Tag: morning - Page 31

march 22/RUN

3.2 miles
mississippi river road path, south/north
41 degrees
feels like spring!

We are more than midway through the Great Melt of ’19 and everything is starting to feel springy. Sunshine. Warm air. Brown ground. Even though it’s only 41 degrees it still felt warm enough to be in short sleeves for the second half of my run. It’s been a long time since my arms have had direct contact with the sun. Slowly, I’m losing layers. The river was completely open. The path, clear. I went to the right instead of the left today so I didn’t see the Daily Walker or the Man in Black. Encountered a few dogs and their humans. Some bikers. A runner in shorts and a tank top. At least, I think he was wearing a tank top–it was the color of his flesh, so it was hard to tell. I don’t remember hearing much as I ran–a few voices, approaching me from behind. I wondered if they were running or biking (they were biking). And some kids having fun at the playground. I don’t remember dripping or airplanes overhead or the hum of traffic on the other side of the river or grit crunching under my feet or my heavy breathing or crows cawing. Forgot to think about anything else but how beautiful it was and how my back was a little sore. Someday soon, I should record myself talking as I run or give myself something to try and think about.

addendum: I almost forgot about the black glove I saw lying on the edge of the path looking forgotten. Why is it always black? How long has it been there–was it buried under the snow or lost today? Is it missed? Was it dropped right on the spot where I saw it or had it traveled from somewhere else, carried by the snow? Did a runner lose it? A walker? At night? In the morning? During a snowstorm? So many questions!

I’ve started checking out Poetry Daily every day. Last week, I discovered the poem, Hearing Loss by Noah Balding. They cannot hear the human voice, but only other, peripheral sounds. This reminds me of my vision problems and my inability to see faces.

march 20/RUN

4 miles
mississippi river road path, north/south
38 degrees
99% clear path

The first day of spring! The snow continues to melt, the path continues to get clearer. Listened to my playlist so I didn’t hear any birds or melting snow or gabbing geese. Ran faster. Smiled more. Felt overheated–too many layers. Sometimes the sun was out, sometimes it wasn’t. Never enough for me to see my shadow. Everything is still brown. No green yet. Definitely no flowers. Hopefully no more snow.

Before going out for my run, worked on a poem I’m doing about vision and my inability to see when/if people are trying to make contact with me. Mostly I can see people’s eyes–at least that they have them and the whites and the pupils. But I can’t see when the pupils move, when they shift, expand, contract. So I can’t always tell when people are looking at me. It makes reading people difficult.

As I’ve been think/write/research more on vision, I’ve encountered some interesting stuff, including a few articles about Emily Dickinson and how her temporary vision problems influenced some of her poetry, like this poem:

Before I got my eye put out – (336)
BY EMILY DICKINSON

Before I got my eye put out –
I liked as well to see
As other creatures, that have eyes –
And know no other way –

But were it told to me, Today,
That I might have the Sky
For mine, I tell you that my Heart
Would split, for size of me –

The Meadows – mine –
The Mountains – mine –
All Forests – Stintless stars –
As much of noon, as I could take –
Between my finite eyes –

The Motions of the Dipping Birds –
The Morning’s Amber Road –
For mine – to look at when I liked,
The news would strike me dead –

So safer – guess – with just my soul
Opon the window pane
Where other creatures put their eyes –
Incautious – of the Sun –

march 19/RUN

4.25 miles
mississippi river road path, north/south
39 balmy degrees
1% super slick barely frozen slippery spots, 5% puddles

Officially, spring starts this week. And, unlike many past Minnesota Marches, it feels like spring is starting too. Still barely reaching the 40s. Still snow on the ground. But birds and bright sun, more melting snow and a vague sense of warmth/warmish air is all around. A good run but one tinged with some worry. Scott has arthritis and unless he’s able to change the way he runs, he might have to stop running altogether. Most likely he won’t be able to run the marathon. I am sad for him and for the possibility of not running with him. And worried, wondering if the marathon might be too much for my body too. Before my run, I felt every ache–in my lower back, my right calf and knee, my left foot–more acutely.

What do I remember from the run? Slip-sliding over barely visibly shiny slick spots. Hearing the birds. Marveling at the river’s surface shimmering in the sun. Watching my shadow run ahead of me. Getting passed by someone running much faster than me and watching their graceful gait. Thinking about my form, trying to keep my feet straight and my arms even. Listening to the dripping and melting. Feeling too warm. Encountering a runner in shorts. Tried to think about what I had been pondering pre-run after finding a fun poem by Sharon Bryan: the body and the soul. What is their relationship and what is a soul? Walt Whitman says the body is the soul and Michel Foucault claims the soul is the prison of the body. And here’s how Bryan imagines it:

Body and Soul
BY SHARON BRYAN

They grow up together
but they aren’t even fraternal

twins, they quarrel a lot
about where to go and what

to do, the body complains
about having to carry

the soul everywhere as if
it were some helpless cripple,

and the soul snipes that it can go
places the body never dreamed of,

then they quarrel over which one of them
does the dreaming, but the truth is,

they can’t live without each other and
they both know it, anima, animosity,

the diaphragm pumps like a bellows
and the soul pulls out all the stops—

sings at the top of its lungs, laughs
at its little jokes, it would like

to think it has the upper hand
and can leave whenever it wants—

but only as long as it knows
the door will be unlocked

when it sneaks back home before
the sun comes up, and when the body

says where have you been, the soul
says, with a smirk, I was at the end

of my tether, and it was, like a diver
on the ocean floor or an astronaut

admiring the view from outside
the mother ship, and like them

it would be lost without its air
supply and protective clothing,

the body knows that and begins
to hum, I get along without you

very well, and the soul says, Listen
to that, you can’t sing worth a lick

without me, they’ll go on bickering
like this until death do them part—

and then, even if the soul seems to float
above the body for a moment,

like a flame above a candle, pinch
the wick and it disappears.

Love these lines: the diaphragm pumps like a bellows/
and the soul pulls out all the stops— /sings at the top of its lungs, laughs/at its little jokes

I tried to think about the body and the soul while I ran, but I mostly thought about my body only: my knees, back, shoulders, toes, feet. Were they sore? Was I landing on my foot correctly? How’s my right knee? Are my shoulders too tense?

The other day, I wrote about running in the fog. Here’s a poem someone posted on twitter this morning. It’s from The New Yorker, May 2012.

Confessions of a Nature Lover
By Bob Hicok

Back then I was going steady
with fog, who could dance
like no one’s business, I threw her over
for a leaf that one day fluttered
first her shadow then her whole life
into my hand, that’s a lot
of responsibility and a lot
of relatives, this leaf
and that leaf and all the other leaves
hung around, I told her
I needed space, which was true,
without it I’d only be a soul,
and no one’s sure that wisp
is real, that’s why we say
of real estate, location, location,
location, and of speech,
locution, locution, locution,
and of live, yes, yes, yes,
I am on my knees, will you have me,
world?

So much to think about in this poem. For now, I’m just thinking about his reference to fog. After running in the fog last Thursday, I did some free writing around fog and my log entry. Here’s a draft of a poem:

march 14/4 miles/heavy fog/43 degrees

Liquid-y layers
drip drop drape

the Forest’s floor. Fog
reaches Road’s ribbon,

the river’s edge.
Everything is enveloped.

Shrouded. Cocooned. Consumed.
Light, devoured.

Only a single bike lamp carves out
a bright circle in the thick air

while several sirens sing
an invisible song.

march 16/RUN

3 miles
mississippi river road path, north/south
25 degrees
20% super slick thin ice covered

Birds! Sun! Almost clear path! 50 degree weather next week! Finally. This last month of winter has been rough. Too much snow. Too much cold. Too much ice. It’s still cold. And there’s still snow and ice. But spring is coming someday soon. My run today felt good. Hardly any wind. Long stretches of clear path. Heard some trickling water and lots of disembodied voices. Behind me on the path. Below me in the gorge. The river was completely open, sparkling in the sunlight. Do I remember anything from the run? Taking my gloves off around mile 2. Pushing up my sleeves too. Feeling my ponytail flapping as I picked up the pace. Running/gliding/sliding over a short stretch of sheer ice between the lake street bridge and the greenway. Passing lots of pedestrians.

My poem for today is WS Merwin’s Sight. He died yesterday. A wonderful poet. I love the form of this poem. 5 quatrains. Each one starting with a one syllable word.

SIGHT
W. S. Merwin

Once
a single cell
found that it was full of light
and for the first time there was seeing

when
I was a bird
I could see where the stars had turned
and I set out on my journey

high
in the head of a mountain goat
I could see across a valley
under the shining trees something moving

deep
in the green sea
I saw two sides of the water
and swam between them

I
look at you
in the first light of the morning
for as long as I can

march 15/RUN

2.75 miles
basement, treadmill
100% icy sidewalks outside

Back to the treadmill today. After the Great Melt of 2019–9 inches of snow gone in just 2 days!–it got cold again. Too icy on the sidewalks for me. Maybe someday the treadmill will inspire great thoughts or provide awesome runner’s highs, but not today. That’s okay. I’m just happy to be moving.

Last night I had my first advanced poetry class. The best! I am so excited to be taking it and to get to be with other writers. In our first session, we read and discussed Naomi Shihab Nye’s prose poem Yellow Glove about a girl who loses one of her yellow gloves. I was reminded of a little poem I wrote about a black glove that I used to see running south on the river road:

black glove

for the past month
every time I run south
on the river road I greet
one black glove
fitted over a branch
upright and open
waving hello.
where did the runner go
who left this here?
don’t they miss it? and
why not leave the pair
together to keep each other company?
maybe the glove isn’t saying hello
but pleading with me to stop
to listen to its lament
to look for its partner.
someday I’d like to find the trail
with the right one—
the one that isn’t left
on the path I run regularly—
and rescue it
reuniting it with its twin.

I’d like to do more with this idea of abandoned gloves and other items of clothing on the trail. What might they be doing when we’re not looking?

Here’s a poem I encountered this morning. What a poem. I love her use of the abecedarian form. So many wonderful lines: “wherever he stops, kids grow like gourds from women’s bellies””some white god came floating across the ocean” and “You better hope you never see angels on the rez. If you do, they’ll be marching you off to
Zion or Oklahoma, or some other hell they’ve mapped out for us.”

Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination of Anglikan Seraphym Subjugation of a Wild Indian Rezervation
BY NATALIE DIAZ

Angels don’t come to the reservation.
Bats, maybe, or owls, boxy mottled things.
Coyotes, too. They all mean the same thing—
death. And death
eats angels, I guess, because I haven’t seen an angel
fly through this valley ever.
Gabriel? Never heard of him. Know a guy named Gabe though—
he came through here one powwow and stayed, typical
Indian. Sure he had wings,
jailbird that he was. He flies around in stolen cars. Wherever he stops,
kids grow like gourds from women’s bellies.
Like I said, no Indian I’ve ever heard of has ever been or seen an angel.
Maybe in a Christmas pageant or something—
Nazarene church holds one every December,
organized by Pastor John’s wife. It’s no wonder
Pastor John’s son is the angel—everyone knows angels are white.
Quit bothering with angels, I say. They’re no good for Indians.
Remember what happened last time
some white god came floating across the ocean?
Truth is, there may be angels, but if there are angels
up there, living on clouds or sitting on thrones across the sea wearing
velvet robes and golden rings, drinking whiskey from silver cups,
we’re better off if they stay rich and fat and ugly and
’xactly where they are—in their own distant heavens.
You better hope you never see angels on the rez. If you do, they’ll be marching you off to
Zion or Oklahoma, or some other hell they’ve mapped out for us.

march 14/RUN

4 miles
mississippi river road path, north/south
43! degrees
100% soaked socks 25% deep puddles

Decided I was done running in the basement. I needed to get outside and be by the gorge and I didn’t care that everything was saturated with snow or ice or cold water. I’m very glad I went even if my socks got soaked before I left my block. My right shoe made this really cool squishing sound every time I took a step. Too bad I didn’t get a recording of the noise. 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

Fog
BY CARL SANDBURG

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

I do also remember encountering 2 dogs with their human, walking in the rain.

The Rainwalkers
Denise Levertov

An old man whose black face
shines golden-brown as wet pebbles
under the streetlamp, is walking two mongrel dogs of dis-
proportionate size, in the rain,
in the relaxed early-evening avenue.

The small sleek one wants to stop,
docile to the imploring soul of the trashbasket,
but the young tall curly one
wants to walk on; the glistening sidewalk
entices him to arcane happenings.

Increasing rain. The old bareheaded man
smiles and grumbles to himself.
The lights change: the avenue’s
endless nave echoes notes of
liturgical red. He drifts

between his dogs’ desires.
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?

march 13/RUN

2.5 miles
basement, treadmill
100% huge puddles hiding invisible slick spots outside

Happy to have the treadmill again today but disappointed in the weather. As Scott pointed out when I complained, it could be worse. Farther west today in the Plains and Denver winter storm Ulmer–yes, that’s what they’ve named it–is hitting. A nasty blizzard. Even so, the conditions here suck. We have flood warnings. Rain + melting snow + clogged sewer drains = yuck. So dreary to look out of my upstairs window and see a grayish brownish sludgy soup on the street. Managed to walk the dog for one block and almost fell at least 3 times. Deep puddles hiding sneaky slick spots. Didn’t think about much on the treadmill. Just stared at the letters on a box on a ledge in front of me and listened to my running playlist. Well, I did think about how much faster I thought I was running than the treadmill or my watch say. Also wondered how the gorge was doing today.

My poem for today comes from Didi Jackson. I heard it on Tracy K. Smith’s wonderful podcast, The Slowdown. It’s called Listen, which is something I’ve been working on doing ever since I was diagnosed with a degenerative eye disease in 2016. It’s even more important now since I found out from my eye doctor on Monday that my central vision has gotten worse. In my left eye, my central vision is 98% gone. The 2% remaining is in the very center and is almost gone too. I saw it on a scan of my retina–a pale yellow dot in a sea of darkish grayish black. My right eye is a little better. Only 70% totally gone. My doctor’s prediction: My central vision will be totally destroyed within the next 5 years. His suggestion: “Get your hearing checked. You’re going to need it.” So, I will listen. I read a tip on a low vision site for how not to spill when you’re filling up a cup: Listen. You can hear when the cup is full. I’ll have to practice that.

Listen
by Didi Jackson

Like a hundred gray ears
the river stones are layered

in a pile near the shed where mourning
doves slow their peck and bobble to listen

to a chorus of listening.
Small buds on the lilac perk up.

A cardinal’s torpedoed call comes
in slow waves of four,

round after round. It’s a love call;
a call to make him known to himself.

The stones listen harder,
decipher the song; attempt

to offer back its echo.
But fail.

This is not a poem of coming Spring.
This is a poem well aware

that gray flesh is dead flesh.
All of the ripe listening

comes at a cost. The first
sky is in all skies.

The first song
is in all songs.

march 11/RUN

3.2 miles
mississippi river road path, north/south
24 degrees
65% snow-covered
25% rough, ice shard covered

Oh beautiful sun! It seemed much warmer than 24 degrees. Too bad it snowed a heavy, wet snow this weekend that melted and then refroze in sharp, jagged ruts or almost refroze in glassy, slippery surfaces on the path. So treacherous! I slipped a lot, but never fell. The hardest part was navigating the sidewalks for the 4 blocks to the river. Once on the river road path, it was easier. Some bare pavement and only a few stretches of jagged ice. It is very difficult to notice anything or think about anything or sink into a deeper layer of connection with the world when you have to focus so much attention on avoiding ice shards or mini ice rinks or deceptive puddles that are deeper than you think or slicker than you think. I did hear the geese honking. Smelled some almost burnt toast. Saw that the river was open along the east shore. No Daily Walker or Man in Black. Did see the older woman who walks with ski poles and a few speedy runners. A dog and its human. A bike–can’t remember if it was a fat tire.

The Chairs That No One Sits In
BY BILLY COLLINS

You see them on porches and on lawns
down by the lakeside,
usually arranged in pairs implying a couple

who might sit there and look out
at the water or the big shade trees.
The trouble is you never see anyone

sitting in these forlorn chairs
though at one time it must have seemed
a good place to stop and do nothing for a while.

Sometimes there is a little table
between the chairs where no one
is resting a glass or placing a book facedown.

It might be none of my business,
but it might be a good idea one day
for everyone who placed those vacant chairs

on a veranda or a dock to sit down in them
for the sake of remembering
whatever it was they thought deserved

to be viewed from two chairs
side by side with a table in between.
The clouds are high and massive that day.

The woman looks up from her book.
The man takes a sip of his drink.
Then there is nothing but the sound of their looking,

the lapping of lake water, and a call of one bird
then another, cries of joy or warning—
it passes the time to wonder which.

I want to place my deck chairs on my deck and look out at the tree down the alley and try to hear the sound of me looking. What does that sound like? Also, I wonder, are the chairs forlorn? Maybe they are relieved to not have the burden of some human’s butt sitting heavily on them?

march 8/RUN

3.1 miles
mississippi river road path, north/south
24 degrees
75% snow-covered

Sun! Sun! Sun! Birds. Warmer air. Melting ice. Impending snowstorms. Soft, shifting, slick snow. A gaggle of gabbing geese. Good mornings exchanged with the man in black. 5 seconds of bare pavement–a jagged strip in the middle of the path. Ran without headphones. What did I hear? The geese, my ponytail gently hitting my jacket. What did I think about? How draining it was to run on the path, slipping in the snow. How much nicer it will be once the path is clear. Don’t remember smelling anything–no burnt toast drifting down from the grill on lake street.

Thinking again about layers. After a winter of double shirts and double running tights, I’m ready to have less of them. What freedom! But what layers can we never lose?

march 7/RUN

3.2 miles
mississippi river road path, north/south
95% snow-covered
16 degrees/feels like 16

Wow, the birds really think it’s spring. So chatty! I guess nobody told them we’re getting a foot of snow this weekend. Didn’t wear my yaktrax, which was a big mistake. The path was extra snowy because the plows had come through again, moving out more snow and making little mountains in the process. Greeted the Daily Walker and a few other runners. The soft, small mounds of snow all over the path made it much harder to move my legs. Listened to a playlist and felt a happy buzz around mile 2. Jamie Quatro’s first layer of the runner’s high (from “Running as Prayer”). I think I only get these highs when I’m listening to music–the ones where I feel intensely euphoric, invincible. Glanced at the river but I can’t remember what it looked like–was it open? I think I heard the geese honking at some point, but it was hard to tell with Fleetwood Mac singing about mountains and getting older and needing to change and snow-covered hills.

clothing layers: black shirt, orange shirt, vest, buff, gloves, visor. A rare occasion of wearing just the right amount of layers.

path layers: the smallest sliver of bare pavement near the lake street bridge, slick ice, hard packed snow, soft not quite settled or compressed snow, snow ledges on the edges of the path, big chunks of old snow, little mounds of snow scattered all around

I’ve been mentioning hearing geese honking a lot lately. Here are 2 very different poems that feature geese:

Wild Geese/mary oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Seasons/John Haag

Clouds so thick
they put down
roots

Young aspen
practising
quakers

Incoming geese
Periwinkle sign passports
brings remission with a V
of the blues

Feel the sun
butting the buds
open

Blossoms
Trout lilies nod expand
they know the sky
they know

Lilac
a scent by which
we mark the calendar

Weather report
May? showers
By all means and fresh rainbows
Yes. You May

Crickets
ventriloquists
of summer

Loon cries
increase the loneliness
of lakes

It’s untrue
They leave that that bats
to the silence make it darker
of owls

Morning warblers
refresh
the joy of hearing

Comes the hedgehog
And the bumblebee who lives on pins
non-aerodynamic and needles
existentialist

Horses stand
awash
in the setting sun

Anticipate
Nighthawks if you can
swoop the firefly’s flash
gathering the evening

Prophetic winds fill
the graveyard
with signposts

Then a scurry
of stormspurred
sparrows

A lamentation of geese
Hummingbird leaves in the early
to cruise dusk
the Carribean

Squirrels
pad
their acorn accounts

Cedar waxwing
Blue jay insists feathered scholar
it’s never too late knows his berries
to scold

Grackle
predicts a turn
for the worse

Flies buzz
in this cast-iron against the chill
autumn pane
stained with rust

Fly husks on sills
reflect
the year’s demise

Ptarmigan advises
“kuk-kuk-kuk
go back-goback”

Deer bundle
Coyote lingers in the laurel
to school us thickets
in survival

Fashionable spruce
knows how
to wear snow

Strange angels
Frostfeathers leave their three-D
lace shadows
the cabin glass

Cabin Fever
medicine
runs low

As
Days does
begin the woodpile

Oliver’s “Wild Geese” was one of the first poems I memorized while I was injured 2 summers ago. I still love it. Today is my introduction to John Haag–I did a search on poetry foundation for “geese.” So much fun. They only had one other poem of his online. It’s great too.

march 6/RUN

5.3 miles
franklin hill turn around
95% snow-covered
16 degrees/feels like 5

More sun. Blue sky. Birds chirping. But no snow melting. No bare pavement. No running on the walking path, dipping below the road, above the floodplain forest. Only running on the bike path right by the road. Wasn’t able to greet the Daily Walker because we were both running the same direction. Did get to say “good morning” to the man in black. Wow, he’s tall and lean and friendly. Heard the geese by the railroad trestle. Saw a nervous squirrel dart across the road and the path. Listened to my vest rustling as I moved. Sounded like a soft brush on a snare drum. Wore my yaktrax again. The path was slick and slushy, making it harder to fly, especially as I ran up the franklin hill. The river was mostly covered with snow but as I neared the franklin bridge, it opened up and I could see gaping black holes. Encountered 2 fat tires and a walker–a woman bundled up with a mask over her mouth. No dogs. No snow blowers or trucks backing up. No cars revving their engines or disembodied voices traveling up from the gorge. I don’t remember thinking about anything as I ran–did I?

layers: green shirt, orange shirt, black jacket, black vest, hood, buff, gloves–which came off around mile 2.

