Cooler than last week, but still too warm for me. Felt drained and my feet were sore from my shoes — the Saucony Rides strike again. Even so, happy to be out beside the gorge with my friends — the boulders, benches, trees, shadows, walkers, runners, river. But not the bikers — too many of them, and too many close calls.
Last night, we had some intense wind and thunderstorms. Eveidence of it is everywhere: leaves, twigs, branches, whole trees scattered near the trail, gushing sewer pipes, muddy paths. The water from the 44th street pipe gushed out in spurts, almost like a bucket filling up then dumping over. The water from the 42nd street sewer pipe rushed with a steady flow of water, like a waterfall.
I ran closer to the river and I remember looking at it, but I don’t remember what it looked like. Was it smooth? scaled? blue? gray? brown? I don’t recall. I do remember not hearing any rowers.
I didn’t have any deep thoughts about water or swimming or life or, if I did, they didn’t stick around. Instead, I thought about how my feet were sore and my legs felt sluggish, how I wanted to stop, and how I had some unfinished business and needed to get to a bathroom soon.
swim: 3 loops (6 cedar loops) cedar lake open swim 88 degrees
The water was warm but calm and more greenish than usual. Lots of scratchy vines and swimmers swimming in the middle. Also, a giant rubber ducky inner tube floating beside the course. The safety buoy of the day was a clunky, lumpy orange one. Lots of other yellow and pink buoys too. The sky had a few clouds but was mostly blue. Made sure to notice the bubbles around my hands. At the end of the swim, near shore, I went a little deeper in the water — it was cool, which felt nice.
As Scott and I left the beach I noticed an older woman waving at someone, than a little kid yelling excitedly, Grandma!
No bathroom stop in the one port-a-potty today. Someone puked on the floor right next to the toilet. Yuck!
run: 4 miles the monument and back 73 degrees dew point: 69
Thought about going out for a run around 6:30 am but watched Pogacar defend his yellow jersey in the alps instead. Excellent. Finally made it out for a run at 10:30. Not as bad as yesterday, but too warm, especially in the direct sun.
Chanted in triple berries. Admired the reflections of clouds on the river. Heard the kids on the playground at the church preschool. Put in the soundtrack to “Operation Mincemeat” for the second half.
I thought briefly about fields — visual and of tall grass and open vistas — and buoys and dots and simple forms.
Walking home after the run, I noticed someone stopped on the corner with a dog. I wondered why they were stopped — was there a car coming? should I not cross? Got to the other side and realized that it was my son, FWA, and our dog, Delia. It’s happened before — just last week — but it’s always upsetting when I don’t recognize my kids or my husband or my dog. For a moment, they’re only strangers.
Crossing back over the lake street bridge, I took a few pictures of the clouds reflected on the river:
clouds reflected on riverriver clouds
note: I had to crop out my finger from the left hand corner. Even with the cropping, I think these are cool pictures.
visual fields, landscapes, meadows
1
At the end of yesterday’s entry I wondered what sighting buoys and swimming in the lake had to do with the visual field test. I’m still thinking about it. On a literal level, the way I’ve trained myself to sight a buoy, lining up its path, then trusting myself to swim straight to it even when I can’t see it, is how I took the visual field test last month: I fixed on the center dot and looked straight at it, or where I knew it to be when I couldn’t see it. My eyes didn’t wander. Another connection: at a distance, the buoy doesn’t look like the shape that it is — a triangle — it looks like a small dot in the center of my vision.
2
Yesterday, reviewing early july entries, I encountered this definition of visual field: “that portion of space in which objects are visible at the same moment during steady fixation of the gaze in one direction.”
