore by the end but mostly, I felt good. Ran past all the orange “road closed” signs for the Get in Gear this weekend. Scott and I were considering signing up for it, but he’s not trained up enough yet and I’m not that big into races anymore. Too many people, packed too tightly. Plus, they’re expensive. Greeted Dave, the Daily Walker at the beginning of the run and a few other walkers and runners along the route.

10 Things I Noticed

  1. the river is still high, but not as much fast moving foam. On the lake street bridge, it was a contemplative blue with swirls of something just under the surface — or were they on the surface — reflected clouds?
  2. sometimes it was sunny, sometimes it wasn’t. didn’t see my shadow
  3. also, didn’t hear the bells over at St. Thomas
  4. checked my watch: from the bottom of the hill, just off the steps of the lake street bridge, to the top, right by the entrance to the shadow falls trail, is .65 miles
  5. one goose, flying low and honking awkwardly
  6. encountered 3 or 4 runners on the east side of the river
  7. a loud leaf blower below me, on the locks and dam #1 trail
  8. water — some gushing, some trickling out of sewer pipes and limestone, some traveling through the ravine and down to the river
  9. heard the loud knocking of a woodpecker down in the gorge
  10. overheard: one woman walker talking to another: we were in Norway without a hotel. I was on the phone for 3 hours… [laughter]

Tried to read the last few sections of A. R. Ammons’ garbage, but can’t seem to do it. Too many words. Instead, I found myself (how? I can’t remember now) reading through some of Dan Beachy-Quick’s poems and thinking, not for the first time, that he writes a lot about eyes and blindness and (not) seeing. Is he writing from experience, or is it all a convenient metaphor? A google search of his name and “eyes” or “vision problems” or “blindness” has yielded no useful results.

This Nest, Swift Passerine / Dan Beachy-Quick

But how find how as it flew onward
& the mountains gave back the sound
to say what I mean the call of the bird
& the echoe after to say I’ve seen?

Raven hungers and calls and the mountain
Hungers back and calls
The whole range of peaks in the bird’s beak.
Raven lonely and the mountain rings
Loneliness & the echoe after we could see
him no longer

The echo after we could see Light in echo the eye sees
also through the ear a double infinity

The italicized line in the first stanza is a reference to a journal entry from Dorothy Wordsworth that William used in a poem.

I like the last line, the eye sees also through the ear

april 23/RUN

2.5 miles
down franklin hill and back
32 degrees

Cold, but it felt like spring with the sun and the birds and the buds on the trees almost open. Ran with Scott. Started near Lake Street to the franklin hill to check out the flooding in the flats. The river is high and moving fast, but not much worse than it was earlier in the week. Scott took a video with my phone:

We ran back up the hill — the entire 1/2 mile back to the very top, then kept on going until we reached the trestle and 2.5 miles. A nice run.

The thing I remember most about looking down at the river from high up on the gorge was the fast moving foam. And the thing I remember most about running beside it was the way the water (almost) roared as it gathered itself under the I-95 bridge.

overheard

one walker to another at the top of the franklin hill: That’s the problem with late capitalism, it doesn’t encourage community.

I love our neighborhood where people walk around critiquing capitalism. As we ran down the hill, I asked Scott: Is that just a problem with late capitalism? Then I mentioned how it seems that community is often defined too narrowly and only as a response to the limits of capitalism. And, right before reaching the flooding, we discussed Go Fund Me.

Author Bio

Inspired by a bio request I encountered on the submissions page of a journal — don’t tell us how many degrees you have or where you’ve been published; in 3 sentences tell us about the real you and what spurs you on — I decided to have some fun. Here are a few I came up with:

Since the start of the pandemic, Sara Lynne Puotinen has been keeping a series of commonplace books that she has named the Plague Notebooks. The 15 of them she has completed so far are not about the pandemic, but include interesting words she’s encountered or ideas for poems. Occasionally she uses them to practice drawing the perfect block-numbered 6, which is surprisingly harder than she imagined. 

When Sara Lynne Puotinen wakes up, she usually has one of three songs stuck in her head: the theme from the TV show Alice, the sunrise service hymn “Let There Be Peace on Earth,” or “Oh What a Beautiful Morning” from Oklahoma. 