Almost forgot–at some point, it started snowing big fluffy flakes. In my face as I ran south. Running under the interstate bridge I looked up and thought I saw them swirling like static–was it too much sun in my eyes or did they actually look like that? Watched a truck barrel across the interstate and wondered: do they see this staticky snow too? I liked the snow–looking at it, but not when it landed on my eyelashes. By the time I was done running, I think the sun was out again. Can you believe we might get another foot of snow this weekend?

I recently discovered Linda Hogan. She is amazing. Here are two poems from her collection, Rounding the Human Corners:

from Eucalyptus

Some of the religious say the five senses are thieves
so let’s say I am stolen
and like the tree I can lose myself
layer after layer
all the way down to infinity
and that’s when the world has eyes and sees.
The whole world
loves this unlayered human.

The Way In

Sometimes the way to milk and honey is through the body.
Sometimes the way in is a song.
But there are three ways in the world: dangerous, wounding,
and beauty.
To enter stone, be water.
To rise through hard earth, be plant
desiring sunlight, believing in water.
To enter fire, be dry.
To enter life, be food.

march 5/RUN

3.35 miles
mississippi river road path, north/south
10 degrees/feels like -3
100% snow-covered

Cold. Windy. Wonderful! It was tough running straight into the wind on the way out, but it felt great being outside above the gorge. The river is frozen over. The path is still completely covered. Wore my yaktrax today. Imagined that I was tall, strong. Wanted to think about how the cold felt but it was difficult because I had so many layers on.

layers: green shirt, orange shirt, black jacket, gray jacket, 2 pairs of running tights, 2 pairs of socks, buff, hood, visor, mittens, gloves

Didn’t feel the cold. Not even in my fingertips. Just warm. And encumbered by layers. Too many sleeves. Bulky, heavy gloves. A jacket zipped up too high. What will it feel like without the layers? Bare legs? Hopefully in a month or two I’ll get to remember.

Before heading outside, I read the article, Counting Feet: On Running and Poetic Meter. Love the ending line:

both running and poetry are ways of feeling, inside ourselves, that steady beat of being human—the marker that, yes, we are alive, and living, and carrying ourselves forward on ever-moving feet.

I can’t stop thinking about inside/outside and their complicated relationship.

Last night, I read a new poem that I don’t quite understand yet but with which I am enchanted. It’s about salt–which, by the way, is something I can feel right now on my face, caked post run. I am a salty sweater.

Salt
BY HUANG FAN
TRANSLATED BY HUANG FAN AND MARGARET ROSS

Grain by grain, salt’s frozen tears
Help me count history’s disasters
I can’t blame salt for telling food
You’re full of wounds

Salt misses the freedom of the ocean
Remembering waves, salt jumps into a soup
But it finds there only my reflected face
It hides by making itself too soft to chew

Sometimes, salt follows a cold sweat
Waking me from a nightmare
Dreamed blood tastes like salt
As if in human failure lay the silence of God

Having swum in the ocean
Salt considers soup a shallow pond
For salt, every meal is a jail

One day, an extra salty flavor
Makes me cough and cough
It feels like cold fish bones scraping my throat
Maybe it’s salt telling me
I’m going to prison in your body
Don’t ever forget who I am!

Translated from the Chinese

I almost forgot to mention that it was my mom’s birthday. If she were alive, she’d be 77. I imagine she wouldn’t have wanted to run today in this cold and wind, but she might have gone cross country skiing. Oh to be out in the wintery world with her, talking and laughing and admiring the snow decorating the trees!

march 1/RUN

3.35 miles
mississippi river road path, north/south
12 degrees/feels like 12 degrees
99% snow-covered

It’s March. Finally. The month of many birthdays.

Dear March – Come in – (1320)
Emily Dickinson, 1830 – 1886

Dear March – Come in –
How glad I am –
I hoped for you before –
Put down your Hat –
You must have walked –
How out of Breath you are –
Dear March, how are you, and the Rest –
Did you leave Nature well –
Oh March, Come right upstairs with me –
I have so much to tell –

I got your Letter, and the Birds –
The Maples never knew that you were coming –
I declare – how Red their Faces grew –
But March, forgive me –
And all those Hills you left for me to Hue –
There was no Purple suitable –
You took it all with you –

Who knocks? That April –
Lock the Door –
I will not be pursued –
He stayed away a Year to call
When I am occupied –
But trifles look so trivial
As soon as you have come

That blame is just as dear as Praise
And Praise as mere as Blame –

A wonderful run that helped my mood tremendously. Very gray–one of those pewter mornings that Margaret Atwood mentions in “February.” You could tell snow was coming. It started when I reached the turn around. Big flakes. No sharp daggers. Wore my yaktrax today and it helped. I hardly slipped at all. Still difficult to run in certain stretches where the snow was sloppy. Felt strong and free and grateful to be outside moving. Greeted the Daily Walker and a few other runners. No fat tires. Heard some geese honking near the lake street bridge. They like to congregate there.

from The Black Maria
Aracelis Girmay

Body of sight. Body of
breaths. Body of trying.

Beloved, to
day you eat,
today you bathe, today
you laugh

Today you walk,
today you read,
today you paint, my love,

Today you study stars,
today you write,
today you climb the stairs,

Today you run,
today you see,
today you talk,

You cut the basil
You sweep the floor

& as you chore, touch
the ankles & hairs of your befores
who look up from their work
in the field or at the chisel
to tell you in their ways: You Live!

What a poem! Here’s a blurb about Girmay’s book:

Taking its name from the moon’s dark plains, misidentified as seas by early astronomers, the black maria investigates African diasporic histories, the consequences of racism within American culture, and the question of human identity. Central to this project is a desire to recognize the lives of Eritrean refugees who have been made invisible by years of immigration crisis, refugee status, exile, and resulting statelessness. The recipient of a 2015 Whiting Award for Poetry, Girmay’s newest collection elegizes and celebrates life, while wrestling with the notion of seeing beyond: seeing violence, seeing grace, and seeing each other better.

feb 28/RUN

5.1 miles
Franklin hill turn around
10 degrees/feels like -1
100% snow-covered

feels like: an ice rink then loose sand on the beach then too hard concrete; spring if you close your eyes so you can’t see the snow and you just feel the bright sun, hear all the birds warbling and cooing and chirping

Scott and I signed up this morning for the Twin Cities Marathon next October. It’s happening!

Even though the path was difficult–slippery, loose, hard–I had a good run. Ran 5 miles. I haven’t done that much since Jan 12th, when I ran a 10k. Very bright. Saw my shadow, her tassels fluttering in the wind. Looked down at the river: open water. Listened to my feet snapping on the path. Greeted the Daily Walker. Ran up the Franklin hill for the first time in a few weeks. Noticed how blue the sky was. So bright! Wore my sunglasses the entire time, wondering how much bluer the sky and the snow looked through these lenses. Was passed by a runner after the turn around. Such a beautiful gait. So relaxed and rhythmic. Gracefully bobbing up and down. I love watching a good runner’s feet as they rise and fall, up down, up down, up down. Started chanting my numbers again. First, 123/45 then 123/45 It’s interesting how much easier it was to get the rhythm straight when I was moving. Sitting here now at my computer, I’m struggling. After chanting numbers I added some words: mystery is solved/suspects are captured/Shaggy & Scooby/Velma too

On the final day of February, here are 2 poems entitled February:

February
BY JACK COLLOM

It is all kind of lovely that I know
what I attend here now the maturity of snow
has settled around forming a sort of time
pushing that other over either horizon and all is mine

in any colors to be chosen and
everything is cold and nothing is totally frozen

soon enough
the primary rough
erosion of what white fat it will occur
     stiff yellows O
beautiful beautifully austere
     be gotten down to, that much rash and achievement that
             would promote to, but

now I know my own red
network electrifying this welcome annual hush.

I must admit, after reading this poem–both out loud and in my head–many times, I still don’t understand these lines: “what white fat it will occur/stiff yellows O/beautiful beautifully austere/be gotten down to/that much each and achievement that would promote to” Guess I’ll have to read it a couple dozen more times–I like that he’s making me work for it. The confusion is a nice contrast to the pleasing/easy/comfortable/welcoming rhymes: know/snow, chosen/frozen/erosion

February
BY BILL CHRISTOPHERSEN

The cold grows colder, even as the days
grow longer, February’s mercury vapor light
buffing but not defrosting the bone-white
ground, crusty and treacherous underfoot.
This is the time of year that’s apt to put
a hammerlock on a healthy appetite,
old anxieties back into the night,
insomnia and nightmares into play;
when things in need of doing go undone
and things that can’t be undone come to call,
muttering recriminations at the door,
and buried ambitions rise up through the floor
and pin your wriggling shoulders to the wall;
and hope’s a reptile waiting for the sun.

Many February poems focused on signs of spring. I read one that featured the green tips (or leaves or something) of a crocus on Feb 28! Where is this magical land of flowers in February? Certainly not in Minnesota. I like my February poems bleak, bemoaning the endless winter, with barely any hope of spring ever coming.

feb 26/RUN

3.3 miles
mississippi river road path, north/south
2 degrees/feels like -8
100% snow-covered

Snow again. All set to go, heading out the door, looked down at the sidewalk and it was white. What? Looked up at the sky: falling snow. Wasn’t expecting that. Oh well, went out for a run anyway, wondering what the people in the cars driving by were thinking about me running and slipping on the icy sidewalks, scaling tall, misshapen mounds of snow created by the snow plow. Listened to my playlist today, which was a nice distraction from the wet, sharp shards of snow hitting my face and settling on my eyelashes. Didn’t feel much wind, but the light snow was always in my face, coating the slightly unzipped part of my jacket and the tops of my gloves. Greeted the Daily Walker and a few other runners. Encountered at least 2 fat tires. Quickly glanced at the river. All I could see was grayish white, whiteish gray. Devoted a lot of attention to watching the path and avoiding big ice chunks or slick spots. Wanted to think about the cold today and how it feels but it was hard because I didn’t really feel that cold. Maybe because of all of the layers?

layers: green shirt, orange shirt, black jacket, gray jacket, 2 pairs of running tight, extra long light weight fish scale socks, shorter heavier dog paw socks, a buff, a hood, a visor, gloves, mittens, headphones

I don’t remember breathing in the cold deeply. And it wasn’t cold enough for the snot to freeze in my nose. My face burned a bit but my fingers were fine. So were my toes. I guess the thing I remember most about the cold is how it lingers. Taking off my running layers when I got home, my torso was very cold, so were my legs. Now, an hour later, I still feel cold.

