march 14, 2019 / 4 miles
some origins of a poem
Rereading my entries for March 14, I was struck by the one for March 14, 2019. I recognized the beginnings of my haibun about fog and the railroad trestle. Here’s the finished poem:
4. Just Past a Railroad Trestle
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.
And, here is some of the entry that inspired it:
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. Heard some sirens but couldn’t see the flashing lights until they were almost right beside me. It started raining around the 2 mile point. A light rain that I hardly noticed. What I remember most about the run: the haunting, hovering fog
and
(from The Rainwalkers/Denise Levertov)
The three of them are enveloped –
turning now to go crosstown – in their
sense of each other, of pleasure,
of weather, of corners,
of leisurely tensions between them
and private silence.Love the last sentence: “The three of them are enveloped–turning now to go crosstown–in their sense of each other, of pleasure, of weather, of corners, or leisurely tensions between them and private silence.” Enveloped. Such a better word than surrounded or consumed or covered or layered. In what was I enveloped today above the gorge?
Most of my writing is inspired by my runs (or walks) by the gorge, and comes out of recounting of them in this running log. This entry is a great example of how this happens. Looking back through more entries from that spring and summer, I found that I decided to turn this fog moment into a poem in late May.