It reminded me of definitions of landscape I came across yesterday in the OED: “A view or prospect of natural inland scenery, such as can be taken in at a glance from one point of view.”
the space in which objects are visible at the same time, what all can be taken in (simultaneously) with one glance
3
as though there swung at the end of a tunnel, a passage dotted with endless points of arrival, as though our gaze started just outside our faces and corkscrewed its way toward the horizon, processual, as if looking took time to happen and weren’t instantaneous, offered whole in one gesture before we ask, before our will, as if the far Sonoma mountains weren’t equally ready to be beheld as the dead fly on the sill) (Pastoral/ Forrest Gander)
What I remember of better eyesight is how the world assembled all at once, an effortless gestalt—the light, the distance, the dappled detail of shade, exact crinkles of a facial expression through a car windshield, the lift of a single finger from a steering wheel, sunlight bouncing off a waxed hood. (Naomi Cohn)
4
A quick glance — my eyes emerge from the water like an alligator to look ahead for the buoy. Often all I see is a green mass of trees and empty water. Occasionally, a bright dot, far off. I don’t see it every time I look, but enough times to keep steadily swimming towards it. No time to think, not enough data to be certain, but I believe it’s the buoy, and usually I’m right. A few times I’ve mistaken a bright swim cap or a car’s headlight or a sailboat for the buoy.
5
“A field is used more often to describe an area managed by people. The field before you was once an orchard and pasture belonging to a farmer. A meadow is used to describe a wild area.”
“Fields and meadows start when trees have been removed from an area. This can occur naturally with a forest fire or flood, or humans may cut down a forest. Seeds from grasses and weeds take root shortly after and a meadow is born.
As the trees within my macula disappear, my forest meadows. here I’m thinking about my classic memory from science class with the inverted tree in the back of the eye.
bike: 8 miles lake nokomis and back 82 degrees / 79 degrees
Biked to the lake! No worries, felt relaxed and able to see well enough, or if I couldn’t see, able to navigate well enough. No moments of panic. Biking back was the best. Long shadows, cooler, people biking/walking/running and enjoying the calm evening. I admired the shadow of me on a bike, looking larger than life.
swim: 3 loops lake nokomis open swim 82 degrees
Yesterday, open swim sent out a warning about blue-green algae. They weren’t closing the lake, just encouraging people to be cautious. I didn’t see any algae blooms, although I noticed that the water was a more vivid, electric green. The water was warm and calm and wonderful. With the sun, it was difficult to see — I could see dots, which I trusted were buoys as I swam towards the little beach, but swimming back towards the big beach, barely anything other than bright sun, sparkling water. I managed to see the buoys at least once and trusted my shoulders to guide me across. I don’t think I’ll ever not be amazed that this works, that I swim straight to the buoys when I can’t (or barely can) see them.
I tried something new as a I swam. Each time I tilted my head to breathe, I thought a word, usually 1 syllable but occasionally 2: squish flash flit fly flush flare zip zap bird tree cloud blue girl ghost gorge life death bliss breath bubbles bike run float lift shut jump black red orange feet toe hand face field grass give take spirit sprite light dark
There were many other words, but I don’t remember them all. I might try this again. Maybe some great words/images will burst out?!
images collected in consciousness like a tree alone on the horizon (Crows/ Marilyn Nelson)
So warm already at 8 am! Decided to do a quick run anyway. Felt better than I thought especially on no coffee or food, but it was still hard. Listened to the new Lorde (recommended by RJP) while I ran south to the entrance of the Winchell Trail. Listened to turkeys and trucks and coxswains while I ran north.
10 Things
a coxswain below giving instructions through a bullhorn — take a drink before class begins . . . today we’ll start with some stroke work: 22/22/22/24
the distant gobble of turkeys
the rumble of a truck
a roller skier
a biker in a bright yellow shirt working on their aero position, back bent low and straight over the bike
the tree that fell and blocked 3/4 of the trail is still there, its leaves now brittle and brown
empty benches
voices above me, approaching steadily — bikers or runners?
another coxswain — difficult to hear over my music
cracked pavement below — some small and shallow, others deeper and slanted, all waiting to twist ankles
a few hours later: a steady rain
Returning to this log entry to wander with a question I posted yesterday:
What kind of landscape even exists in the absence of vision?
Darby Nelson is referring to lakes and how little can be seen below the surface. Landscape is a strange word choice here. Landscape refers to a view/tract of land that’s inland. What’s the word for a water view? Waterscape? Beyond that, the OED definition of landscape is about a view, a portrait, a picture. What is the experience/perception of a space — land or water — called that doesn’t prioritize or exclusively rely on vision?