Listening to a poem about winter by Mark Strand (Lines for Winter), I wrote a few phrases in my journal that I liked:

“gray falls from the air” “the dome of dark” “the tune your bones play” What tune do my bones play?

Yesterday I mentioned the rhythms I started chanting at the end of my run: 1 2 3/45 or 54/321. I wrote them in my journal and translated them into meter: 1 2 3/45 becomes an anapest/troche or unstressed unstressed stressed/stressed unstressed. This afternoon, as I look out my upstairs window–the half of it that isn’t yet blocked by packed snow on the porch roof–at the snow, I’ll try adding words to the beats.

My poem for today is a wonderful Ars Poetica (a poem about the art of poetry):

To the New Journal
Susan Rich

after W. S. Merwin

Let’s just listen—

before the spent words and the hidden nests
of sentences begin, before the musical count

of vowels and consonants, the ink

not yet slippery with wild grief
or souped-up grandeur.

I wish to arrange you—

with a few half-formed couplets—
inquiries without answers.

But what can we do? These mountains are still

young and rising, I write. Yet,
even the fields call to an orchestra of stars.

Even the birds sing to-do lists.

Even the birds sing to-do lists. Love this line.

feb 25/RUN

3.3 miles
mississippi river road path, north/south
0 degrees/feels like -11
100% snow-covered, 40% ice-covered

Cold today. Not much wind, but lots of ice on the sidewalk and the trail. Reached the river road and encountered something strange: the path, right at the entrance, was covered in black, smoky snow and jagged black ice–like something had made the snow quickly melt then reform. Must have been some sort of fire–what happened? Heard lots of birds while walking to the river. Greeted the Daily Walker and a few other runners. Tried not to worry about my right knee which grumbled with short, sharp pains a few times. Didn’t look at the river even once. Did I look at the floodplain forest? (at least once, I remember now). I did look down at the Minneapolis Rowing club building. Spent most of my time watching the path, making sure I wasn’t running on extra slick spots or over chunks of snow. With less than a mile left to run, I started chanting a rhythm in my head: 123/45, 123/45, 123/45, 321 then 54/321, 54/321, 54/321, 321. How would these beats work in a poem? I’ll have to play around with them…

It is almost the end of February–the snowiest February in recorded snowfall history and the 6th snowiest month since they started keeping track in 1872. We started the day with a feels like temp of -23 and are facing a week of cold cold cold. Another snow emergency has been declared and then, after that, cars will only be able to park on the right side of any street until April. In light of this bleakness, I want some darkly hopeful poems. Here are two:

Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude
BY ROSS GAY
an excerpt

Friends, will you bear with me today,
for I have awakened
from a dream in which a robin
made with its shabby wings a kind of veil
behind which it shimmied and stomped something from the south
of Spain, its breast aflare,
looking me dead in the eye
from the branch that grew into my window,
coochie-cooing my chin,
the bird shuffling its little talons left, then right,
while the leaves bristled
against the plaster wall, two of them drifting
onto my blanket while the bird
opened and closed its wings like a matador
giving up on murder,
jutting its beak, turning a circle,
and flashing, again,
the ruddy bombast of its breast
by which I knew upon waking
it was telling me
in no uncertain terms
to bellow forth the tubas and sousaphones,
the whole rusty brass band of gratitude
not quite dormant in my belly—
it said so in a human voice,
“Bellow forth”—
and who among us could ignore such odd
and precise counsel?

I want to have this dream, although I imagine my bellowing would be more woodwinds than brass–deep throat-toned clarinets, trilling piccolos, a jaunty bassoon.

Instructions on Not Giving Up
Ada Limón, 1976

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.

I love how she reads it on the poets.org site. Click on the link in the title to hear it. Spring isn’t here for a while. But, it’s coming. The greening of the trees and the green skin growing–so much green soon!–will come in a few months.

feb 22/RUN

4.3 miles
mississippi river road path, north/south
19 degrees/feels like 19 degrees
100% snow-covered

feels like: this snow is here to stay forever, the white is too bright, a strange dream, slick, soft, sibilant

layers: (too much) green shirt, orange shirt, black jacket, black vest, buff, hood, visor, 2 pairs of tights, 1 pair of socks. gloves. 2 miles in, the gloves came off.

Not much sun but the snow was very bright. So white. White path, white walls, white sky. No snow on the river though. Walking, right before I started running, I heard the birds. Determined to make spring come soon. They started chirping a few weeks ago. The run was fun. I like running on snow, even if it is uneven in spots. Encountered a few other runners, the Daily Walker!, the man in black (the one I mentioned yesterday)–we greeted each other and he seems very nice so I’m not freaked out by how tall he is now, 2 fat tires, a few dogs. Thought about the marathon again as I neared the franklin bridge. Also thought about a poem I read this morning: Robert Duncan’s “Often I am Permitted to Return to a Meadow.” I was trying to think about the made place in my mind that I return to. I struggled to hold onto any thought about the poem or places I imagine. I kept thinking about my breathing and not slipping on a slick spot or twisting my ankle on an ice chunk.

Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow
Robert Duncan

as if it were a scene made-up by the mind,
that is not mine, but is a made place,

that is mine, it is so near to the heart,
an eternal pasture folded in all thought
so that there is a hall therein

that is a made place, created by light
wherefrom the shadows that are forms fall.

Wherefrom fall all architectures I am
I say are likenesses of the First Beloved
whose flowers are flames lit to the Lady.

She it is Queen Under The Hill
whose hosts are a disturbance of words within words
that is a field folded.

It is only a dream of the grass blowing
east against the source of the sun
in an hour before the sun’s going down

whose secret we see in a children’s game
of ring a round of roses told.

Often I am permitted to return to a meadow
as if it were a given property of the mind
that certain bounds hold against chaos,

that is a place of first permission,
everlasting omen of what is.

This poem is the first poem in Duncan’s 1960 book, The Opening of the Field. He was part of the Black Mountain Poets. Charles Olson was another member of the Black Mountain Poets. In doing some research on Duncan and this poem, I encountered Olson’s idea of projective verse: poetry shaped by rhythms of poet’s breath. So cool–I want to explore this more, thinking about breathing when I run vs. walk vs. sit.

Olson argues that the breath should be a poet’s central concern, rather than rhyme, meter, and sense. To listen closely to the breath, Olson states, “is to engage speech where it is least careless—and least logical.” The syllable and the line are the two units led by, respectively, the ear and the breath:
“the HEAD, by way of the EAR, to the SYLLABLE
the HEART, by way of the BREATH, to the LINE”
poetry foundation introduction to “Projective Verse”

feb 21/RUN

4.2 miles
mississippi river road path, north/south
13 degrees/feels like 5
100% snow-covered

feels like: freedom, solitude, quiet, I could run for another hour

Of course the amazing Minneapolis parks cleared the path already. It was difficult making my way to the river–several neighbors had not shoveled yet–but once I got there, it was fine. Better than it’s been for the last week, although there were still spots where the path was rough and uneven. Running above the river, I felt separated from everything. The plowed snow provided a hip high wall that divided me from the cars. And not many other people were outside. I only encountered 2 walkers, 1 runner and 1 biker (biking with thin tires on the road). One of the walkers was dressed all in black and was so tall–tall people unsettle me. Maybe it’s because I’m short? As I ran under the lake street bridge, on the way back, something strange happened: suddenly the sky turned lighter, from gray to brownish. After thinking about it for a moment I realized, it looked sepia toned. Weird. The wind picked up a little too. Maybe my eyes were seeing things after spending so much time staring at the bright white snow? The sepia tone made me feel like I was stuck inside a vintage photo of old Minneapolis. What did the river gorge look like 100 years ago? After a quick google search, I didn’t find any images of the west side of the gorge, but I did find a cool article about Bridal Veil Falls on the east side.

It was quiet today. There were cars, but they drove slower on the snow. No roaring or rumbling rushing. Not much wind. I did hear birds chirping as I walked to the river and a few geese honking deep in the gorge but mostly, everything was quiet, calm, slow–not in a thick way, just relaxed.

Keeping Quiet
Pablo Neruda

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still
for once on the face of the earth,
let’s not speak in any language;
let’s stop for a second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fishermen in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would not look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.

Life is what it is about…

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with
death.

Now I’ll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.

I discovered this poem last year. This morning, while looking through my running journal, I found it and my response. I like this poem but I feel like the advice is not universal.

Keep Quiet?
Sara Puotinen

Keep quiet
be still
stop moving
this impulse to still ourselves
to not move or do or be anything more
than a body with other bodies
does not feel liberating
it feels confining
maybe some of us keep too quiet
maybe some us stand too still
maybe some of us need movement—
need to be moving—to find the calm
to breathe
to feel less trapped

feb 19/RUN

3.5 miles
mississippi river road path, south/north
8 degrees/feels like 8
99% uneven, sharp, crusty snow-covered

Checked the weather before leaving and noticed that the actual temperature was the same as the feels like temp so no metaphors or similes or approximations today. Just the Is or the It or the This or whatever you want to call it. Is this possible? Hard to find meaning without metaphor.

Observations:

Running south, everything was sharp and crisp and brittle. Sounds were louder and harder and traveled farther. The crunch of my foot was a quick snap. I could hear the kids yelling and laughing at the school from several blocks away. The cars were rushing loudly.
Running north, it was much quieter. Muted. Soft. I didn’t hear the kids until I was right on the other side of the road from them. I hardly heard the cars.
Was there something about the quality of the air–how cold it was, how humid–that made the sound travel the way it did?
The sun was very bright. I could see my shadow.
The path was covered with crusty, uneven snow which was difficult to run on.
At first, it was very cold. Slowly I warmed up. The last part of me to not be cold were my fingers. By mile 3, I had folded my gloves over so they were only on my knuckles and the tips of my fingers.
I didn’t encounter any walkers or bikers and only 2 runners.
The river was completely covered over with snow. No open water.
I looked for the lone glove left by the side of the path. It’s gone. I wonder what happened to it?

Moment:

Running back north, I realized I was on the marathon route. Next October, I will be running this stretch around mile 16. I thought about that and how I wanted to remember what it looked like now in the middle of the winter, with the snow piled up on the side of the path, on the trees, on the trashcans. The river, covered. The path emptied of people. Will I be able to remember? Also gave future Sara a pep talk.

