Tag: 10 things

dec 20/RUN

3.35 miles
locks and dam no. 1
12 degrees
99.9% snow-covered

It snowed yesterday. 5.5 inches of soft, powdery stuff. Today it’s colder and the snow has compacted. With my yak-trax it wasn’t too difficult to run on. No slipping. Tiring, though. And beautiful! For the first mile, the river was open and then it was covered — one half had ice and snow, the other sparkles.

10 Things

  1. sharp, dark shadows — mine, behind me for the first half, in front for the second
  2. the only bare stretch of pavement was on the biking side of the bridge, up against the wall, where it is sheltered and covered in dead leaves
  3. encountered at least 3 runners
  4. the loud voices of some construction workers, joking with each other
  5. a deep cough by one of the workers
  6. everywhere, small ledges and wedges of snow
  7. some dirt sprinkled on the path to make it less slippery
  8. the bones of fallen trees, covered with snow in the ravine
  9. a bench on the hill above the edge of the world, at just the right angle to face the sun
  10. a screeching bluejay high in a tree

I’m working on a section of my poem about form. At some point during the run, I thought about searching for forms that can hold my words — but not too tightly — and my messy, layered thoughts and feelings. Earlier this morning, I was thinking about partial forms and illusory forms and unreliable forms — the fuzzy forms my brain creates, the unnatural form of the river. I haven’t quite figured out how to tie them all together.

As part of my focus on forms that seem natural but aren’t, I’ve been thinking about and trying to find an article about the Apostle Islands and re-wilding. This morning I finally found it again! The Riddle of the Apostle Islands

dec 15/RUN

4.3 miles
minnehaha falls and back
36 degrees
70% ice-covered

A great temperature — mild — but not great surface conditions. Neighborhood sidewalks and the trail had a thin layer of ice with only a few clear patches. The worst stretch was at the falls. I stopped and walked in the snowy grass for a few minutes. But, I didn’t fall. If the conditions had been better, I would have gone for a few more miles. Oh well, at least I got out there. It felt good to be outside, above the gorge. Fresh, cool air, a moving body, the river.

10 Things

  1. a laughing kid somewhere across the road — not seen, only heard
  2. the river, some of it open water, some ice, all of it gray
  3. a runner in BRIGHT yellow shoes
  4. a lot of the snow that fell last week is gone, now there’s grass and brown leaves all over the ground
  5. a slick path near the falls parking lot — I didn’t feel nervous that I’d fall, but my feet weren’t getting any traction
  6. near the overlook by the falls, dirt or grit of something had been used to make it less slippery
  7. the falls were gushing
  8. the dirt trail in the small wood near the ford bridge was visible and inviting and cleared of snow
  9. stopped at a bench above “the edge of the world” — admired the clear, colorless view of the river
  10. can’t remember where, but I encountered a faint smell — tangy, sour — of the sewer

Finished another section of my poem yesterday. It’s very exciting to have found a way to put all these words together. How many more section do I have in me before january? Yesterday’s section is titled, Geologic time, and it’s about experiencing time at the gorge on a longer, deeper, slower scale.

Here’s discussion of ekphrasis that I’d like to remember and return to when I finally get to my ekphrasis, how I see, project:

Some of the “paintings” and “photographs” are purely ekphrastic, in the sense that the images, associations, and overall tone were conceived in the moment of looking at a certain artwork hung in a museum or in my memory. Others are more of a collapsing between that moment of looking and earlier or later situationally unrelated impressions; some poems contain a dueling ekphrasis in which impressions of multiple artworks blend. So, yes, most refer to a specific artwork(s), but then the question becomes: What is ekphrasis in the pure sense? And what does pure even mean—another something that Heti can weigh in on. Doesn’t all ekphrasis—the act of looking, and reading, and possibly “interpreting” a text—include a necessary degree of subjectivity and, therefore, can’t it help but become saturated with personal associations and allusions? 