Even though she’s way too old to think this and knows it’s impossible, Sara Lynne Puotinen still glances down at the bottom of the pool when she’s swimming laps to make sure Jaws isn’t popping out of one of the drains. Swimming in the lake, she can’t see what’s below her, but she wonders if Jaws might be down there too.

Sara Lynne Puotinen wants to know which one of her parents decided her first name didn’t need an h but her middle name did need an e. She’d like to thank them. Also, she just learned that Lynne means lake in Welsh and wonders if said parent knew this too.

Here are three things that Sara Lynne Puotinen has decided will make for a good day: a wild turkey running through a field, its head bobbling awkwardly; the ski poles of a roller skier clicking rhythmically on the asphalt; the very rare rumbling of a train crossing over the trestle above the mississippi river gorge.

After reading the line, the tree outside my window, in too many poems, Sara Lynne Puotinen can’t help but notice the tree outside her window. She thinks, but is not sure, that it is a pussy willow tree. When she looks out at it, she thinks of her mother-in-law who died last year because she loved pussy willows.  

Sara Lynne Puotinen has decided she likes the wisdom that comes with getting older but not the aches or pain or fear. Or all the people dying from cancer.

Sara Lynne Puotinen enjoys composing poems while running up hills. She also enjoys composing them while running down hills. In other words, she likes making things that are hard even more difficult, and things that are easy less so.

Love this poem I found the other day on Have Has Had:

WITH ALL DUE RESPECT TO KRIS KRISTOFFERSON, JESUS WAS A LEO/ Paula Turcotte

The facts of this case are murky at best so let the record show
the Church was riding the coattails of Saturnalia and
December 25 proxied for the solstice well enough. The water
into wine thing: grandstanding if I ever saw it. Show me
a Capricorn and I’ll show you the guy rowing the boat,
not the spectacle walking on water. I’d also like
to submit into evidence the carpenter to superstar glow
up. It’s textbook Leo—just ask his siblings. Oh,
you haven’t heard of them? Your honor, the state rests.

april 21/RUN

5.5 miles
franklin hill turn around
38 degrees
snow flurries

Strange weather. Overcast, then sun, then snow pellets — graupels. A few times, I saw the faintest trace of my shadow. Almost impossible to believe that a week ago it was 67 and I was running in shorts and a tank top.

Ran through the tunnel of trees and noticed several of the trees had bent branches. Still attached but split. I only noticed them because of how the split part was much lighter than the rest of the tree. As I ran by, I kept seeing flashes of light where a branch was bent. A strange sight. Must have been all the wind last week.

Looking down from high up on the gorge, I could see how full the river was. Water stretching far into the floodplains, moving fast downstream. Lots of white foam. I tried to think of what metal to compare the river to, but decided it was too dull to be metallic. It looked like chocolate milk (and not in a good way, if there is a good way to look like chocolate milk). At the bottom of the hill, the water wasn’t any higher than it had been on Monday.

There were 2 runners on the hill doing hill sprint repeats. Both running fast. Most vivid image: one runner (who might have been Olympian Carrie Tollefson?) sprinting up the hill, her greenish-gray gloves rhythmically moving back and forth as she pumped her arms.

Greeted Dave the Daily Walker at the beginning of the run — Good morning Dave! Passed Daddy Long Legs — in black with a bright orange jacket — at the top of the hill.

I can’t remember listening to anything on the way to Franklin, listened to “swim meet motivation” playlist on the way home.

Had some fleeting thoughts about my vision poems — now in 3 different forms: Snellen Charts, Amsler Grids with scotomas, and Ishihara colorblind plates — and how to put them altogether. Then I started to think more about forms and how it’s difficult for me to see/read some of my own poems, how certain forms are dissolving as words become more difficult to read. I wondered what it would like, sound like, feel like, to write even sparser poems, with even fewer words?

A. R. Ammons’ garbage

I’ve lost a little momentum with the final sections of garbage — too meandering? I’ll try to finish it, but not today. I have about 20 pages left. First, Ammons’ full name = Archie Randolph Ammons. Second, I decided to return to the poem that inspired me to read garbage in the first place: “Corsons Inlet.” I’m hoping that reading so much of garbage might give me more insight into “Corsons.” Reading it again, just now, I’m reminded of a line and a poem that I was reviewing this morning as I attempted to re-memorize it: Rita Dove’s “Voiceover” and the opening lines:

Impossible to hold a landscape in your head.
Try it: all you’ll get is pieces.