This was a wonderful run. It was cold and the path was too icy and uneven, but I loved being out there today. Tomorrow it is supposed to snow, maybe as much as 6 inches. Then more this weekend. Thinking about snow, I found a snippet of a poem in my notebook from last year:

Kinds of Snow/Su Smallen

There is snow that falls separate from the sky, and snow
that is the sky itself falling, the sky itself reaching down to us…

feb 18/RUN

3.1 miles
mississippi river road path, north/south
15 degrees
100% snow-covered

feels like: a path for snowshoes not running shoes, it’s much warmer than it is, spring is in the next room

Decided to wear my yaktrax because the path is still covered with snow and ice and I thought they might help. They did but my feet aren’t used to wearing them so I think I got some blisters. Blinding sun. Bright blue sky. Hard, crusty path. Saw my shadow running ahead of me for a while. Felt strong and sore and ready for the path to be clear again.

layers: green shirt, orange shirt, gray jacket, 2 pairs of running tights, 1 pair of socks, 1 pair of gloves, a buff and my mom’s teal hat with the hassles–the one she wore when she skied. After turning around and heading south, the gloves came off. So did the buff and the sunglasses, which had fogged up. How do people run with sunglasses on without having their sunglasses fog up?

My interest in inside and outside has me thinking about locating myself–what does it mean to be inside? outside? Inside of what? Outside of what? What does it mean when I’m running above the gorge? What does it mean when I can’t see the faces of the people I’m trying to talk with? Can “I” be outside, while I’m inside? So many ways to approach these fundamental questions–I’ve been posing and exploring them for 25 years, first as a student, then a teacher, now a writer/poet.

Speculations about “I”/Toi Derricotte

A certain doubleness, by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another.
— Henry David Thoreau

I didn’t choose the word —
it came pouring out of my throat
like the water inside a drowned man.
I didn’t even push on my stomach.
I just lay there, dead (like he told me)

& “I” came out.
(I’m sorry, Father.
“I” wasn’t my fault.)

(How did “I” feel?)

Felt almost alive
when I’d get in, like the Trojan horse.

I’d sit on the bench
(I didn’t look out of the eyeholes
so I wouldn’t see the carnage).

iii

(Is “I” speaking another language?)

I said, “I” is dangerous.
But at the time I couldn’t tell
which one of us was speaking.

(Why “I”?)

“I” was the closest I could get to the
one I loved (who I believe was
smothered in her playpen).

Perhaps she gave birth
to “I” before she died.

I deny “I,”
& the closer
I get, the more
“I” keeps receding.

I found “I”
in the bulrushes
raised by a dirtiness
beyond imagination.

I loved “I” like a stinky bed.

While I hid in a sentence
with a bunch of other words.

vii

(What is “I”?)

A transmission through space?
A dismemberment of the spirit?

More like opening the chest &
throwing the heart out with the gizzards.

viii

(Translation)

Years later “I” came back
wanting to be known.

Like the unspeakable
name of God, I tried

my 2 letters, leaving
the “O” for breath,

like in the Bible,
missing.

I am not the “I”
in my poems. “I”
is the net I try to pull me in with.

I try to talk
with “I,” but “I” doesn’t trust
me. “I” says I am
slippery by nature.

I made “I” do
what I wasn’t supposed to do,
what I didn’t want to do —
defend me,
stand as an example,
stand in for what I was hiding.

I treated “I” as if
“I” wasn’t human.

xii

They say that what I write
belongs to me, that it is my true
experience. They think it validates
my endurance.
But why pretend?
“I” is a kind of terminal survival.

xiii

I didn’t promise
“I” anything & in that way
“I” is the one I was most
true to.

feb 16/RUN

1.75 miles
downtown loop
11 degrees
100% uneven, slippery, awful snow

feels like: misery, uncertainty (will I fall? injure myself on this uneven snow?), no fun

It’s rare to have a bad run in the winter, but today I did. Not because of the company–I got to run with Scott–but because of the path. So uneven and snow-covered. And it felt colder than 11 degrees. Oh well, no more runs on this loop until more snow is cleared.

The other day, I decided to tag all of the log entries on here that have other people’s poems in them. There are 31. Only 31 for 508 posts. I have been reading lots of poetry, I guess i just haven’t been putting it in my log entries. Not cool. So for the next month (at least), I’d like to put in a different poem for each entry. Or, if not an entire poem, a line or stanza or more. update, 16 feb 2025: I have continued to do this post-a-poem practice, not every time but often enough to have gathered a list of 1,068 poems. I’ve been thinking the list is getting a bit unruly and that I should mix up the practice a little. Maybe pick one of the already posted poems and give attention to it?

Today’s poem is only 2 lines because this poem is very long.

from Hymn to Life/James Schuyler

The world is filled with music, and in between the music, silence
And varying the silence all sorts of sounds, natural and man made

I think I’d like to use these lines as an epigraph for a poem or a series of poems about sounds. As I mentioned this poem is long. You can listen to the author reading it and it’s over 30 minutes! I would like to spend more time with it, though. Strange and captivating and clever.

Here’s a few more lines:

Change in everything yet none so great as the changes in
Oneself, which, short of sickness, go unobserved. Why watch
Yourself? You know you’re here, and where tomorrow you will probably
Be.

feb 14/RUN

3.3 miles
mississippi river road path, north/south
23 degrees
99% snow-covered

Ran with a playlist today so I didn’t hear anything but Beck, Lizzo, Ke$ha, Queen and Justin Timberlake. The path continues to be covered with snow and is slick. Very tiring on the legs. Not much traction. The wind was blowing in my face as I ran north so I knew it would be at my back running south, which made me smile. It was almost too bright when I started but by halfway, a few clouds had moved in and it was overcast. With quick glances, I noticed: the trail of open water in the Mississippi and the snow-laden branches of the oaks and maples and cottonwood in the floodplain forest. Anything else? I can’t remember.

Yesterday I started reading Linda Barry’s What It Is. I was struck by her mention of inside and outside. “Images are found in by through the action between inside and outside. I’ve been thinking a lot about inside and outside lately. What is inside? What is outside? What is it that separates them? Skin? The self? The body? Layers of clothing? A window? Door? The gorge? The leaves of the trees?

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bt4EshJh-2h/

Inner and Outer Weather

Ever since encountering Edward Hirsch’s great line about inner and outer weather–“Wandering, reading, writing–these three adventures are for me intimately linked. They are all ways of observing both the inner and outer weather, of being carried away, of getting lost and returning.”–I’ve been thinking about weather and the relationship between things like wind or humidity and my thoughts, feelings, writing. I’ve been thinking about making it the focus of another chapbook. The phrase, “inner and outer weather” was originally in a Robert Frost poem.

Tree at My Window

Tree at my window, window tree,
My sash is lowered when night comes on;
But let there never be curtain drawn
Between you and me.

Vague dream-head lifted out of the ground,
And thing next most diffuse to cloud,
Not all your light tongues talking aloud
Could be profound.

But, tree, I have seen you taken and tossed,
And if you have seen me when I slept,
You have seen me when I was taken and swept
And all but lost.

That day she put our heads together,
Fate had her imagination about her,
Your head so much concerned with outer,
Mine with inner, weather.

Robert Frost, West-Running Brook (1928).

feb 13/RUN

4.4 miles
mississippi river road path, north/south
9 degrees/feels like 1
100% snow-covered

feels like: chunky, slick, crunchy, hard

I didn’t intend to, but I got to practice some hurdles today. Snow hurdles. I ran before the plows had returned to clear the mini snow walls they made when they plowed the crosswalks. Got to greet the Daily Walker. Saw a few fat tires, some other runners. No dogs or skiers. A few minneapolis parks trucks. My friendly shadow. The sun was too bright. Half the river was open, the other half covered in snow. Spent a lot of time paying attention to the path, trying to avoid ice/snow chunks. At times, the path was difficult to run on–too slick and uneven. Tried to not think about anything. I’m sure I didn’t for much of the run. Spent some time thinking about my form and wondering about my knees. Imagined running the marathon. Thought about my body and how little I noticed it when I was younger and didn’t have any aches or pains or problems. Now I notice it and think about what it is and how it’s me and not me. I wish I didn’t ache or have problems with my knees, but I like having a reason to think about my body–so many interesting questions to explore, so many new things to learn about joints and muscles and chemical processes!

layers: (too many!) green shirt, orange shirt, black jacket with hood, vest, 2 pairs of running tights, 1 pair of socks, a buff, visor, gloves. During the second half of the run, I was dripping sweat.

other layers: dirt, a thin hard sheen of ice, dusting of powdery snow, small clumps of snow, loose 1/2 inch of rough snow (the path); a woodpecker pecking, a truck backing-up, a car with a loose part rattling, a plow approaching, the fabric on my vest and jacket rustling, the quick crunch of my striking feet, a plane rumbling overhead (sound)

feb 11/RUN

4.25 miles
mississippi river road path, north/south
22 degrees
100% snow-covered

feels like: a different world, one emptied of others; someone drained the color out of the landscape; running in soft sand

The snow was sloppy and loose. Even so, I smiled a lot and enjoyed my run. Greeted the Daily Walker. Didn’t slip on any of the ice patches, hidden beneath the snow. Felt strong and relaxed and empty of thoughts. After not thinking for a while, I had a thought: How glorious it is to be running and not thinking about anything! Then of course, I had another thought about time, wondering if I was even noticing it pass at all. I ran for 40 minutes but it felt like 5. Heard some disembodied voices coming from some place I couldn’t see. There was so much snow–and it was so white. Hard to distinguish between the sharp crusty snow, the soft slushy snow, the mini piles of snow or the big hard chunks of icy snow. No contrast. My bad vision needs contrast. Can someone with good vision tell the difference between these snows? The sky was all gray. But not gloomy, at least not to me. Just peaceful and quiet and removed from everything. Noticed the river had some open water. Saw a few walkers and bikers. Again, no skiers. Will I ever see another cross country skier while I’m running by the river? 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.

layers: less layers today. Green shirt, orange shirt, black vest, 2 pairs of running tights, a buff, a visor, 1 pair of socks, 1 pair of gloves. Felt fine. The gloves didn’t come off, but I folded them over. Maybe if I had run for another mile I would have removed them?

feb 6/RUN

3.4 miles
mississippi river road, north/south
15 degrees/feels like 8
100% snow-covered

Also feels like: too warm for double gloves, an ice rink, a winter wonderland, I’m the only one not in a car, yaktrax

I ran today! It snowed 4 inches last night. The path had been plowed, which was helpful, but the ice was still there. I think this is the most slippery path I’ve ever run on. Wore my yaktrax and that helped, but only a little. I wasn’t worried about falling, just about twisting an ankle or a knee. Harder to run. My legs will be sore soon. Still, it was beautiful and there was hardly any wind and I had the path almost all to myself. One or two walkers, a runner, and an actual cross country skier! Not a roller skier, but a skier with skis! I think this is the first time I have ever encountered a skier on the river road. I loved listening to the sharp crackling of their skis on the crusty path. Glanced quickly at the river and noticed it was covered with snow. Everything is white today, the river, the roads, the path, even the sky.

layers: 2 pairs of running tights, a green base shirt, orange thicker shirt, thin black jacket with hood, gray jacket, 1 pair of gloves, 1 pair of mittens, a running belt with my phone and key in it, a buff, a visor, no headphones. Slightly too warm. Mittens came off after a mile, sleeves rolled up/hood off by the turn around at the railroad trestle, the buff turned into a headband by mile 2.