Lindsay Turner and Stella Corso

random note for future Sara: Scott and I are rewatching all of The Brady Bunch. It’s been 10 years and I still think Mike and Carol are the worst parents in the world. Also, my least favorite character is Bobby, and my favorite is Alice. I was going to write that Jan was my favorite but then I remember the season 2 episode when she plays practical jokes on everyone. She’s obnoxious.

how I don’t see yellow

Yesterday on Instagram, I looked at a block of text and couldn’t see that part of it was circled in bright yellow until I shifted my eyes to the left or right. Straight on, no circle. Look slightly to the left, yellow circle. I took a screen shot of it so I could post it here as an example of how I don’t see yellow.

dec 11/RUN

4.5 miles
minnehaha falls and back
11 degrees / feels like -7
100% snow-covered

The coldest run of the year so far. It didn’t feel like 7 below to me with all of my layers: 2 pairs of running tights, long-sleeved shirt, sweatshirt, my warmest winter jacket, a buff, a hat, a pair of gloves, my thickest pair of mittens. The thing I’d like to remember most about the run was the river, burning white in one spot. Wow! As I ran south, I could see it sparkling through the trees.

10 Other Things to Remember

  1. the banks on the east side of the river were glowing white with snow
  2. crunch! creak! my foot stepping down in the snow — the crunch for the foot striking, the creak for it lifting off
  3. other peoples’ foot prints in the snow, all over the trail
  4. running on stretches of the falls path where no one else had been, looking down at the untouched white, like a blank page ready to be written on
  5. my shadow when the sun was out: sharp, in front of me
  6. my shadow when the sun was behind clouds: soft, faint, only the hint of contrast
  7. the falls were rushing over the limestone edge — all water, no ice today
  8. the sound of a plow on the path somewhere across the park. later, its aftermath: a cleared path
  9. an empty parking lot at the falls
  10. a big tree, felled in the ravine below the double bridge — was it my favorite fall tree — the one that turns a bright orange? no — whew!

Yesterday I finished a draft of another haunts section and I was wondering if I was done (for now) with writing about girls and ghosts and the gorge. Then this morning, re-reading my post from dec 11, 2023, I came across this line:

At one point on my run back, I suddenly felt a beautiful ache of emotion and thought: tender. Yes, I need to include a few lines in my haunts poem about feeling tender as I run — maybe in contrast with tough and the callouses I mentioned last week (6 dec 2023)?

The poem I finished yesterday was about being tender and, although callouses are not in the poem, they inspired it. I started thinking about how time works on this blog, how it took a whole year to take up that suggestion, and how that is often the case here. Things move slower, and not always forward but looping back and returning again and again to ideas. Then I thought about gorge time and Lorine Niedecker’s geologic time. A new section of my poem to write — on my practice and time and looping back to ideas and experiences!

dec 9/RUN

2.4 miles
2 trails
39 degrees

A quick run with Scott. It felt colder than 39 because of the wind. Scott talked about an annoying problem with moving a client to a different server and I talked about my current poem and where to go with it. Then Scott mentioned a small monitor he wants to get and how, of the four options, 3 cost $`100 with $25 shipping and one cost $110 with $15 shipping. I wondered which option people respond to more, and this thinking about how people chose reminded me of the latest If Books Could Kill podcast about the book, What’s the Matter with Kansas?, and why people vote the way the do. Of course this led to a discussion about the current state of politics and how we’re both doing (surprisingly okay and trying to protect our mental health).

10 Things

  1. the river is more open today but still different versions of gray
  2. the wrought iron fence is bent in the middle and at the top — what happened? we noticed a thick tree branch on the other side of the fence
  3. a somewhat subdued din of laughing and yelling at the playground
  4. a man on a bike unwilling to move over and give us runners and walkers the chance to pass each other
  5. a steady line of cars at the 3-way stop suddenly eased up as we approached — clear sailing across!
  6. a dog with their human turning down the steep-ish dirt path on the far end of the 35th street parking lot
  7. at the end of the run, walking home: the sound of woodpecker high in a tree (heard, never seen, although we both tried to find the bird)
  8. knowing that the wind was at our backs when I saw leaves flying towards us
  9. running by the green water fountain in the parking lot and wondering if there was any way that it was still on — not because I wanted any water, but just because I was curious
  10. sometimes the sun was out, and sometimes it was behind the clouds — what did the clouds look like? Did I even check?

where to take my poem

Where it ends now:

Wind, sun, frigid air,
the effort it takes
to keep moving, a
slow wearing down of
cone cells, soften her
hard shell and cause cracks
that start small then spread
then split her open and
able to feel more
of everything and
everyone here, now
and before.