I’m also thinking about how a landscape is scenery, an object to gaze at, the background. What if we made the lake the subject? How would we understand and name our relationship to it? Ecosystems popped into my head — maybe not the right word, but another way to think about what the water we’re observing, especially when we’re in it, is. And, what if we (you, me) are not individuals separate from the lake as observers but ecosystems too?
It is becoming increasingly clear that there is no such thing as a biological individual. All organisms are intricately nested collectives: networks of relationships between cells and microbes that make it impossible to say where one “individual” starts and stops. Humans are no exception: We carry around more microbial cells than we do our own.
In the same entry I posted the above quotation (8 april 2022), I also posted and discussed Arthur Sze’s poem “Entanglements.” I especially like these lines:
your field of vision tears, and an underlying landscape reveals a radiating moment in time.
“(during my run) I reflected on the underlying landscape as layers that can’t be seen with your eyes, only smelled or felt or imagined. And I delighted in the idea of so much happening, so much present beneath me that I couldn’t see, that I didn’t need to see, for it to exist or to affect me or to be connected to me.”
Field of vision? Suddenly I thought about my interest in writing a poem/s about taking the visual field test (see 1 july 2025). And I’m thinking about landscapes and fields and meadows (see 2 may 2025). A line popped into my head: a meadow of moments — no, a moment meadows.
What does the visual field test have to do with the lake or my experiences swimming in it? A lot, I think. Somehow I want to bring together the visual field test with my swimming and sighting buoys. How? Not sure yet.
4 miles river road, north/south 72 degrees humidity: 85%
Because I waited until after today’s tour stage — the last one in the Pyrenees — it was humid and hot out by the gorge! Other than the heat, the run was not too bad. I chanted in triples for about a mile and tried to keep my chest up, shoulders relaxed, arms in a controlled swing. I don’t remember hearing the rowers or seeing the river.
10 Things
the entrance to a steep dirt path above the rowing club on the other side of the path that goes under the lake street bridge
a runner behind me, coming fast, slapping his feet on the paved path
a biker sternly telling the runner, you’re on the bike path!
the runner not reacting because he was wearing headphones
the fence panel that they were redoing yesterday was in place and its new, unpainted wood stood out against the other brown panels
a wooden slat of the fence jutting out by the ravine because of a leaning tree — watch out!
2 older women sitting on a bench — one to the other: not bad, 2 miles in 2 hours
a flash of orange in the peripheral — a hidden tree trunk marked for removal
slightly more of a view at the sliding bench — I think park workers trimmed the trees
the crack north of the trestle looks like it might have grown some more
4 miles river road, north/south 57 degrees humidity: 80%
In the 50s! What a beautiful morning. Sunny, calm, cool. My gait felt strange, awkward, for the first 1/2 mile. Was it the shoes? I wore Brooks instead of Sauconys. The humidity was high — lots of sweat, not dripping but pooling near my nose. Chanted in triples for the first mile.
10 Things
rowers! heard 2 different coxswains
after 5 or 6 months, they’re finally replacing the fallen fence panel above the northern end of longfellow flats
the dirt they put in the crack north of the trestle has settled and the crack is back and as big as before — at one point will this be unfixable?
good morning! / good morning! — exchanged greetings with a runner with a dog
good morning! — Mr. Holiday wished me a good morning
click click thought it was a roller skier, but it was a biker changing gears
a circle of light below the sliding bench — have they cleared some branches for more of a view here?
smell of cigarette smoke
the dark dirt of a steep trail leading down to the river
the loud slap of a runner’s shoes as he passed me, running fast, or at least much faster than me
I was watching the tour as I compiled the 10 Things list, but had to put my computer away when they reached the last climb — a tough HC. Pogacar went for it near the bottom and Vingegaard couldn’t follow. Wow!
this disintegrating certainty this water whatever it is whatever anything is under these veils and veils of vision which the light cuts but it remains
unbroken (Nobody/ Alice Oswald)
while I’m swimming today: recite this bit and the others from Dart and Nobody:
swim: 4 loops lake nokomis open swim 71 degrees
Open swim is back and I did 4 loops! A wonderful night, in and out of the water. The water was smooth and fast and not too warm or too cold or too crowded. Entering the lake, I watched as a motorized paddle board zoomed by, then another. What? As I swam toward and then past the orange buoy I heard a metallic buzz in the water. Was it because of these paddle boards? I am very grateful that motorized boats aren’t allowed on nokomis. If they were, would I be hearing this buzzing sound all of the time?