I don’t remember thinking about anything except for: this is slippery, ouch! (when my right knee shot out a quick flash of pain), I am running slow, how far should I run?, this is slippery, is that the Daily Walker? (no it wasn’t), I like the crusty snow the best because my yaktrax can grip it, I wonder what people driving by think of me running in this?, I hope no car slides off the road and hits me. No big insights or nagging worries. All wonderfully mundane.

feb 2/RUN

4.75 miles
stone arch bridge to home
28 degrees
50% snow-covered
feels like: spring, sun, dripping eaves

One way runs are the best. No loops or turn arounds or thoughts about how I’ll have to run back up the hill I just ran down. Ran from downtown, right by the Stone Arch bridge, through the flats, up Franklin, under Lake Street, above the gorge, to the 36th street parking lot on the river road.

9 things I remember noticing:

my striking feet sinking into soft mushy snow
very bright, warm sun but no shadow
running into the sun, I was blinded. All I could see were the sparkling spots of bare pavement on the path that the sun was illuminating
spots of slick but not slippery snow in the shade
passing under the light rail on the washington ave bridge, hearing it rumble then honk
water trickling off of eaves, bridges, down rocks in the flats
a dog’s collar clanging off to the side, turning and seeing it walking with its human right above the gorge
river was covered with snow and ice, no black holes today
heard voices coming from the hill up the U of M’s Wilson Library. Were they biking? Running? Walking? Not sure.

layers

two pairs of tights, green base shirt, orange warmer shirt, black vest, buff, hat, gloves, sunglasses. Today, the gloves came off, around mile 3, probably right after running up the franklin hill.

chants while breathing

I can’t remember when it happened but sometime in the 3rd or 4th mile, I started rhythmic breathing (in 3 out 2) and creating chants to match. I tried to remember them, but now I can’t. Except: raspberry/custard. mystery/is solved. who could it/be now? it could be/nothing. why is it/ something? These chants really helped by distracting me. I’ll have to remember to do these again.

Sadly, I spent a lot of mental energy paying attention to the path and thinking about which side I should run on. In the middle with the bare pavement but in the way of others? On the soft snow but out of the way of approaching bikers? Right next to the walking path? Close to the cars, on the edge?

feb 1/RUN

4.15 miles
mississippi river road path, north/south
8 degrees/feels like -3
100% snow-covered

Finally I get to run outside again. A balmy 8 degrees. Ran without headphones and listened. My feet on the crunching snow in quick, sharp snaps. A woodpecker rapidly pecking a tree. Some other random birds chirping. A dog barking in a truck driving by under the lake street bridge (is this the same truck, the same dog as last week?). Park workers starting up their chainsaws, clearing out dead branches. Brittle branches breaking–such creaking and cracking!

Layers: two pairs of running tights, a black tech shirt, orange thick cotton shirt, thin black jacket with hood, gray outer jacket, a buff, a visor, 1 pair of gloves, 2 pairs of socks. Again, almost too warm, except for my fingers which were cold for a mile. Unzipped my jackets a little at the end of mile 1, took off my hood at the end of mile 2, put it back on I turned around and faced the wind at mile 2.5, zipped up jackets to my chin at mile 3. Kept my gloves on the entire time.

Wind: Running north it felt easy which meant, of course, that the wind was tricking me. Hiding behind my back, slightly nudging me along without me noticing. Encountered a runner running south, bundled up with their face covered and I knew I was in for it in the second half. Yep. Turned around into a cold wind. Just read yesterday that you should always run into the wind at the beginning of your run before you get too warm and sweaty. Running into wind with a sweaty face makes you get colder faster. Oh well. It wasn’t too bad. Wind doesn’t bother me anymore.

The Path: Totally covered with snow. Not icy or slippery but slick enough that I was sliding slightly. Now, an hour later, my legs are more sore than usual….A few times I noticed how the path suddenly felt different–more absorbent, soft, gentle on my striking foot. Then I realized the Minneapolis parks crew had dropped dirt on the edges of the path. Mostly it was already covered in snow but in a few spots the dirt was still exposed. What a relief it was to run on those few, fleeting stretches!

jan 25/RUN

4.1 miles
mississippi river road path, north/south
-5 degrees
5% snow-covered

The other day I wondered how cold was too cold for me. I’ve decided to take this as a challenge and an experiment, part of my focus for this winter on layers. Last year, I paid careful attention to the crunching snow. This year, I’m curious about layers, literal (as in layers of clothing, layers of sound, layers of ice) and metaphorical (layers of anxiety, doubt, joy, ideas, meanings). What will this project look like? Not totally sure, but for now, I’m interested in layers in terms of clothing I wore today as I ran outside in -5 weather. There was hardly any wind so the feels like temp was -5 too. I’ve run in feels like 20 below so today wasn’t the coldest I’ve been. What is the difference between actual and feels like temp? I’ll have to research that some more. Today I was almost too warm. I wore 2 pairs of running tights, one green shirt, an orange sweatshirt, a black jacket with a hood, a gray jacket with big pockets, 2 pairs of socks, a buff, a stocking cap, sunglasses, gloves and mittens. Too much. Great for the first mile but after that, I unzipped the jackets a little, moved the buff from my head to my neck, took off the sunglasses and put the mittens in my pocket. Ice kept forming on my cheeks, just below my eyes, caused my water on my lashes. Ice also formed on the surface of my gloves. Pretty cool looking and feeling. I think it came from the ice on my cheeks that I kept wiping off. The sun was too bright. Blinding. Ran with my shadow for a while. Greeted the Daily Walker. That dude is hard core. No coat, just double shirts. Holding his gloves while he walked. How can you get warm while walking? I can only do it when I’m running. Heard some geese so I looked up and saw them flying above me in a V. Also heard the noise of my feet crunching on snow, then thwacking the frozen, compacted path. And a dog barking in a truck as it drove by. Saw steam coming from the boat house below the lake street bridge and wondered who was there in the winter. Turned around and headed back south right as I approached a parks crew cutting down more trees. Remember looking down at the river once and noticing one small hole of cold black water and expanded into a gaping hole. How can there be more open water as it gets colder?

jan 23/RUN

3.5 miles
mississippi river road path, north/south
17 degrees/feels like 10
50% snow-covered

Usually I don’t run 3 days in a row but it’s going to get very cold tomorrow and the next day and the next day after that—maybe even too cold for me!–so I decided to get one more run before the river road became an arctic hellscape (a phrase I read in a running article about winter). Sunny. Bright. Beautiful. Heard some geese honking. Smelled breakfast. Saw the path turn to sparkles in the sun. Good morning-ed the Daily Walker. Encountered some park workers chainsawing some trees near the Welcoming Oaks. Tried to look closely to make sure it wasn’t one of my favorites. I think they’re safe, but it was hard to tell. I was too far away and couldn’t focus fast enough. And I didn’t want to look like I was staring. Hardly encountered anyone on the path. Running north, my shadow was leading me. I guess she was tired today because it felt sluggish and difficult even though I wasn’t running that fast. On the way back, running south, I led her and we picked up the pace. Also on the way back, the sun was in my eyes. The path sparkled. Hard to tell when it was snow, wet pavement or ice.

I suppose 17, feels like 10 is cold but I was warm. Sweating. Less than a mile in, most of me was almost too warm. Except for my fingers, which always take the longest. Pushed my sleeves up after the lake street bridge. Then shifted my buff from my head to my neck. By mile 2, I wished I had worn a different hat–maybe a baseball cap instead of the thick teal stocking cap I had on. At the end of the run, I unzipped my jacket and took off my gloves. How cold does it need to be before I’m not hot at the end of a run? Not sure I want to find out, but I probably will if I try running outside later this week or early next week.

Writing that last paragraph makes me want to experiment with ways to describe the unlayering process that occurs as I run–both literally, as I shed gloves and buff, but also metaphorically as I remove layers of doubt, anxiety, restlessness.

jan 22/RUN

4.15 miles
mississippi river road path, north/south
18 degrees
100% snow-covered

Warmer. Snowing, slightly. Sometimes I felt the flakes as hard crystals, but mostly as wet drops. My feet crunched on the path, not crisply but sloppily. Because it was warmer, everything felt sounded smelled wet. The path was soft and muffled. Hardly any wind. So quiet. If this snow sticks and gets colder, like it’s supposed to on Thursday, it will become sharp and loud. Heard lots of birds. First crows cawing then other birds chirping. Wheels gently whooshing as they approached. No bikes or Daily Walkers or dogs. A few runners. Today I looked down at the river. So cool. Almost all covered in white with an occasional big gaping black hole of deep, cold water. As I ran, I followed a thin track made by other runners or bikers. Had intended to think about poetry and rhythms and chants but I forgot. I did pay attention to my feet though, noticing how and where they touched the ground. And then, after I was done running, I recorded the sound of my crunching feet. I held the phone down at my side and really captured the delightfully irritating crunching, grinding noise.

Crunching Snow/ Jan 22, 2019

jan 19/RUN

4.85 miles
left on river road to downtown
2 degrees/feels like -12
75% snow-covered

Winter running is the best. The sun was shining and the wind wasn’t blowing too much. Decided to listen to my running playlist even though I probably should have been listening to the crunching snow, so tightly compacted in the cold. It’s extra annoying when it’s this way–a constant grinding noise, almost sounding like twisting styrofoam. Anyway, I was happy to listen to John Legend and Barry Manilow and Justin Bieber and Gonzo and Crowded House and Styx. When I wasn’t carefully watching the path to avoid chunks of snow, I looked down at the river. Totally covered with ice. A beautiful, desolate gray. Didn’t see many walkers–no Daily Walker–but several runners, including 3 men all in red jackets gliding by so quickly and gracefully. The flats, just down from the Franklin bridge were colder and windier but not miserable. Was proud of myself for pushing through as I approached the big hill right before downtown. Nearing it, my legs were sore and tired. I told myself that it was fine to walk. But when I got to the hill I kept going. Still tired, I told myself that I could walk halfway up. Then I reached the halfway point and kept running. I told myself I could definitely stop at the top of the hill and walk for a minute. Then I reached the top and sped up instead. I’m always pleased when I can work on my mental toughness.