And here are some parts of Ammons poem that fit with Dove’s lines:

Overall is beyond me: is the sum of these events
I cannot draw, the ledger I cannot keep, the accounting
beyond the account:

and

but in the large view, no
lines or changeless shapes: the working in and out, together   
and against, of millions of events: this,
so that I make 
no form of
formlessness:

and                       

I will try
to fasten into order enlarging grasps of disorder, widening
scope, but enjoying the freedom that
Scope eludes my grasp, that there is no finality of vision,
that I have perceived nothing completely,
that tomorrow a new walk is a new walk.

april 20/RUN

3.65 miles
locks and dam #1 hill loop
38 degrees

It’s supposed to rain all day, starting around 9 am, so I went out for a shorter run at 8. Made it back before it started. Dark and damp. Long line-ups of cars, commuters heading to work, I suppose. I liked watching their bright headlights cut through the gray air. At 42nd street a runner whose cadence sounded much faster than mine passed me. I enjoyed watching the steady, relaxed rhythm of her feet rising and falling, up down, up down. Such grace!

I remember looking at the river and wondering how high it was, but I don’t remember much else about it, except: at the bottom of the locks and dam hill, right by the closed gate, the water was foaming and contained some trash. Yuck.

Heard traffic rushing by, water gushing out of the sewer pipe at 42nd, and my feet shuffling on the grit as I ran south. After running up the hill I stopped to put in music — Kool and the Gang Essentials — and discovered that the soft rubber for my right ear bud was missing. Bummer. Decided just to put the left one in and listen to the gorge and Kool and the Gang as I ran back north.

Yesterday I finished a solid draft of my 8th Ishihara plate poem. Hooray! Very happy with it, especially how I was able to finally (after 2 years of trying) to find a place for a lovely image of the sparkle a swimmer makes as their hands enter the water and light bounces off the ripple they create. Here’s my description in the poem, which I’m tentatively titling, “The Glitter Effect”:

all around swimmers’ hands pierce the 
water, stroke after stroke. Each point of contact be
tween lake finger and light sparks in amber and bu
ilds a glittery bridge from body to body to body 
until we reach the other side.

Should it be sparks in amber or sparks amber? Maybe it should our hands instead of swimmers’ hands? And, what about until the other side is reached? (too passive?)

I also like the ending, although I think the poem might need to do a little more work to get to it:

This is not a 
poem mourning the loss of cone cells. 
This is not even a poem. Th 
is a compass.

Maybe it should be, This is not even a poem, but a compass or This is not even a poem. It is a compass?

Found this poem the other day. Birds!

How Far Away We Are/ Anushka Shah

After “How Far Away We Are,” by Ada Limòn

So we might understand each other better,
I’ve given up on trying to listen for birds
in the morning. But, I am never without them.
The internet is a pocket forest: a green parrot
named Tico who harmonizes in soaring vibrato
to classic rock songs, woolen baby emperor penguins
with prehistoric feet, potoo birds whose fluty songs
haunt even after their diamond mouths close,
a raven named Fable who inflates her blue-black head
feathers before she declares practiced “Mwahs!”
in the same tone as her keeper, and a cockatiel
who sings an Apple ringtone (you know the one)
when it’s upset. How incredible it is that they all
perch together. How to tell you: It’s been years since
I’ve wanted to die, but I still don’t understand why
sometimes it feels so difficult to brush my teeth,
start my day, end my day. Why I always miss you,
but sometimes I can’t even think of you. Why, when
we are separated, when my mind is difficult,
birds are easy. Today, after watching ten videos
of hummingbirds before noon, I feel light enough to push
off my comforter’s irresistible smother and flit around
the house. I want the whir of a sequined green body,
red-adoring eyes, and narrow tongue coiling into skull,
as much as I want the steady sleep-twitch of your
warm body pressed against me. I’m passing this idea
to you: One day, maybe we could plant zinnias
and cardinal flowers in a ruby cluster and wait
for hummingbirds to unfurl and flick their tongues
into an easy sweetness. We could fill two glasses
with cold water and put them on the nightstand.
We could watch together, even on a palm-sized screen—
floating swans, a white, crested pet pigeon waddling
herself to bed, sprinting ostriches, a parakeet father
insistently squawking, “iloveyoubabies gonnafeedthebabies.”