I was off course in the first loop; the sun made it very difficult to see the green buoys. But it wasn’t a big deal. On the second loop, I figured it out.
I marveled at the contrast between above and below the surface. Above was a smooth blue, below a glittering green. Checked out my bubbles. Felt the water darken when the sun went behind a cloud. Was attacked by a few stray vines.
Thought about how much I love the water and how confident I am in it, and then about how dangerous and scary and deadly it can be.
Recited Alice Oswald lines — not the new ones I just memorized, but the ones I’d already been reciting in my head.
Rain this early (7 am) morning. Hopefully stopping in a few hours. Watching the tour and rereading old entries from july 16ths. Discovered this excellent description of a buzzing bug:
Its hot voice sizzles from some cool tree Near-by: It seems to burn its way through the air Like a small, pointed flame of sound Sharpened on the ecstatic edge of sunbeams.
note: I first posted this poem on 16 july 2022. I posted it again last year in 2024. Maybe I should memorize it?
a few hours later: what a stage of the tour (stage 11)! Pogacar crashing; Visma waiting for him. What will happen tomorrow in the Pyrenees?
It is 10:30 and a light rain. Won’t stop until 12:30. Do I wait, or go now? It’s probably refreshing and it might be fun to run in the rain . . .
4.25 miles minnehaha falls and back 66 degrees light rain
I did it, and it was a great run! Back to the 9/1 (9 minutes running / 1 minute walking) and feeling strong and relaxed. The light rain helped to cool me down, and I liked how my feet glided on the wet trail. Glided sounds strange. How about glode or glid or glod? Started the run by chanting in triple berries then turning everything I noticed into triples — river road, dripping trees, running feet, rushing cars. Listened to everything dripping for the first 30 minutes, then put in the “Energy” playlist for the last stretch.
10 Things
gloom with the occasional bright flash from headlights
one flash looked lower — I think it was a reflection in a big puddle!
the ravine by 42nd was gushing like the falls
the falls were giving off a fine, gauzy spray
a stranded surrey near the longfellow house — were they getting wet in the rain?
someone walking up the hill at the edge of the park, carrying an umbrella
above the creek, the grass next to the sidewalk was soaked with a line of big puddles
the sprawling reflection of a tree in a wide puddle on a sidewalk
the silhouette of a bird on a wire, looking very Bird
the bells of St. Thomas — faint, distant
an hour later: I was planning to do open swim at cedar lake tonight but I just got an email: “canceled due to inclement weather.” Bummer.
a few random Alice Oswald bits
1
On her process of translating what she notices into a poem, and on poetry as framing the silence:
She and her husband, playwright Peter Oswald, divide their day in two – walking their sons to and from school through fields. But she doesn’t take a notebook with her. She believes in the subconscious, in what is brewing on a ‘non-verbal level’. She thinks ‘a flavour or feeling builds up, almost a sculptural shape that could be a living creature, or a dance or a painting’. Only later comes the ‘plastic art of finding the words’.
There is also, in her poems, a sense of the silence behind every word. ‘One of the differences between poetry and prose is that poetry is beyond words. Poetry is only there to frame the silence. There is silence between each verse and silence at the end.’
closed and containing everything, the land leaning all round to block it from the wind, a squirrel sprinting in startles and sees sections of distance tilted through the trees and where you jump the fence a flap of sacking does for a stile, you walk through webs, the cracking bushtwigs break their secrecies, the sun vanishes up, instantly come and gone. once in, you hardly notice as you move, the wood keeps lifting up its hope, I love to stand among the last trees listening down to the releasing branches where I’ve been – the rain, thinking I’ve gone, crackles the air and calls by name the leaves that aren’t yet there
Oh, that ending! Now I’m imagining what the rain does when it thinks I’m not around! Today the rain didn’t crackle the air but . . . dotted it? feathered it? poked or punctured it?
3
The other day I came across Alice Oswald’s description of a project she’ll be working on next year as a fellow at Columbia University. She’s calling it Interviews with Anon:
At the Institute, Oswald will write a procession of passersby, not all of whom are human and many of whom are imperfectly seen: “My inspiration is the wandering, bartering, folktale style of Herodotus, who included 940 characters in his Histories. I shan’t be writing history. Perhaps it will be more like a headcount or even a carnival.”