Anything else I remember? At one point, I realized I was just running and not thinking about my form. Of course, realizing that made me think about my form. Didn’t see any dogs or geese or squirrels or fat tires or groups of walkers or skiers. I did see my shadow though. She was just ahead of me, leading me down the franklin hill, having as much fun as I was. No smells. My feet felt cold. My face, flushed. My fingers, fine. My right ankle hurt a little but I think it was my shoe, not an injury, causing the pain.

jan 17/RUN

4.3 miles
mississippi river road path, north/south
20 degrees/feels like 10
50% light snow covered

Snowed last night. Barely even a dusting, but still snow. It’s been a strange, bare January. The biking path was mostly clear, with streaks and stripes of light snow. Tried running on the walking path for a bit but kept stumbling over small chunks that I couldn’t see. Always wondering, is it my bad vision or does everyone have trouble spotting these chunks. Looked down at the river. Clear. Grayish-brown. Open with no ice floes. Also looked down at the gorge. Brown trees with a white sliver of trail winding through the woods. Heard chirping birds. Music from a bike’s radio. Some voices. A few squirrels scurrying around. Greeted the Daily Walker near the beginning of my run. Encountered a few fat tires. Any other runners? I can’t remember, but I don’t think so. A few walkers, some with dogs, some without. Most of my thinking was about my form and whether or not my legs were up for running again less than 24 hours after I had run at the stadium. At one point I thought: I should stop thinking about my body and running form and get distracted. And, I did. I think that’s when I focused on the snow in the gorge and noticed that the sky was mostly gray with a hint of blue. Almost forgot about the smells–walking out of the house, I got a whiff of fried something. Must have been coming from the bar a block and a half from our house. Later, a mile into the run, running under the lake street bridge, I smelled breakfast–toast, eggs, bacon–coming from longfellow grill. Found it strange that the smells were so strong when it was so cold. Usually, when it feels like 10 degrees all I smell is cold. At different points in the run, I felt smooth. Sleek. More machine than gangly human.

jan 14/RUN

4.25 miles (40 minutes)
minnehaha falls loop
31 degrees

Felt strong and relaxed. Slipped a few times on ice patches as I shifted from the running to walking path. Ran past a woman calling out, “there’s a bald eagle sitting in this tree!” Didn’t stop because I probably wouldn’t have seen it anyway and because I wanted to keep running. For about a minute I wondered what she thought of me for not stopping. The sky was light gray. Gloomy, I guess, but I liked it. Made the river seem even more vast, majestic, other-worldly. The falls were almost roaring. Minnehaha creek was flowing. There are some disappointed cross country skiers out there, missing the chance to ski on the iced over creek. I wonder if there’s any open water at Lake Nokomis? So strange. Saw the Daily Walker just starting on the path as I was ending. Too far away to greet.

This morning, just before sunrise, I took my dog for a walk. The sky was a smudged gray. Such a pleasing contrast to the bare branches of the towering trees.

jan 12/RUN

6.2 miles
the flats and back
23 degrees/feels like 16

Another good run. My second time trying a 7 minute stretching warm-up before heading out. I think it helps. Heard lots of crows cawing–no ducks or geese honking or chickadees chirping. Overcast. No wind. Humid. Not too cold. Didn’t encounter that many runners. No Daily Walker. Several fat tires. Ran down the Franklin hill to the flats. The river was mostly open with an occasional chunk of ice. Beautiful. Desolate. Recited “sick” my Shel Silverstein again. Peggy Ann McKay had the measles and the mumps at least 10 times. It was helpful, but I think it’s time for a new poem. I need another one I can chant–nothing too deep just rhythmic and rhyme-y. Scott and I are thinking about trying to do the marathon again this year. Slowly the idea is creeping in and taking hold.

Anything else I remember? My zipper hitting my jacket. The faint sound of a key (or keys?) jangling somewhere. The stinky stench of the sewer near the lake street bridge. Almost slipping on a hidden patch of ice right as I was turning around to head back. Wanting to walk the entire franklin hill but keeping running by chanting, “there’s a bridge, there’s a bridge, at the top, at the top, look at it, look at it, never stop, never stop.” Feeling strong. My eyes watering from the cold. Dodging ice chunks on the walking path and trying to time my foot falls so I wouldn’t land on a slippery patch. No snow, dead, crunchy leaves. Thinking it was late November and not mid January. Stopping to stare down at the floodplain forest at the end of my run. Hearing some voices somewhere down below–maybe at the beach?

jan 10/RUN

4 miles
almost the franklin bridge turn around
15 degrees/feels like 6

What a day for a run! Sunny and clear and cold. Hardly any wind. Only small chunks of ice left on the side of the path. So calm and filled with noises. Everywhere. Chirping birds. Honking geese. Whooshing wheels. The low hum of traffic rumbling from across the river. Decided to listen today. My zipper pull made a small rhythmic thud as it hit my chest. My striking feet thwacked. Was able to run on the lower path, above the gorge. Looked down at the floodplain forest and enjoyed the cool visual effect of sun flashing through tall, thin tree trunks as I ran by. Said “hello” to a walker about 3 miles in. Encountered a fat tire just past the lake street bridge.

Stopped and took a minute video of the view from the end of my run. Had difficulty standing still and holding the camera straight. The camera rises and falls as I breathe.

mississippi river run jan 10

jan 7/RUN

5.5 miles
franklin loop
38 degrees/98% humidity

Wet. Warm, but not warm enough. Lots of slick spots, more on the sidewalk than on the path. A gray day. Humid. Felt pretty good during my run, although I found myself worrying constantly about my back or my IT band or my knee. At one point I wondered, what would it feel like to not notice my body? To simply run? Of course, this did happen many times during the run, but I remember more the times when I was too aware of my body. Speaking of the body, when I crossed over the franklin bridge and was running on the St. Paul side, I started reciting Sick by Shel Silverstein in my head. All sorts of ailments: measles, mumps, wrench’d backs, crooked spines, chicken pox, cold nose, numb toes. This winter, I’d like to think more about my body (and the body) and my sometimes strained relationship with it as I’ve gotten older and it doesn’t work as effortlessly as it used to.

I looked at the river a lot this morning. Mostly frozen over, it looked like a weird wasteland. So gray and vast and empty.

Starting my run, everything was wet. Felt wet. Sounded wet. Whooshes and drips and gushing water out of drain pipes. Splashes. It was so humid I thought it was drizzling. Was it?

jan 5/RUN

3 miles
downtown loop
41 degrees

Ran with Scott downtown again. This must be our new Saturday morning ritual. We ran up the river road, over the Plymouth Bridge, through Boom Island and Nicollet Island, beside the cobblestones on St. Anthony Main and then stopped at the Stone Arch Bridge. The path was slick on the edges, wet in the middle. Hard to believe, but a lot of the snow has melted. I don’t remember much from the run except that it felt difficult. I also remember:

Feeling the bright sun on my face as we ran across the Plymouth bridge.
Being slightly annoyed by the flashing light from the sun as I ran by the railing on the bridge.
Watching our shadows ahead of us as we entered Boom Island park.
The shshsh sound of soft snow as we shuffled across it on the dirt path in the park. (As I learned last week, this shshsh sound is a sibilant sound. I like sibilant sounds.)

For the past 3 mornings, I’ve been starting the day with some yoga stretches–I’m using a 30 minute video on youtube. I took one yoga class in college but it was mostly meditation and sitting and breathing, not much stretching. Yoga is no joke. I thought I was flexible but I’m not that flexible…yet. I’m hoping that these stretches will help prevent injuries this year.

jan 4/RUN

4 miles
mississippi river road path, north/south
33 degrees
less than 5% snow-covered

Sun! Warm(ish) air! Clear path! Almost clear lungs! A great morning for a run. Listened to a playlist and floated above the path. Saw my shadow a few times but focused more on the sky–some wispy white with bright blue. The river is almost frozen over. Saw the Daily Walker twice, but both times I approached him from behind, so no “good morning” greetings today. Also saw a few fat tires and a runner running far ahead of me with a glowing yellow shirt and black shorts (of course shorts, it is above freezing after all). Experienced a runner’s high around mile 3: a big smile spread across my body, from my head to my toes, and I felt Joy. Speaking of the runner’s high I was just talking with my son yesterday about endocannabinoids and how they contribute to our feelings of elation. I wrote a poem about it two years ago:

I See Wonder in the Chemicals

suddenly, without warning I am
exhilarated
euphoric
effervescent, bubbling over with feeling

sometimes I feel ecstatic
beside myself with joy
beside my shadow with delight
beside the world with reverence and awe
beside my mom with longing, regret, enduring love.

sometimes I feel enormous
capacious
if I stuck out my chest
and opened my mouth a bit wider
I could let in the whole world.

sometimes I feel electric
amplifying sounds
lighting up paths
nothing but pure energy,
a flow of electrons moving through the universe

how to explain these feelings?
are they chemically-induced delusions,
brought on by elevated levels of endorphins or endocannabinoids?
why do we need to explain?
can we bear witness to their wonder,
be curious about their origins and impacts
write about them
study them
experiment with them
propose scientific theories about them
without knowing them?
naming and classifying them?
reducing them to chemicals?
claiming that we own the Truth?

I see wonder in the chemicals
their poetic names
their purposes
their possibilities
but only when our theories about them
don’t foreclose
other explanations
other ways of feeling and being.

I reworked bits and pieces of this poem into other poems. I’m not happy with this poem as it is, but I would like to re-visit and further explore this idea of wonder in the chemicals.

jan 3/RUN

4 miles
mississippi river road path, north/south
25 degrees
5% snow-covered

Much warmer today. Bright sun. Beautiful! But running was hard. Since my cold has settled in my chest I can’t take in enough oxygen. Oh well. Even with the difficulty breathing, I enjoyed the run. Glanced down at the river and noticed it was almost all frozen. Heard a dog barking in the gorge. Let my shadow lead me–she loves the sun. Heard a train horn blaring for at least 10 seconds. Saw the shadow of a bird flying overhead. Wondered whether the noise I was hearing by the Lake Street bridge was water trickling, wind blowing or a car driving by. Wiped out my fogged up sunglasses several times. Blew my nose, cleared my throat. Stopped at the halfway point to catch my breath. Tried to keep my shoulders relaxed and my hips high. Encountered a few fat tires, a stroller, some walkers and runners. No Daily Walker. No running groups. Couldn’t smell anything. Felt the warm sun on my face running north, a cold wind on my wrists running south. Can’t remember thinking about much else but breathing. Inhale deeply, slowly, through my nose and mouth.

jan 1/RUN

3.2 miles
greenway bridge turn around
2 degrees, feels like -10
95% snow-covered

Cold! Wouldn’t have minded it except that I have a cold and a bunch of junk in my chest. It was hard to breathe. So I stopped and walked a few times. Still glad I got out there. A beautiful morning without much wind. Listened to the snow crunching under my feet. Right before starting my run, as I was walking, I heard the 2 distinct sounds of crunching snow: the quick snap of the one foot striking and the perpetual grinding of the other foot leaving the ground. I heard these two sounds less when I was running. Much more snapping, less grinding. Noticed the river today–almost frozen. Greeted the Daily Walker-a great omen for 2019.