Lines I love and want to remember:
The internet is a pocket forest:
when my mind is difficult,/birds are easy.
I want the whir of a sequined green body,/red-adoring eyes, and narrow tongue coiling into skull,

follow-up, a few hours later: Scrolling through Instagram, I came across a wonderful poem by Naomi Shihab Nye. Around 5 or 6 years ago, when I lost enough cone cells that I could no longer ignore that something wasn’t right with my eyes, I would always pretend to see the bird that someone else was pointing out. Now, I’m more likely to admit I can’t see it. Perhaps when the novelty of knowing what’s wrong with me and not having to pretend to see what I can’t wears off, I’ll go back to saying Yes!

Lying While Birding/ Naomi Shihab Nye

Yes       Yes

        I see it

so they won’t keep telling you

           where it is

note: Nye’s reading of the poem on the site is wonderful.


april 18/RUN

5.3 miles
franklin hill turn around
44 degrees

Great weather for a run! Sunny, low wind, crisp air. Felt strong, relaxed, steady. Kept track of the river as I ran north. Decided I’d run as far on the river road trail as I could before it was closed for flooding. I made it to the bottom of the hill. Wow! How long before the river crests? I looked it up; not until Sunday. Wow! The river is rising because of how fast the snow melted last week.

Before heading back up the hill, I checked out the water and took a picture:

a walking and biking trail half flooded with river water

A few other people — some walkers, 2 dogs, a runner with a jogging stroller — were down here checking it out too.

As I ran north, I listened to the birds, the traffic, the silence. Heading back up franklin hill and running south, I listened to Taylor Swift’s 1989.

Shadows!

First it was the shadow of a bird flying over my head. Then my sharp shadow just in front of me. Then sprawling tree shadows stretched across the trail. I started seeing shadows everywhere and thinking about how they help me to navigate the world — how, when I can’t see something, I might be able to see its shadow cast on the sidewalk. I feel like there was another distinctive shadow, but I can’t seem to remember what it was.

Rust

At the very end of the run, Taylor Swift’s “Bad Blood” came on and I heard these lines:

I was thinking that you could be trusted
Did you have to ruin
What was shiny? Now it’s all rusted

And I remembered, yes, I’m very interested in rust as a color too. I last mentioned in on March 13, 2023 with Schuyler and ED’s “elemental Rust.” I’m thinking of it less as a color-as-noun (like brownish reddish orange), more as color-as-verb and in relation to erosion, decomposing, crumbling — this is where it connects with texture. Does this make any sense, even to me? Not sure, but it seems helpful to think of rust in relation to shiny. Are they in contrast to each other? Only if you imagine shiny and sparkling as new, which isn’t always the case.

Currently, I’m in the weird, all-over-the-place space with my 8th Ishihara plate poem. Trying to consider different possibilities, not shut out ideas, letting my mind meander and take strange (wrong?) turns. This morning I had big ideas about creating a playlist of sparkling, shimmering, dazzling, glittering songs that could help me to find a way into the poem (this method worked with listening to frank ocean’s channel ORANGE as I wrote orange). Not sure it’s working, it’s harder to find “glitter” songs that aren’t by Mariah Carey. Plus, I do better when my inspirations are more slanted, less direct, less literal.

In the hopes of offering a little focus, here are some non-music inspirations and ideas I’m currently drawing from and that I’ve listed in my notes:

1

Eamon Grennan’s beautiful silver ribbon in “Lark-Luster”: when summer happens, you’d almost see the long silver ribbons of song the bird braids as if binding lit air to earth that is all shadows, to keep us (as we walk our grounded passages down here) alive to what is over our heads—song and silence—and the lot of us leaning up: mind-defeated again, just harking to it.