Wanted to do a longer run today, but it was too hot! At first I wasn’t going to run at all, but I decided to do a short one to, as I sang to Scott, kick start my heart. Of course I sang the melody of this song completely wrong and of course we had to listen to the original. Ugh! And of course I had to remind Scott that one of the many soccer teams I was on as a kid was named Motley Crüe. Another team: Jabberwockies.
When I was in the shade it wasn’t too bad, but in the direct sun — HOT! I had wanted to run to the overlook on the bridge but I noticed, at the last minute — a few feet from the sign — that the sidewalk was closed. So, I turned down and ran south on the river road trail. Ah, shade!
10 Things
my bright yellow running shoes
the neighbor who is always sitting on his front steps smoking was there but wasn’t smoking
the excited chirping of little kids on the playground at the daycare
from a biker: that was so sweet — the tone of sweet made me think kind, thoughtful, not awesome
a long line of cars on lake street
my shadow, straight and strong
2 runners crossing the street, standing in the bike path, a biker approaching, heads up! / oh, sorry!
the rush of wind through the trees
a steady stream of cars on the river road making it difficult to cross
the dark brown dirt, the gentle curve of the green grass, the sharp edge between of a front yard on 46th
This Be the Place: a Pond
Today is the first rest day of the tour so no cycling to watch all morning. Instead I returned to my morning reading practice of visiting poetry sites and rereading past log entries. A lot of great stuff, including: This Be the Place: A Several-Acre Space of Tenderness/ Han Vanderhart
The “several-acre” space is a pond, which struck me as strange. I think of ponds as small bodies of water and several-acres sound big. But is it (big, that is)? Maybe several acres is small. What distinguishes a pond from a lake? I recall looking up brooks and streams and creeks and rivers when I was reading Emily Dickinson’s poem, Have you got a Brook in your little heart (see 13 march 2021), but not ponds. So I looked it up. Fascinating!
pond or lake: the distinction is arbitrary
The term “lake” or “pond” as part of a waterbody name is arbitrary and not based on any specific naming convention. In general, lakes tend to be larger and/or deeper than ponds, but numerous examples exist of “ponds” that are larger and deeper than “lakes.” . . .Names for lakes and ponds generally originated from the early settlers living near them, and the use of the terms “lake” and “pond” was completely arbitrary. Many have changed names through the years, often changing from a pond to a lake with no change in size or depth. Often these changes in name were to make the area sound more attractive to perspective home buyers.
Learned that the study of inland waters is limnology. And the terms, lotic and lentic, too:
surface waters are divided into lotic (waters that flow in a continuous and definite direction) and lentic (waters that do not flow in a continuous and definite direction) environments. Waters within the lentic category gradually fill in over geologic time and the evolution is from lake to pond to wetland. This evolution is slow and gradual, and there is no precise definition of the transition from one to the next.
From lake to pond to wetland reminds of my discussion of ecological succession and Robin Wall Kimmerer at the begining of May. A meadow becomes a thicket, a thicket becomes a forest.
Was Lake Nokomis ever a (bigger) lake that became a pond, then a wetland, then a lake again? Yes!
The landscape around Lake Nokomis was formed by natural forces, to be a place that absorbed and stored water. Over 11,000 years ago, glaciers carved through the land, and then retreated and melted. As the ice blocks that were left behind melted, they formed an expansive system of interconnected wetlands and lakes. Under these saturated conditions organic material from dead plants was unable to completely decompose, forming extensive peat deposits — a wetland soil. Because peat readily absorbs moisture and can hold up to 10 times its weight in water, it can act as a barrier and prevent rainfall from draining into deeper layers of the soil. This can cause water to accumulate, or perch, above the peat. Once abundant wetlands in South Minneapolis were filled or development.
In 1853, the U.S. Surveyor General’s Office conducted the first government land survey of the landscape around Lake Nokomis, then called Lake Amelia. The area contained over 1,500 acres olakes and wetlands. At that time, the natural lakes were larger and shallower than today. Since then, nearly 60% of the area’s wetlands have been filled. In their place is today’s built landscape.
