Sometimes, while rereading old entries, I encounter an image that became (part of) a poem. I’d like to archive those examples here.
1
With all the snow on the ground and in the trees, I suddenly remembered cross country skiing with my mom up in the upper peninsula of Michigan–in Houghton–on these amazing groomed trails a mile from her house. I always loved going there with her, when she was in her late 50s and I was in my mid 20s. So much snow everywhere. And so many beautiful trees–aspens (I think) and firs. There was one stretch that I especially liked where you skied through a forest. I called it the cathedral of trees. Today I didn’t run through a forest, but I felt that same sort of delight and reverence as I ran by the welcoming oaks, their branches loaded with snow. What a wonderful gift to be able to conjure up that memory and think about a time before my mom was sick.
11 feb 2019
poem: Through the Welcoming Oaks/ Sara Lynne Puotinen
1. Through the Welcoming Oaks
Red oaks line the path. Some stand at attention, others at ease. Each seems to greet in its own way. “Good morning.” “Hello friend.” “Be careful.” I listen and they are grateful, offering gifts—shade, a pale golden light warming the sky, a serenade of acorn shells crunching underfoot. Once something more. A memory. Thick fresh slabs of frozen white caught in oaks’ crooks take me back. Mom and I in a forest up north, skiing under a stand of bushy balsam firs heavy with snow. We glow flushed with effort, burning bright with health. We laugh in delight at the trees looking like a scene from Currier & Ives. We do not yet know she is dying.
Red oaks painted white
cast out the ghost of cancer
and return us home.
2
Speaking of not seeing faces, this morning my daughter was talking to me. I was sitting at my desk, she was on the couch, in the shadows. Looking at her for several minutes as she told me about her homework, I couldn’t see her facial features at all. Her head was a shadowy blob with hair. I could, however, see her hand gestures. Her small, graceful hands waved and pointed and flexed and reached out as she discussed her assignment. I did not need to see her face or her eyes to understand her.
log entry on 9 april 2020
poem: “The Motions of the Dipping Birds” — Door is a Jar, Winter (December) 2023
The Motions of the Dipping Birds/ Sara Lynne Puotinen
Because I can no longer see
her face, when my daughter talks I watch
her small hands rise and fall,
sweep the air, flutter.
I marvel at the soft feathers her fingers make
as they soar then circle then settle
on the perch of her hips waiting
to return to the sky for another story.
3
Everything everywhere was so wet. Dripping. Gushing. Trickling. Seeping. Even the air. Almost 100% humidity. And the fog–wow. Thick. The river looked so beautiful with the fog hovering above the water that I actually gasped as I ran above it. Got to say good morning to the Man in Black. Encountered only one biker, their bike light cutting through the thick air.
log entry on 14 march 2019
Just Past a Railroad Trestle/ Sara Lynne Puotinen
Yesterday lingering ice lurked on the edge of the
path. Today water takes a different form. Liquid air
drips drops drapes forest’s floor. Reaches river’s
edge, road’s ribbon. Passes through the worn
wood of the split rail fence just beyond the trestle.
Breaches the boundary between gorge and bluff,
drop off and overlook, mowed turf and glacial till.
Envelops* everything. River, road, trestle, tree,
boulder, fence, asphalt, me. We are not lost only
unseen. Even the car that crashed through the split
rails and was caught by a tree hides, unnoticed for
hours. Too soon we will all be found.
A single light carves
a circle in the thick fog.
A bike approaches.
*My choice of envelops was inspired by The Rainwalkers/ Denise Levertov, which I also posted on 14 march 2019:
The three of them are enveloped –
4
After finishing the run, I decided to swim. The water was warm which is amazing considering the lake still had ice at the end of April! Guess all those 90+ degree days really warmed it up fast. The water was also clear. Freak-me-out clear. I could see the bottom and the algae plants growing up from the bottom and the fish swimming below me. I have decided that it is better to swim without being able to see what I’m swimming with. If I can’t see it, I can pretend it’s not there, which is probably what it would like too. The coolest part of the clear water was seeing all the shafts of light piercing through the lake. 3, 4, maybe more. I also liked being able to look at the bottom in the beach area–I think I counted 5 or 6 hair bands, lost to their owners forever. I might have swam longer but there were a few school groups at the beach and I was concerned that some of the kids would mess with my stuff. I couldn’t tell if they were in elementary or middle school, but they sure knew how to yell out “fuck” at the top of their lungs. A kid that will brazenly yell out “fuck this” or “fuck you” or preface many words with “fucking” on a school trip might find it amusing to throw my towel in the water or take my sweatshirt. But getting back to how clear the water was, part of me wishes I had spent more time exploring underwater and studying the bottom–how deep it gets, what’s really down there. But, another part of me–perhaps a bigger part–likes the idea of keeping it a mystery. Knowing more might make me more anxious or disappointed in how un-mysterious it is.
an entry on june 1, 2018
There is a Limit/ Sara Lynne Puotinen
Lake Nokomis, Minneapolis
to what I need to
know and this is it.