2

Tell me how do I steady my gaze when everything I want is motion? Saccadic Masking/ Paige Lewis

3

dazzle
razzle-dazzle
radiate
gleam (as in gleaming bronze)
glimmer
spangle
catch the light
twinkle
glint
reflect, echo, bounce

4

texture — unsteady rough, not smooth ridged, not flat, patterned — and its influence on light: bird feathers, wind on water/waves, crumbling pavement potholes asphalt pools (puddles), gray depressions — holes/pits in snow casting shadows that look gray

5

heat energy flame burn flicker flare: a. giving forth dazzling, unsteady light, b. sudden outburst, short-lived, intense, c. gradual widening, spreading out, display in expanded form

6

A. R. Ammons and another wordless language, not made up of reds and blues and yellows: mutual glistening in a breezy grove of spring aspen speech

There are more influences to come, but I’ve run out of time, so I’ll stop at 6.

april 17/RUN

4.25 miles
minnehaha falls and back
37 degrees / feels like 32
wind: 21 mph

It snowed most of the day yesterday, only a dusting. Today it’s windy and much colder than a week ago. That wind! My ears ache from it now, sitting at my desk, 20 minutes after finishing.

Difficult to pay attention to anything other than the wind. In the first mile, I started chanting, I am the wind and the wind is invisible. All the leaves tremble, but I am invisible. Then I thought about how I might not be able to see the wind, but I could sure feel it! At that point, I began to wander a little. I’ll try to remember: I can’t see wind, but I believe in it/not seeing is believing/what you see is not what you get/belief/last year’s monthly challenge — wysiwyg

Tried to notice things that moved or sparkled but got distracted. Instead I gave attention to the shadows and thought about contrast — distinct lines, sharp divisions, dark shadows / light pavement, ground, grass

Forgot to look at the river. I bet it was sparkling.

The falls were roaring. The park was crowded. Lots of kids at the playground. An adult playing “hot/cold” with someone. I could hear her calling out, hot! warm warm cold! cold!

Ran on some grit, listened to it sizzle.

Encountered some walkers and runners. I don’t remember seeing any bikers — was that because of all the wind, or did I just forget that I saw them?

For the last mile of the run, I was slowly creeping up on another runner. I tried to slow down so I could keep an even (and far) distance behind him, but I still kept creeping up. Finally, I crossed over to edmund so we were running parallel to each other, divided by the boulevard and the parkway. Within 30 seconds, I passed him.

Tracked the Boston Marathon this morning. Happy that Helen Obiri won and that Emma Bates ran so well. Bummed that Des Linden and Eluid Kipchoge didn’t have great days.

Listened to the rushing wind, yelling kids, sizzling sand, gushing water on the way to the falls. Listened to my swim meet motivation playlist on the way back north.

A. R. Ammonds’ garbage

Onto section 14 today.

the leavings…

anything
thrown out to the chickens will be ground fine

in gizzards or taken underground by beetles and
ants: this will be transmuted into the filigree

of any feelers’ energy vaporizations: chunk and
smear, grease and glob will boil refined in

time’s and guts alembics

alembics = a distilling apparatus used in alchemy

I love the pairing of time and guts here.

on meaningless:

meaningless = a place not meaning yet OR never to mean, which is the emptiness and endlessness of space, the distances of stars OR what to make of so many meanings

it is
fashionable now to mean nothing, not to exist,

because meaning doesn’t hold, and we do not exist
forever; this is forever, we are now in it;

Not sure what to do with this section, except this: I don’t want to try and summarize it. Even as I didn’t grasp everything, I enjoyed reading it, like his references back to earlier parts of the poem, including his love of the baked potato. starch (in Arch) in the potato/meets with my chemistry to enliven by chemistry and the comfort he finds in being free of the complexes of big meaning. And I love his vivid descriptions of breaking down/decomposing. garbage is influencing my writing of my colorblind plate poems, but in slight, slant, off to the side ways.

a final colorblind plate (the 8th)

I have decided that I have one more plate poem to write. It will be about silver and the glitter effect and seeing color as movement and contrast and poetry. Inspired by something I heard on my new favorite show (Escape to the Chateau), I searched “luster” on the Poetry Foundation and found a wonderful poem by another one of my favorite poets, Eamon Grennan. (The line I heard was: Dorothy does glitter, I do luster. It was spoken by mom Angel and refers to her 5 year-old daughter Dorothy. I might have to find room for the differences between glitter and luster in my poem!)