Talking to Scott while we ran, I wondered if I wanted to end here or write about a section of the trail just north of the trestle that was repaved a few years ago, but cracked open again in less than a year, and then was patched/resealed earlier this year but is now cracked again. I keep thinking about this section. Why? Maybe it’s something about the endless cycle of crack and reseal and the belief that eventually no seal will stop the slope from sliding down into the gorge. Here, at this spot, is evidence of eroding ground and the opportunity to witness time passing on a different scale. Or, maybe it’s a particularly interesting (at least to me) example of how a cracked surface looks and acts. Is there any connection to my small cracks that spread and split? I don’t know.

As I continued talking with Scott, I mentioned Wittgenstein and his need to get off of smooth ice, where it’s difficult to walk, and back on rough ground where friction helps us move. Then I talked about how I don’t like running over cracks and appreciate when they’re repaired, but I don’t often notice smooth pavement. I orient myself on the path by the cracks. The cracks are where the stories are.

And now I’m thinking about how you can’t leave a trace on smooth, sealed asphalt — as opposed to footprints in mud or tamped grass or rutted dirt. Also cracks are where the ground/earth/flowers can poke through. And, I’m reminded of daylighting and how some people/groups are advocating for freeing water from being buried under cement:

the exhumation of streams from underground and reintroduction of them to the surface. There is ample research-based evidence for what seems intuitively true: natural waterways—meaning, those that flow through the topography of a landscape and not through a sewer—support healthier ecosystems than those encased in concrete darkness. Daylighting brings benefits to water quality that include nutrient retention, prevention of algal blooms, and overall more supportive environments for a diversity of species. It also keeps clean water out of the sewer system, where, currently, huge volumes of it unnecessarily go through the sewage treatment process, a waste of resources that can also cause sewers to overflow.

Reaching the Light of Day/ Corinne Segal

Now I’m thinking about management and maintaining and conservation and how this cracked path and its perpetual repair is where many different elements are entangled: park workers trying to maintain safe paths, a shifting and eroding ground — due to the “natural” instability of the area and chemicals from local lawns in the groundwater and seeping into the soil, overuse or misuse by visitors, the impact of heavy traffic on the parkway from commuters.

Where to go with all of this? Unsure, I returned to the part of my poem that’s inspiring this wander and I was struck by this bit:

able to feel more
of everything and
everyone here, now
and before.

A reminder: the cracked path doesn’t have to be an exact metaphor for my cracking open. It doesn’t have to be a metaphor at all. It can be another layer to this idea of this land as a work of art, as crafted/made/shaped into something beautiful (which does not = pretty) that enable us to feel things deeply. I’d like to bring in 2 things I mentioned in my rambling: 1. smooth asphalt doesn’t leave a trace, doesn’t tell a story but cracked asphalt can/does and 2. the process of cracking and sealing and cracking again enables us to witness time passing on a different scale; it makes visible what was invisible — too slow and slight to notice.

Now, time to try and fit these ideas into a few 5 syllable lines!

dec 8/RUN

6.1 miles
hidden falls loop
36 degrees

Wow, what a great morning for a run! All the snow has melted so the paths were clear and I don’t remember much wind. I felt strong and relaxed and grateful to be outside when everything is bare and brown and open. And that river! Half frozen with a thin layer of ice, half open with shiny, dark water. I stopped at the overlook on the ford bridge and stared down at it, admiring the variations of gray and the feeling of air and nothingness — barren, vast, other-worldly.

10 Things

  1. the sound of a kid either laughing when his voice bounced as he went over something bumpy or crying so hard that his voice was breaking — heard, not seen
  2. several runners in bright yellow shirts
  3. two runners in white jackets
  4. some kids laughing and yelling near the skate park just past the ford bridge, again heard, not seen
  5. the view of the valley between ford and hidden falls — bare tree branches, then endless air, then the other side
  6. a blue port-a-potty with the door ajar
  7. the sound of water rushing over concrete at the locks and dam no. 1
  8. a lone goose honking somewhere near the oak savanna
  9. the contrast of wispy, dark branches against the light gray sky
  10. the river — no color, some shiny, some dulled by ice

an attempt to track my train of thought

I’m working on another section of my Haunts poem (which might need a different name as I stray away from ghosts). Before my run, I was thinking about being tender and erosion and H.W.S Cleveland (Horace William Shaler) as envisioning the grand rounds and the gorge as art. Before I headed out, I gave myself a task for during the run: to think about and look for examples of erosion and how it fits in with my idea that art is about making us feel things deeply (feeling tender). This task was inspired by this section in my poem:

his pitch for parkways
was about making space
for beauty and for
feeling things deeply —
he wanted to turn
this place into art.
Grass and benches and
trees to frame open
sky and the stone that
holds a river and
all who seek it. But
up here exposed on
the bluff, it is not
only the view that
makes the girl tender.
Wind, sun, frigid air,
the effort it takes
to keep moving, a
slow wearing down of
cone cells, smooth out her
edges, peel away
her layers, create
cracks that start small then
spread.