Linda Gregg might call my pond a “resonant source,” a term she uses for places that are “present as essences. They operate invisibly as energy, equivalents, touchstones, amulets, buried seed, repositories, and catalysts.” These are the Ur-images of our creative psyches, that live with us and inform our writing. “If we opened people up,” remarked the filmmaker Agnès Varda, “we’d find landscapes.” Along with a Virginia creek and cornfields and the wood with its mayapples, this pond is inside me: as summer, as stillness, as childhood—as peace.
You can not realize you are in despair, looking at a pond’s surface.
I love the surface of Lake Nokomis. How when I lift my head out of the green water to sight, I see blue. How its ripples sparkle and its small waves sometimes look like other swimmers. How dragonflies hover above, bubbles hang just below it. How it often hides its moods from those at a distance; what looks calm and still from afar, feels rough and active from within.
ponds and writers: Maxine Kumin and Henry David Thoreau
Two writers that popped into my head as I think and read about ponds; Maxine Kumin and her homemade pond, Pobiz Pond, on her farm and Thoreau and Walden Pond. I just requested Kumin’s memoir in which she writes about how she and her husband, along with help from friends, dug out a pond on their farm property.
Other poetry people who love ponds? Mary Oliver, of course!
note: I was planning to swim, but open swim was canceled because of thunderstorms forecasted for 6:30.
3.1 miles locks and dam #1 and back 72 degrees / humidity: 84% air quality: 117
Hot! Humid! Hazy! The shade helped. Avoided the crowded river road trail. Heading south I ran on the narrow, root-filled dirt trail on the grassy boulevard until I reached the parking lot, then the trail to Locks and Dam #1. Heading back north, I ran on the Winchell Trail.
There was a moment when I heard the soft rush of cars, the trickle of water out of the sewer pipe, and . . .? I know there were 3 distinct sounds that I noticed all at once and that I imagined putting in a contrapuntal poem. Was the third sound the rowers? the birds? the tapping which might have been a woodpecker on a tree, or a squirrel with a nut? It wasn’t the wind, because there is no wind today. I felt its lack, but also saw it on the surface of the water. Still, thick. It wasn’t the buzzing of workers sawing or mowing or building something. What was it? Just remembered! The soft then sharp buzz of cicadas, which came in waves. I knew I’d remember it! (It only took 2 hours.)
The common thread for these 3 noises is their steady, insistent beat, not moving time forward, but around and around, on repeat.
swimming words
Catch water, thumb first then the semi-circle pull, arms straight, centre, down. Palm push back, twist shoulder to breath. And recover. Kick. Kick. Kick.
Stretch bone to breakwall and the tidal roar of thirty thousand swamps, refuses to crest, to break. Thirst for the bubbled silence of midnight, midlake, midstroke when the limelight was all to reach for, a trap door opening to a world below.
Pulse counts in an orchestra — it’s only a paper moon waterlogged and beaming up, a lighthouse lamp spinning in time. A course to decipher all the way to safe harbour. There’s a table laid in checkered cloth. The catch of the day muscles away.
At the edge, pulled bodily from a lake that holds fast and drags thighs, shins against stacked stone and laps the bloody threads. It won’t return you whole to the land.
Love the title of this poem and the last line. Does the lake return me whole to the land? What does it mean to be returned whole? And, is that to be desired?
I was planning to do open swim at Cedar Lake tonight, but there is a heat advisory and it’s 90 degrees, so Scott and I will go on Wednesday instead, when it’s much cooler.
process influences constraint
Last week, I read about Sarah Riggs’ approach to writing her latest collection, Lines:
In my poem “November 14” from Lines we start with “Only hour only thought: speech speech.” At the age of 47 I set out to write the book in 47-minute time periods. Roughly an hour, an only hour so to speak, in a field of time dedicated only to thinking/ speaking. Increasingly hard to do this century, with text messages et cetera punctuating thought. So on October 15, 2018, I started on a dictation of the mind so to speak, in which second thoughts are also written, and set my phone timer for each writing session, at the same café for many of the poems. Not written so much as transposed. I determined each poem would be 47 lines, and the lines do not need to be connected to ones before or after, though they could be. There would be 47 poems. The name of each poem is the date it was written. To be in time, in the calendar, to have a project that is a book that is a series. To feel in the momentum of it. To slant into dream, to invite that we survive through the tilt and whir of connecting synapses.