Lark-Luster/ Eamon Grennan

Gravity-defying, the lark in the clear air of a June morning stays aloft on a hoist of song only, and only when song goes as breath gives out does the bird let itself down the blue chute of air in such an aftermath silence so profound you’d think it was a double-life creature: one life aloft in blue, all clarity, the other hidden in the green swaddle of any rocky field out here where, when summer happens, you’d almost see the long silver ribbons of song the bird braids as if binding lit air to earth that is all shadows, to keep us (as we walk our grounded passages down here) alive to what is over our heads—song and silence—and the lot of us leaning up: mind-defeated again, just harking to it.

Oh, that long silver ribbon of song that you can almost see! Love it.

april 15/RUN

3.8 miles
marshall loop
45 degrees
drizzle?

As expected, much cooler today. It is supposed to rain until late afternoon, so I’m happy I managed to run between raindrops. I think it started drizzling towards the end of the run, but it was hard to tell because I was overheated and sweating. Yesterday I wore a tank top and shorts, today the same shorts but with tights, a long sleeved shirt and my winter vest. Tomorrow it might snow. April in Minnesota.

Listened to “swim meet motivation” playlist so I didn’t give much attention to the world. I took my headphones out for a few seconds and heard lots of birds. What else?

10 Things I Noticed

  1. near St. Thomas, 2 runners in red jackets on the other side of Cretin, sprinting down the sidewalk
  2. the river: brown, dull, flat
  3. later, exiting the lake street bridge, I noticed an unusual number of cars turning off from the river road. An event somewhere?
  4. I think a house I always pass by on this loop has a new fence, or has it always been there and I just noticed it today?
  5. the sky was dark and gloomy
  6. most of the cars had their headlights on. I could see them through the bare trees on the other side of the ravine by shadow falls
  7. one car didn’t have their headlights on and I could barely see them
  8. 2 different lime scooters parked in awkward spots, one blocking part of the sidewalk on marshall, the other up against the railing on the lake street bridge
  9. no eagle perched on the dead tree on the east side of the lake street bridge
  10. mud + leafy muck + water collecting at the sidewalk curb entrances. a few times I stepped right in it

A. R. Ammons’ garbage

Section 13 took me a few read throughs to find a way in. In section 12, Ammons had railed against words, too many words! In section 13, he describes two types of men who use too many words: the blabbermouth and the loudmouth. Then he ends with this:

whirlwind, not human, I’m the whirlwind: the
creaking hills, not human, my silence cracks and

creaks: the flow of clouds not mine, my
motions trained clear by clouds: and the

streams’ yielding bending fathers my winding:
and the semicircles’ gusts before storms make

grassclumps draw in the sand—these are the
going closures that organize mind, allowing

and limiting, my mind’s ways: the rabbit’s
leaps and halts, listenings, are prosody of

a poem floating around the mind’s brush: I
mix my motions in with the mix of motions, all

motions cousins, conveyors, purveyors, surveyors,
rising from the land, eddying coils of wash,

bristling with fine-backed black clarity as with
brookripples over stone, spreading out, evaporating

or seeping in under, soaking, salt flats, the
turkey buzzard whirling, the wind whirling,

the giant “stills” of the sea and I, and sand,
whirling, stalling, breaking out, getting on,

coming round—cousins, not silent, either,
communicative, but not with human sound,

communicative motions making sounds, much mutual
glistening in a breezy grove of spring aspen speech

prosody: I know I know this word, having encountered dozens of times, but somehow I still forget what it means. I looked it up: the patterns of rhythm and sound used on poetry

This bit reminds me of Ammons’ earlier discussion in section 7 about non-human languages — whales, horses, birds. Here it’s the language of motions. I love this last line:

much mutual
glistening in a breezy grove of spring aspen speech

Spring aspen speech? So good. Reading this part about all the motion, I’m thinking of one of my introductions to Ammons and the initial inspiration for studying him this month: “Corsons Inlet.” Once I finish garbage I’ll have to read that poem again.

april 14/RUN

3.1 miles
2 trails
67 degrees

The last summer-warm day for a while. I wore black shorts and a light green tank top and was too warm. Was able to run the winchell trail today! Got a closer look at the river. At first, heading down to the southern entrance of the trail, the river was blue with a streak of silver sparkles. Later, heading north, it gleamed bronze.