During my run, I stopped to record three ideas into my phone:

One: I thought about the cracks and the idea of being split open and how this splitting open was not a wound that needed to be patched but something else.

Two: I can’t quite remember how I continued to think about this idea of the wound and breaking open but I do remember suddenly thinking about eroding shorelines and bluffs and how cracks and a wearing away can be harmful. At first I wanted to make a clear distinction between the erosion I was writing about, and the tenderness it allowed for, but then I realized, just before reaching the ford bridge on my way back from hidden falls, that tenderness and feeling things deeply and art as inspiring this is both wound and that something else I can’t quite name. I spoke into my phone:

Beauty as not always pretty, sometimes ugly. Art as wonder and amazement, terror and pain.

I think I was remembering some lines from a podcast episode for Off the Shelf with Dorothy Lasky, as I mentioned terror.

I don’t think beautiful things are innocent, I guess, sadly. I mean, I don’t know what “innocent” means also, but yeah, I think beautiful things are holy, and I think that those things can be awful. I guess it’s like the sublime, and those things which we have awe about is what beauty is. And I don’t think it’s always kind, sadly. You know, I wish it were. It can be, but I don’t think that’s what is really there. It overwhelms. So, it is terrifying by its nature. Like, real beauty should make you terrified.

Good for the World

Three: By the time I had crossed the ford bridge, I had another thought about erosion and my diseased eyes:

My cone cells eroding is this slow softening, but at some point, most likely, there’s going to be a break — an abrupt break [when the few remaining cone cells in my central vision die, when I won’t be able to read or rely on my central vision at all]. And that is how the gorge works. It’s the slow softening of sandstone until limestone breaks off.

Yes! This is a helpful way for me to connect the gorge with my vision. I’m not sure that this third thing fits into this section of the poem, but I will use it somewhere!

posted an hour later: I can’t believe it, but after searching through the archive of this log, I realized that I have never posted this beautiful, tender poem by Mary Oliver:

Lead/ Mary Oliver

Here is a story
to break your heart.
Are you willing?
This winter
the loons came to our harbor
and died, one by one,
of nothing we could see.
A friend told me
of one on the shore
that lifted its head and opened
the elegant beak and cried out
in the long, sweet savoring of its life
which, if you have heard it,
you know is a sacred thing.,
and for which, if you have not heard it,
you had better hurry to where
they still sing.
And, believe me, tell no one
just where that is.
The next morning
this loon, speckled
and iridescent and with a plan
to fly home
to some hidden lake,
was dead on the shore.
I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world.

dec 3/RUN

5.2 miles
bottom of franklin hill
21 degrees / feels like 12
75% snow-covered

What a wonderful winter morning for a run! With the sun and my effort, it felt much warmer than it was. The snow wasn’t slippery or deep and made a delightful crunching noise as I stepped down. The river was open again and dark brown. And the birds were so loud — not seen only heard. Mostly I ran on the bike path. Encountered some runners, walkers, dogs, at least 2 bikers, and at least one person smoking on a bench.

a new ritual

Like most of my rituals, this one began with little intention. I decided last week to stop at an inviting bench to check out the view for a moment and now I’m doing it every time I’m returning south from the trestle or beyond. The bench is facing the river and above the white sands beach. At one time I’m sure it was farther from the slope, but not it’s right on the edge. How long before it falls in? Today, while I was looking down at the river, I felt a blur of movement. What was it? Did I imagine it? I waited for a moment and then I saw a dog and their human through the bare trees, walking at the beach. They looked so far away and alone.