After making eye
contact too many
times with a trio
of hairbands settled
on the sandy floor
I have decided
ignorance is better.
I will believe all
that’s here is me &
water me swimming
water wanting to
hold me up help me
glide go about its
business unnoticed
prepping for splashing
kids boarding paddlers
diving ducks floating
bandaids dearly missed
nose plugs easily
replaced hairbands and
whatever else joins
us in the lake. By
next week the water
will be opaque light
brown steel blue pea soup
green or on extra
sunny days lentil
dal yellow and I
won’t think about
what it contains. I
will rarely bump in-
to fish only once
step on a sharp steel
something and never
again remember
the hairbands sad and
stuck on the lake’s floor.
5
(log entry from 5 aug 2025) There is a geometry of water . . . (Swimming Chenango Lake/ Charles Tomlinson).
Thinking about geometries of water and Anne Carson’s anthropology of water and the relationship of points, lines, surfaces, angles. Suddenly remembered a reference to geometry that I’d like to experiment with:
“Closed because geometric mean of E. coli exceeds 126 MPN/100 mL“
It’s the message on the parks lake water quality map, explaining why the beach is closed. Will it reopen in time for tonight’s open swim? I hope so!
Geometric mean, what’s that? While Minneapolis Parks doesn’t explain, I found another site with some helpful information: E-coli Open Water Data
- tests take 24 hours to process, that’s why I’m still waiting for the results to show up now, even though they tested yesterday (could this 24 hours be another example of swimming, one day in august?)
- MPN = most probable number
- this site is out of Toronto so it gives the acceptable rates for Canada. In Canada, it’s under 200 MPN, which is higher than here in Minneapolis: 126
- e-coli stands for Escherichia coli
I asked FWA — my science guy — what the geometric in geometric mean means and he explained it this way: they make an imaginary grid for the lake and then take samples from different sections of the grid, then they average those samples to get the MPN/ML number. So geometric = grid
The grid makes me think of my vision and the visual field test and the amsler grid and imagining the lake as a grid with different sections of it muted or extinguished or replaced with other sections of the grid that I can actually see.
And now I’m thinking about the geometric ways in which I approach swimming in the lake:
- angles
- trajectories
- following a line, working to understand that relationship between points and surfaces (swimmers’ hands piercing the water and plotting my course with glitter)
- lines and angles (wider angles to achieve distance from other swimmers, to find the buoy without seeing it)
- lines and surfaces (try to follow a line that cuts across a wave/swelled surface instead of directly into it)
- the line of the rope tethered to the buoy and a weight, anchoring the buoy
- the angle of that rope line
- how the angle of the sun and the angle of the buoy determine how likely I am to see it and how much orange is reflected on the surface of the water
- the angle of the lifeguards in relation to the angle of my projected path, how the difference between these angles affects how straight I swim
- same with the angle of other swimmers’ paths
- the sharp angles of prickly vines
- parallel lines: water and airplane, kicking feet, body and bottom, body and big beach
- perpendicular lines: water and light pole
- buoys as balls, spheres, orbs
- buoys as cylinders
- buoys as equilateral triangles
- angles of elbow, the arc of an elbow’s path from out of the water to back in
- grid quadrants: 1. from big beach to little beach, 2. from little beach to middle green buoy, 3. from middle green to final green buoy, 4. from final green buoy to first orange buoy
- rounding the buoy vs. cutting a sharp angle
- coordinate points: hand/water, a swimmer/another swimmer’s toe, orange buoy/surface
All of this geometry talk has inspired me to craft a double inkling about grids and seeing and the grid in my eye tethered to the grid in the water. I have a first draft that needs a little work. The poem is about how I’ve been using sighting buoys during open swim to learn how to see in new ways, or to function without needing to see things clearly or often. Or, is it about the parallel paths that learning to sight and learning to rarely or unreliably see have taken and how that’s shaped my experiences with vision loss? or, are both of those conclusions too heavy-handed? Should it be stranger?
My Geometry / Sara Lynne Puotinen (from Inklings)
of open swimming:
an eye, lake water.
Both of us now grids
with one dot in our
centers — a cone cell
that works, a buoy
that beacons. A line
drawn between passes
through vacant lots and
murky seas as it
tethers us to each
other — swimmer and
vision, buoy and
body, to sight and
to rarely see.