Learned a new word today: spoonerism. Named after Minister William Archibald Spooner, spoonerism is a term for wordplay in which a speaker switches the first letters/sounds of words. Like a blushing crow instead of crushing blow or truck fump (or tuck frump) instead of…well, you know. Anyway, I’d like to play around with some spoonerisms in relation to running. Here’s one I just came up with: instead of long run, wrong lung.

Here I am in all of my layers:

View this post on Instagram

She’s heading out for a run. It’s a balmy 2°F, after all.

A post shared by Scott Anderson 📎 (@room34) on Jan 1, 2019 at 9:25am PST

dec 30/RUN

3.25 miles
greenway bridge turn around
30 degrees
15% snow covered

Much warmer today. The feels like temperature is 25 degrees warmer. The path was clear but wet. Lots of runners out there. What do I remember about my run? The sidewalks were slippery but the path by the river was not. Encountered 2 fat tires. Didn’t notice any birds or squirrels or the river–did I look down at it even once?

dec 29/RUN

3.15 miles
greenway bridge turn around
10 degrees/feels like -2
100% snow and ice covered

I think this is the coldest run of the season. Feels like -2! It didn’t seem too cold to me. But it was super slick. Decided to run in my yaktrax for the first time ever. Not too bad. With their spikes, they made a much louder crunch on the snow. I barely slipped at all. Encountered a handful of runners out on the trail. Not too many walkers and no bikers. Was this the last run on 2018?

dec 23/RUN

3.25 miles
greenway bridge turn around
25 degrees, 100% (light) snow-covered

The dustings have begun. A slow gradual accumulation of snow on the path, 1/4 of an inch at a time. I loved my run this morning. Cold, but not too cold. Slick, but not too slick. White ground, blueish gray water, grayish white sky. Listened to a playlist so I didn’t hear any gorge sounds. Greeted the Daily Walker. Saw a guy who sorta looked like Santa Claus walking a dog. Noticed that the river was clear, no ice. Didn’t smell any sewers or almost burnt toast. On the way back from the turn around, 1/2 mile left, 3 runners, dressed all in black, were running on the road. Very dangerous. I’m glad they decided, after the third car passed them, to move up onto the path.

dec 21/RUN

5.2 miles
franklin loop
23 degrees
0% snow-covered

Decided to run the franklin loop because the weather was nice and almost all the snow had melted. Was able to run on the walking path for about half of the run. A nice gray day. Easy on the eyes–not too bright. I thought that we wouldn’t be seeing green grass again until spring, but the warmish weather (above freezing) has melted most of it. When will it snow again? Are we not going to have a white christmas this year? The run felt easy, which was good. I stayed slow and steady and somewhere on the st. paul side, I got the idea to repeatedly chant a poem I had just re-memorized: Shel Silverstein’s “Sick.” It was a little challenging because the poem has 218 words and 32 lines, but it was fun and made the run go by faster. Not sure how it would work with other poems that are less rhyme-y and rhythmic. I’ll have to try it next week!

dec 17/RUN

5.5 miles
franklin loop
28 degrees
0% snow-covered

Ran the Franklin loop today. Noticed the river. Clear, moving. No ice. Not quite above freezing. Warm, well warm compared to last week when it was in the teens. The path was clear with only a few slick spots. The last time I ran this loop was on October 29th. And because they don’t clear the path as well over on the St. Paul side, I might not have too many chances to run it before spring. In addition to paying attention to the river, I looked at the Franklin flats, below me, and over to the Minneapolis Rowing Club. I heard a single goose honking, flying high above me. Also heard some music in the distance. Where was it coming from? A bike approaching me from behind. I played chicken with a few walkers who were supposed to move over for me but didn’t seem to want to until I made them. Anything else? Oh–I smelled toast up above, on lake street. Decided I didn’t like the smell but also decided that the toast wasn’t burnt, but just on the edge of being over-toasted.

dec 15/RUN

3.5 miles
downtown loop
30 degrees
10% snow-covered

For the third week in a row, Scott and I ran while FWA was at his clarinet lesson. It’s fun to run downtown by the river. Started on the Stone Arch Bridge. A wedding couple were getting their picture taken. The bride was only in her wedding dress, which had sleeves but no back. Brrr. Boom Island was beautiful, with the snow on the small hills and the sun and the wooden bridge. The light on the Mississippi was almost blinding–a sparkling path leading to shore.

dec 14/RUN

5.15 miles
franklin hill turn around
30 degrees
0% snow-covered

Hooray for Fridays and good weather and good runs and conquering big hills and paying attention to the river and noticing your shadow and imagining it leading you down the hill and then, when it’s behind you on the way back up, imagining it gently pushing you forward until you are all the way up and not exhausted and for not being bothered by bad smells like burnt toast or earth thawing near the sewer and keeping relaxed and remembering to smile and listening to Lizzo singing about being 100% that bitch and not slipping on ice because there isn’t any ice and not feeling pain or fear or doubt and for the Daily Walker who is always there on the path no matter what the weather walking and saying “good morning” to you as you run by and for the sun that decided to come out today and sparkle on the water and warm my back and make me believe in the beauty of mid December mornings.

Running Playlist

Cry Me a River/Justin Timberlake
The Flesh Failure/Hair
Truth Hurts/Lizzo
Don’t Stop Me Know/Queen
Closer to Fine/Indigo Girls
Landslide/Fleetwood Mac
Get Lucky/Daft Punk
Firework/Katy Perry
I’m So Free/Beck
TiK ToK/Ke$ha
Can’t Stop the Feeling/Justin Timberlake
Breathe/Anna Nalick

dec 12/RUN

3.2 miles
ford bridge turn around
27 degrees
less than 1% snow covered

A nice, easy run. Turned right instead of left today, running towards the falls. No headphones. No music. What sounds did I hear?

elementary school kids playing outside–lots of laughter and joyful yelling
the wheels of a fat tire approaching me from behind, not whirring but clunking or clanking, almost sounding like the wheels were studded
a snow blower and a truck pushing what sounded like pipes across the lot of a new house

What I don’t remember hearing: rushing water, birds, the grit on the path crunching, dogs barking, people talking, cars approaching

Took advantage of the lack of leaves to inspect the gorge as I ran above it. The river looked cold and still, more frozen than flowing.

dec 11/RUN

4.1 miles
greenway bridge turn around
18 degrees
5% snow-covered

A great run, very much needed. Helped to relieve growing anxiety over getting the girl to go to school. Winter is tough for anxiety, but wonderful for running. I breathed in the crisp, cold air and felt better. Listened to music and smiled a lot. Ran faster. Felt freer. Wore sunglasses that got fogged up and gloves that became too warm after a mile. Encountered lots of dogs with their humans. Started my run with a fat tire sighting. Didn’t notice the river, only the path and the cars on the road.

dec 8/RUN

3.5 miles
downtown loop
26 degrees
50% snow-covered

Ran with Scott again while our son was in his clarinet lesson. There were a few slick spots but nothing too bad. Lately my lower back has been sore so I’ve cut back on running. For now, 3 times a week. Seems like I’ve been in a fight with my body–at least my left IT band and lower back. Felt better today. Not sore when I was running. What do I remember about the run? Hearing water trickling down below the Stone Arch Bridge in Mill Ruins park. Being surprised that it wasn’t frozen by now. Mentioning it to Scott–he couldn’t hear it over a noisy truck driving by. Saw a couple squatting down, taking a selfie with a selfie stick. Was so distracted by talking politics that I forgot to notice Boom Island park at all. I don’t even remember running over the beautiful wooden bridge. Saw a group of bikers (peloton) and a pack of runners (a trot–that’s what I like to call a group of runners). Don’t remember hearing or seeing birds or any boats. No roller skiers. No loud, honking cars. No music or trains. Felt wind occasionally and a few wet flakes on my face. Didn’t smell anything that I can recall–no burnt toast or dead leaves or delicious donuts–not even my stale breath from under my buff.

3.2 milesmississippi river road path, south/north41 degreesfeels like spring!

4 milesmississippi river road path, north/south38 degrees99% clear path

Before I got my eye put out – (336) BY EMILY DICKINSON

4.25 milesmississippi river road path, north/south39 balmy degrees1% super slick barely frozen slippery spots, 5% puddles

Body and SoulBY SHARON BRYAN

Confessions of a Nature LoverBy Bob Hicok

march 14/4 miles/heavy fog/43 degrees

3 milesmississippi river road path, north/south25 degrees20% super slick thin ice covered

SIGHTW. S. Merwin

2.75 milesbasement, treadmill100% icy sidewalks outside

black glove

Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination of Anglikan Seraphym Subjugation of a Wild Indian Rezervation BY NATALIE DIAZ

4 milesmississippi river road path, north/south43! degrees100% soaked socks 25% deep puddles

Fog BY CARL SANDBURG

The Rainwalkers Denise Levertov

2.5 milesbasement, treadmill100% huge puddles hiding invisible slick spots outside

Listen by Didi Jackson

3.2 milesmississippi river road path, north/south24 degrees65% snow-covered25% rough, ice shard covered

The Chairs That No One Sits In BY BILLY COLLINS

3.1 milesmississippi river road path, north/south24 degrees75% snow-covered

3.2 milesmississippi river road path, north/south95% snow-covered16 degrees/feels like 16

Wild Geese/mary oliver

Seasons/John Haag

5.3 milesfranklin hill turn around95% snow-covered16 degrees/feels like 5

from Eucalyptus

The Way In

3.35 milesmississippi river road path, north/south10 degrees/feels like -3100% snow-covered

Salt BY HUANG FAN TRANSLATED BY HUANG FAN AND MARGARET ROSS

3.35 milesmississippi river road path, north/south12 degrees/feels like 12 degrees99% snow-covered

Dear March – Come in – (1320) Emily Dickinson, 1830 – 1886

from The Black Maria Aracelis Girmay

5.1 milesFranklin hill turn around10 degrees/feels like -1100% snow-covered

February BY JACK COLLOM

February BY BILL CHRISTOPHERSEN

3.3 milesmississippi river road path, north/south2 degrees/feels like -8100% snow-covered

To the New Journal Susan Rich

3.3 milesmississippi river road path, north/south0 degrees/feels like -11100% snow-covered, 40% ice-covered

Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude BY ROSS GAYan excerpt

Instructions on Not Giving Up Ada Limón, 1976

4.3 milesmississippi river road path, north/south19 degrees/feels like 19 degrees100% snow-covered

Often I Am Permitted to Return to a MeadowRobert Duncan

4.2 milesmississippi river road path, north/south13 degrees/feels like 5100% snow-covered

Keeping QuietPablo Neruda

Keep Quiet?Sara Puotinen

3.5 milesmississippi river road path, south/north8 degrees/feels like 899% uneven, sharp, crusty snow-covered