10 Things

  1. elementary school kids yelling and laughing out on the school field — such energy unleashed — wow
  2. small prints in the snow
  3. a truck speeding by, revving its engine on a bend in the road
  4. 2 or 3 stones stacked on the boulder, covered in snow
  5. a thin ribbon of bare pavement on the edge of the trail
  6. the feel of my feet sliding slightly as I ran down the snow-covered hill
  7. my faint shadow, just ahead of me, only visible occasionally
  8. the slabs of stone still stacked up under the franklin bridge, looking like a person
  9. all the steps down into the gorge are blocked off with chains
  10. a clump of dead leaves at the top of a tree looking like a monster nest

dec 1/RUN

5 miles
minnehaha falls and back
15 degrees / feels like 6
light snow

Brrr. I’m pretty sure that this is the coldest run of the season. I wore almost all of the layers: double tights, double gloves, double socks, a buff, a fleece cap, long-sleeved shirt, sweatshirt, jacket. No frozen toes or fingers, only a few frozen eyelashes.

It was snowing lightly. I barely felt the flakes but I could see them collecting in the cracks of the path and on the road. Not slippery. When I reached the park I noticed faint paw prints on the path.

Passing the parking lot, 2 adults were trying unsuccessfully to calm down a kid losing it — did the kid not want to be at the falls, or did they not want to leave it?

By the gorge, the ground is a rich brown carpet of dead leaves and dirt. A few bushes — buckthorn? — seem to have new, bright green leaves. A runner passed me in a bright yellow vest, almost as bright as the crosswalk sign at 38th.

I noticed dark forms moving below me, on the winchell trail. A coyote or turkey or . . . ? Looking longer I finally saw 2 runners.

The river! Mostly white with wide slashes of exposed, dark water. The falls! Still gushing but covered in thick columns of ice. Winter is here.

All the steps at the falls and on the trails are still open. Will they close them this week?

Running south, between 42nd and 44th, I noticed a bench with an open view of the river and the other side. Decided I would stop on my way back north. I did. Beautiful. And right above the edge of the world.

10 Things

  1. a distracted squirrel in the middle of the trail — gathering a nut?
  2. a smoke smell on edmund, probably from a chimney
  3. a gently sloping hill leading down to the river just past the double bridge, filled with tree trunks and dead leaves
  4. mostly the river was white — ice covered with a thin layer of snow, but there were random patches of dark water. Some of them were thick slashes, others looked like geometric shapes — trapezoids, rectangles, triangles, but not a circle in sight
  5. voices below me — who is there? some hikers, deep in and beyond the winchell trail
  6. the small wood between the 44th street parking lot and the winchell trail, usually hidden, was exposed to reveal a short dirt path
  7. birds! not seen, but heard — sweet tweets and chirps, sounding like spring
  8. a fat tire with a faint, flickering headlight
  9. the fake bells from the light rail train, followed by some quick horn taps
  10. a woman reaching the falls overlook and exclaiming in delight and wonder — wow!

the start of another haunts section?

Before I went out for my run, I did a little research on the bike/walking trails along the river. Deeper digging is required. Maybe a trip to the central library, or an email? Anyway, I learned that they created paved trails above the gorge and beside the river parkway in the fall of 1973. The main trail I use is only 6 months older than me! That seems like it would make a good line for a section that features the trails, either just the paved ones above, or the ones below too.

Mostly the girl stays
above on a trail
as old as she is.
Paved in seventy
three, when gas prices
and an interest in
conservation were
high.

Here’s a wonderful poem from Carl Phillips:

Speak Low/ Carl Phillips (from Speak Low)

The wind stirred–the water beneath it stirred accordingly …
The wind’s pattern was its won, and the wter’s also. The
water in that sense was the wind’s reflection. The wind was,
to the water, what the water was to the light that fell there,
or appeared to fall, spilling as if the light were a liquid, or as
if the light and the water it spilled across

were now the same

It is true that the light, like the water, assumed the pattern of
what acted upon it. But the water assumed also the shape
of what contained it, while the light did not. The light seemed
fugitive, a restiveness, the less-than-clear distance between
everything we know we should do, and all the rest–all
the rest that we do stirring, as the wind stirred it, the water
was water–was a form of clarity itself, a window we’ve
no sooner looked through than we’ve abandoned it for what
lies past that: a view, and then what comes

into view, or might,

if we watch patiently enough, steadily–so we believe, wishing
for what, by now, even we can’t put a name to, but feel certain
we’ll recognize, having done so before. It olled, didn’t it,
just like harmlessness. A small wind. Some light on water.