Lots of trees hanging ominously over the trail. Would one fall on me? When will the parks people come through and remove them. I think I counted at least five.

At least one of the trees on the edge of the trail in the tunnel of trees was sprouting green leaves.

Surfaces run on: grass, dirt, cracked asphalt, crumbling asphalt, smooth asphalt, dry leaves, road, sidewalk, roots.

Heard: a conversation between 2 women I can’t remember now, kids yelling at the playground, a man on a bench talking on his phone, the sizzle of my feet striking grit, a bike shifting gears, the trickle of water out of the sewer pipe at 44th, the gush of water out of sewer pipe at 42nd

A. R. Ammons’ garbage

section 12, the beginning:

a waste of words, a flattened-down, smoothed-
over mesa of styrofoam verbiage; since words were

introduced here things have gone poorly for the
planet: it’s been between words and rivers,

section 12, the middle:

we must have the biggest machine,

fifty miles round, find the smallest particles,
and the ditchwork of the deepest degradation

reflects waters brighter than common ground:
poetry to no purpose! all this garbage! all

these words:

section 12, the end:

imagine, though we think

ourselves purposeless, we may be the thinnest
cross-section of an upcoming announcement, and

though we cannot imagine what the purpose might
be, even now it may be extruding itself, tiny

threads of weak energy fields, right through
us: first an earth in peace; then, hundreds of

years looking for other wars: strife and peace,
love and grief, departure and return: gliding

we’ll kick the l out of world and cuddle
up with the avenues and byways of the word:

Again, this reminds me of Mary Oliver’s conflicted feelings about words and being a poet in The Leaf and the Cloud, minus all the garbage. I like the effect of Ammons’ excessive words — his garbage, even as I find it a lot to read.

Discovered a new poet this morning: Fay Dillof. Here’s one of her wonderful poems:

Little Infinities/ Fay Dillof

1.
Remember The Twilight Zone episode
in which a couple tries to escape town on a train
that loops them back to the same station?

Like that, there are tracks in my brain.

2.
Halted on the highway,
my friend Amy says We’re not in traffic,
we are traffic.

3.
I try not to look at the man in the park, doing pull-ups
on the limb of a tree. Sweaty,
bare-chested—he’s always there.

Not that it’s always the same guy.
Or the same poor tree.

4.
My father’s cousin, when he still could speak,
asked How big is your now?
but I was already looking back on the moment

from some sad future.

5.
The gratitude journal I keep by my bed is empty
because every night its the same:
trees.

6.
In the final reveal, the couple is trapped
in an endless game
being played by a giant child.

7.
Well, at least she never stopped
trying, my gravestone might read.

8.
When I say soul,
I mean like a photobooth photo—
quick this, this, this, oh, this.

a breakthrough!?

Before my run, I was thinking about my colorblind plates and the hidden message I might put behind the dots. What about having each plate hide 1-2 words that, when put together, create a sentence/another poem? Here’s the poem:

Can you see me? I cannot see you.

I’d break it up this way. 7 plate poems, words hidden in each plate:

  1. Can
  2. you see
  3. me?
  4. I
  5. can
  6. not see
  7. you.

Or, should it be:

I cannot see you. Can you not see me?

  1. I
  2. can
  3. not see
  4. you.
  5. Can you
  6. not see
  7. me?

Not sure, but I think I like the second version better. I’ll keep playing with it, but I really like this idea! I think it finally does something with this form that is more than just a gimmick. I imagine the you here as ambiguous. It could mean the hidden numbers or the reader of the poem/taker of the test. I also like the idea of breaking up cannot see into can not see, where “not seeing” is something I can do, I was relieved to do, because it enabled me to finally understand that something was strange about my vision/eyes. It’s so exciting to have figured this out! I’ve been working on it, letting it simmer, since September.

addendum, 26 april 2023: After thinking about it more, I wasn’t satisfied with this hidden poem. I came up with a much better one (no spoilers)!

april 13/RUN

2.5 miles
lake nokomis
62 degrees

After walking around Lake Nokomis yesterday afternoon and hearing the ice shattering and melting, then seeing some loons bobbing in the water, Scott and I decided to return this morning for a run. We started running before 8 am, which is early for me these days. It was windy and sunny and beautiful. The water was an intense blue and getting close to being iced out. Someone already had their canoe out. I wonder what the water temperature is? Open swim begins in 2 months!