Process, Influence, and Constraints. I love all 3 of these, and think about them quite a bit. I like how Riggs opens the essay: “The bird song and street noise and lilt of the subway and recent phone conversations go into our poetry. We are made up of influences, there is no blank page or screen, as has been said many times.”
In terms of influence, Riggs offers these suggestions:
Channel an influence or more than one. You can choose to riff on or translate someone else’s work. You can choose epigraphs. Dedicate or address your work to someone.
I like the idea of translation. I’ve been playing around with something I call form fitters, where I take words from other poets I love and fit them into my running rhythms (3/2 or 2/1 or 3/3/3/4) and swimming breath patterns (5 syllable lines or 3/4/3/4 or 5/4/5/4). I also like the idea of taking a line and making it the title or, what about the last line?, of a poem. Playing around with influences could be a fun month-long project?!
Sticky, but feels cooler because of the cloud cover. Felt relaxed and able to keep running without stopping. Wore my bright yellow shoes, which seem to not be hurting my feet/calves as much. The river was a light gray-blue, the trees dark green. Heard voices near the ravine — was it the workers finishing the new trail? Also heard the clicking and clacking of ski poles up above near the road.
Several trucks and workers in and around the house that used to have the poetry window (it hasn’t had a poem for more than a year). I wonder where the poetry people went?
The tree is still across the winchell trail. Every time I encounter it I’m cautious, looking out for people coming the other way, hidden behind its branches. Today, there were 2 people, but they were paying attention and waited for me to pass. Thanks!
bike: 8.6 miles lake nokomis and back 80 degrees / 78 degrees
Biked with Scott to the lake. Nice! No scary moments. I felt confident and didn’t once question where I was going or where the trail was or if that thing ahead of me was a crack or not. Loud birds. A car not knowing how to drive in a round-a-bout. High creek water under the echo bridge. An ultimate frisbee game in the field between the duck and echo bridges. Slanting light. Kids wading in the creek.
swim: 3 loops lake nokomis open swim 79 degrees
Another orange buoy gone, replaced with a green one. Only one left. For 11 years, seeing the orange buoy has been my thing. I’ve dreamed about them, written poems about them, and now they’re being replaced with green buoys. That’s okay, but I will miss them and all of my orange thoughts.
The water was a little rougher. Not too rough, more like gentle rocking. Some stray vines, lots of breathing only to my right side. Difficult to see the buoys. Recited my Alice Oswald poems as I swam and thought about lifting the lid and shutting it again and the sky jumping in and out. During the second half of the third loop, I stopped in the middle of the lake just to see what it was like. So quiet and wonderful. I couldn’t hear anything from the sky or the beach or other swimmers. Very cool.
Sparkle friends, bubbles. an orange glow off to the side, marble legs, ghostly milfoil, blue sky with a few clouds. Above: blue water, below: a light greenish-blue. An interesting effect: looking up blue, down below green.
A great swim. I feel strong and free and grateful to be moving and pushing my body. Big shoulders, no calf cramps, no numb/tingling fingers.
3.75 miles river road, north/south 70 degrees humidity: 74%
Summer! Not the easiest running with the heat, but it’s beautiful by the gorge. Greeted Dave, the Daily Walker and he wished me a happy birthday again!
10 Things
a coxswain’s voice below me
a very loud bird across the road, trilling not screaming
a sea and sky of green in the tunnel of trees
a woman walking down the center of the path, gesturing to herself
the two big cracks on the stretch of path just north of the trestle have been filled in with dirt
orange cones and orange spray paint surround the cracks to warn pedestrians
looking through a gap in the trees, seeing the air above the gorge, feeling so open and peaceful
an orange day lily on the edge of the trail
empty benches
the sliding bench looks like it has slid more
I stopped to take a few pictures of the bench:
sliding bench / 9 july 2025
During the run and after, I recited AO’s lines from Nobody about the microscopic insects in the eye who speak Greek. Such a great poem! And such a great poem to memorize!