nov 29/RUN

2.55 miles
2 trails
20 degrees / feels like 9

Today I hit my yearly goal of 1000 miles! It was cold, but not too cold. No frozen fingers or numb toes. I ran at 2:30 in the long, afternoon light. Wow — I love the light at this time in the season and the day. Why? Longer shadows, a feeling of everything slowing down, settling in, preparing to rest. I stayed up above as I ran south, then turned down to the entrance of the Winchell Trail on the way back north. The river was a wonderful purplish-blue and scaly from the wind. My legs felt sluggish, and my feet were sore on the uneven asphalt. I stopped briefly near the edge of the world to make note of the moment — the sun, lowering, purple-blue river, a steep slope, water falling from the sewer pipe. Not a slow drip, but a shimmering shower. Yes — I thought about a section of my poem and how my description of water as dripping from the pipe wasn’t the only way to describe it. Often, it’s more than drips.

10 Things

  1. a graceful roller skier. I don’t remember hearing their poles, just watching the way the relaxed and flowing rhythm of their arms and legs
  2. the river through the trees at the Horace Cleveland Overlook — purple, slight agitated from wind
  3. encountering a walker climbing the hill near Winchell, bundled up in a winter coat with his hood up
  4. my shadow — so tall! — in front of me, once she left the path and went into the woods
  5. the top railing of one section of iron fence which should be straight was curved in — what caused that to happen?
  6. the jingle-jangle of a dog collar somewhere
  7. dry leaves rustling in the brush beyond the trail
  8. the smell of smoke at the usual spot on edmund
  9. a tall person in a coat swinging up against the iron fence near the 38th street stairs
  10. someone on a hoverboard or a strange skateboard with a bright light on the front, moving fast along the trail — I thought skateboard because they seemed to moving like a skateboard across the path in gentle arcs

An Entrance/ Malena Mörling

For Max

If you want to give thanks
but this time not to the labyrinth
of cause and effect-
Give thanks to the plain sweetness of a day
when it’s as if everywhere you turn
there is an entrance-
When it’s as if even the air is a door-

And your child is a door
afloat on invisible hinges.
“The world is a house,” he says,
over lunch as if to give you a clue-
And before the words dissolve
above his plate of eggs and rice
you suddenly see how we are in it-
How everywhere the air
is holding hands with the air-
How everyone is connected
to everyone else by breathing.

The air as a door, breathing as a way we are connected.

nov 28/RUN

3.1 miles
locks and dam no. 1
23 degrees / snow flurries

A 5k run with Scott in the snow! Flurries collecting on the edge of path and in the cracks of the asphalt. Flurries in the air making my already pixelated view — due to dead cone cells — even more pixelated. Strange, dreamy, disconnected. It was cold, but not too cold. I was overdressed: double gloves, double tights, a buff, a hood, a cap. Before the end of the first mile I was losing layers: 1 pair of gloves, then a hood.

We talked about last year’s marathon, and doing it again next year, and how it wasn’t as cold as we thought it would be. I mentioned that one of my favorite views is blocked because of too many branches. Scott liked how I described it, thick with thin branches.

10 Things

  1. brown leaves on the edge of the path, mixing with the snow
  2. a white-gray sky
  3. the flurries with big and clumpy, one flew in Scott’s throat and he freaked out a little
  4. the ravine below the double bridge was open and brown and bare
  5. a steady stream of cars, distanced from each other, flowing south on the river road
  6. all the benches were empty
  7. as we ran on edmund, a car behind us gently revved to alert us to their presence
  8. bright green leaves on a tree near the savanna
  9. a biker biking by in bright yellow shoes
  10. after the run, FWA driving us, we counted 6 wild turkeys crossing the road

That was hard to come up with 10 things today!

1

In January of 2024, I devoted a month to windows. This morning, on poets.org, I found this beautiful window poem, Wooden Window Frames / Luci Tapahonso. Here are the opening lines:

The morning sun streams through the little kitchen’s  
wooden panes; its luminescence tempts me to forego coffee.  
But I don’t. The dark coffee scent melds with the birds’ 
chirping along the hidden acacia. Then, a small bird 
alights on the cross of the wooden clothesline.  
Its tiny head turns from side to side, then as if sensing me,  
it gazes at me through a window square.  
We ponder each other, then remember our manners,  
and it flies off into the clean, cold air. 