When we finished the run, we walked up the hill to Nokomis Beach coffee. I used to get coffee here a lot when we lived closer to the lake, but it’s been years. When was the last time I was in here? Everything looked almost exactly the same. A strange feeling of time not passing.

On the way, we encountered a wonderful display of yard weirdness. Scott took a picture:

dozens of figurines displayed at the edge of a yard, including an owl, a gnome, several mushrooms, and the helm of a ship hanging from a tree.

A. R. Ammons’ garbage

1

at the end of section 10 (68):

oh, well: argument is like dining:
mess with a nice dinner long enough, it’s garbage.

2

in section 11 (70-71):

this is

we at our best, not killing, scheming, abusing,
running over, tearing down, burning up: why

did invention ever bother with all this, why
does the huge beech by the water come back every

year: oh, the sweet pleasures, the kiss, the letter from

someone, the word of sympathy or praise, or just
the shared settled look between us, that here

we are together, such as it is, cautious and
courageous, wily with genuine desire, policed

by how we behave, all out of eternity, into
eternity, but here now, where we make the most

of it:

3

at the end of section 11 (73):

I don’t
care whether anybody believes me or not: I

don’t know anything I want anybody to believe or
in: but if you will sit with me in the light

of speech, I will sit with you: I would rather
do this than eat your ice cream

colorblind plates

I continue to work on my colorblind poems. Inspired by some words in a section of garbage, I finished a solid draft of another one yesterday. Here’s a bit of it:

I look at the plate
and see nothing but a mass of
different size dots. No hidden numbers
or hand-painted hiragana. I stare harder and
the dots turn into loops able to map new routes
for making meaning out of electrical impulses.

april 12/RUN

5.85 miles
ford loop
68 degrees

Hot. Bright sun. No shade. All the snow melted, all the walking paths clear and open. I ran with my shadow today. Above shadow falls she stuck tight to my side, but farther south she dropped down into the gorge. My favorite part of the run was the river, burning silver in the sun and the wind. Second favorite thing: the intense blue of the sky — wow! — against the deep green of an evergreen tree, then the shuffle of my feet over the grit and the dry dirt, and the stopping at the overlook on the east side. Least favorite things: sweating so much and how the heat made my knees stiffen and swell after I was done.

Listened to other people’s conversations, traffic, the wind, geese for the first half of the run. Listened to an old playlist (Jan/Feb long run) for the second half.

A. R. Ammons’ garbage

some lines to remember:

1

let’s study the motions (55)

motions today: wind, waves, shimmery river, a soaring honking goose, the clicking and clacking or a roller skis poles, falling water seeping out of the limestone, light bouncing off the roof of a building on the other side, flashing lights from a truck, the long-reaching gait of a tall runner, the compact swing of a short runner.

2

when I learned
about poetry, I must have recognized a means

to command silence in them, the means so to
combine thinking and feeling, imagination and

movement as to spell them out of speech:
people would buy the enchantment and get the

point reason couldn’t, the point delivered below
the level of argument, straight into the fat

of feeling (55-56)

For me, silence = a silencing of judgment and the impulse to always dismiss or tear apart or not take seriously, to listen and let the words move you and make you wonder

delivered below/the level of argument, straight into the fat/of feeling. Love it!

Here’s a poem I encountered on twitter that I’d like to remember (and maybe memorize):

Equinox/ Diannely Antigua

The next spring iI said No.
I said no to the melting snow, the pile
making streams in the grocery store parking lot.
I said no to the sparrow at the birdfeeder, no
to its beak, the small seed it held, no
to the hem of my yellow skirt,
the one my grandmother could’ve sewed,
thread dangling down my thigh.
Then I said no to the sight of green—
the grass covered in winter’s salt, the still wet
lettuce on a plate, the static
glow in the corners of the TV.
But I didn’t know what to say
as I watched the praying mantis
feeding the eggs inside her
their father’s head.