2

My Faith Unfolds Itself/ Alafia Nicole Sessions

after Faith Ringgold’s exhibit, “Black is beautiful,” at the Picasso Museum, Paris, 2023

like a ribbonless plait:            
the rain outside descends in strands:
percussive opera for the sheltered:            

petrichor of hominy and green:
grief everywhere, all at once : and then
            the sun : reminds me I’m not new:

they are my dowry : the gone ones
            and their light : refracted through
the body’s fluids : o rivers : how to

            marry threads of water with faith:
predates language : but the word was
            the beginning : have we come this far by fate:

roots fracture, forget, then return : curse
            the pattern of rupture then mend : not unlike
the making of a quilt, or muscle : broth born

            of fire and water : fists full of ephemerals:
blood-honey : water always finds her way:
            I plump and soften : like soaked grain.

nov 23/RUN

3.1 miles
trestle turn around
36 degrees

Another wonderful almost winter morning! Sunny, hardly any wind, clear paths. In January, a day like this would feel tropical and offer hope for a coming spring. Ran with Scott to the trestle and back. We talked about the Love Supreme arrangement he’s doing for the jazz combo he’s in and how he’s learning a lot about the form of its 4 movements. I talked about my “And” poem and wondered if there was a 3 syllable word that might convey sudden understanding. Scott answered, Eureka! Nice, but not quite the right feel for my poem. I could use clarity, but I don’t want to — clarity is more the mood of the moment that the reader feels without it being spelled out for them, I think.

A mile later, Scott described how you code and in css (where and means both this and that must exist to make a statement true) and how you code or (where or means either this or that can exist to make a statement true). I was fascinated by how and was restrictive and narrowing in the code while or was expansive. In my poem, I’m understanding and as generous and open and allowing for more possibilities not less. I told Scott that I might need to write an or poem now. And is accumulation, more layers while or is a stripping down.

And = all these things can be true, and more
Or = at any give time, any one of these things could be true

Am I getting too far into theory here, trying to be too clever?

Speaking of or in poetry, here’s a great or poem I just found:

Or / Thomas Sayer Ellis

Or Oreo, or
worse. Or ordinary.
Or your choice
of category

        or   
        Color

or any color
other than Colored
or Colored Only.
Or “Of Color”

        or   
        Other

or theory or discourse
or oral territory.
Oregon or Georgia
or Florida Zora

        or
        Opportunity

or born poor
or Corporate. Or Moor.
Or a Noir Orpheus
or Senghor

        or   
        Diaspora

or a horrendous
and tore-up journey.
Or performance. Or allegory’s armor
of ignorant comfort

        or
        Worship

or reform or a sore chorus.
Or Electoral Corruption
or important ports
of Yoruba or worry

        or
        Neighbor

or fear of . . .
of terror or border.
Or all organized
minorities.

And here’s what Robyn Creswell writes about the poem:

There is no doubt that Thomas Sayers Ellis’s “Or,” is a poem, but it is one of the few that feels to me like a rap—an especially good one. This is because of the way it establishes a pattern and then continually breaks away from it. The poem is based on the repetition of or, but as we read through it, what seemed like a formal constraint becomes a principle of transformation, a hinge that keeps flexing. The poem begins, as I read it, by riffing on the either/or logic of identity questionnaires (“You could get with this, or you could get with that,” as Black Sheep once put it, in a different context). But it quickly ramifies into geography, history, poetics.

Thomas Sayer Ellis’ “Or,”/ Robin Creswell

10 Things

  1. Hi Dave! How ya doing? / Well, I’m out here . . . is Dave sick too? (I’m congested but tested negative for covid twice)
  2. a runner in shorts with bare legs
  3. for a few blocks, at the start of the run, the only wind was the wind we made with our moving bodies
  4. June’s white bike hanging from the trestle
  5. bare branches mixed with bright green leaves
  6. a table with an orange water jug set up on top of it — is this for a group run (I didn’t see any group), or for anyone running by?
  7. the long, jagged crack on the new asphalt just past the trestle seems to be growing longer
  8. a trace of smoke smelled on the way to the gorge — from a fire pit or a chimney?
  9. our faint shadows briefly ahead of us
  10. stopping at the bench right above the steep slope — like I did the other day, Scott wondered how long before it fell into the gorge