Tag: morning

may 22/RUN

3 miles
2.5 mile loop + extra
61 degrees

Green gloom with white sky today. Please come back Sun. I like that it’s warmer outside, but I wish it wasn’t so cloudy. I want to see my shadow and the light green glow by the gorge. Decided, for the first time in a long time–a month, at least?–I ran with headphones. It helped a little to listen to AC/DC, Lizzo, Beck, Prince. For a few minutes, I felt like I was flying. Didn’t think about the poem I’m reciting this week. Did I think about anything–other than, how fast am I running, or why does this seem so hard, or I am a badass running up this hill?

Yesterday afternoon I decided to test how well I could still recite all the poems I’ve memorized. Not too bad. The hardest one was the last few lines of Lovesong for the Square Root of Negative One by Richard Siken. Maybe when I’m running loops this summer I could recite different poems on different loops? A fun challenge, maybe?

Wow, this poem! I want to spend more time with it, learning all the lines about listening. So good.

Push the button, hear the sound/ HELEN MORT

Listen to the lorikeet’s whistling song.
Can you hear the call of the mynah bird?
Can you hear the flamingos in the water?
Can you hear your small heart next to mine
and the house breathing as it holds us?
Can you hear the chainsaw start, the bones
of our neighbor’s eucalyptus breaking?
It’s summer, high, emptied. Listen to the ground,
giddy with thirst. Listen to the dog shit
on the lawns, the murderous water boatmen
skimming the green pond. Can you hear
the roses rioting on the trellis? Can you
make a noise like a cheeky monkey? There are
sounds your book lacks names for. Can you
hear the sleepless girls in Attercliffe?
Can you hear the aspirin of the sun dissolving?
Listen to the casual racists in the family pub.
Listen to the house Shiraz I drink as if
it’s something’s blood. Listen to my fear,
blooming in the vase of my chest,
and listen to how I water it. Can you hear
your grandfather’s lost childhood? Can you hear
the suburban library shutting? The door closing?
The books still breathing? O can you hear
the budget tightening? It’s almost dark.
Listen to the noisy penguins on the ice.
Listen to my late-night online purchases.
Orange lipstick. High-waisted bikini briefs.
Types of plant that will never die. Listen
to your half-sister hissing to her friends at 2 a.m.
You hang up. No, you hang up. Listen
to the panic in their emojis. Can you hear
your father lighting his first cigarette?
Can you hear the foxes mating all the way
to oblivion? Their sounds are inhuman,
too human, scaling the high fences,
pressing our windowpanes. Listen
to the utter indifference of the stars.
The night is full of holes and we
grate our bodies against them.
Can you hear that, Alfie? Can you hear me
holding you, closer than my life?
Listen to “The Trout” by Schubert.
Listen to the blackbird’s chirpy song.
Listen to this waltz by Paganini.
Listen to the stage as we walk clean
off the front of it, into the audience,
the pit, the silent orchestra.

I love how she trades off between lines with the question, Can you hear, and the command, Listen. I love the line, “there are sounds your book lacks names for” and roses rioting and indifferent stars, the thirsty ground, the panic in their emojis.

may 21/RUN

3.25 miles
1.5 mile loop*
61 degrees

This summer, I’m planning to do more loops. Today I decided to do an easy run: 2 loops, starting at 36th, heading south on the river road, turning right on 42nd, then heading back north on edmund. One loop = 1.5 miles + .25 mile run to the river.

green as mood, feeling

Overcast this morning and warm. Everything was green. Thought about the idea of green as something you feel instead of see. What does it mean to feel green? Today’s green, in the absence of bright sun, felt calm and floating. Not solid or sharp or singular but part of everything else–pavement, grass, dirt, trees, sky, birds, the little kid speeding away from his dad on his bike.

I quickly googled green mood and found an article about it: What Does Green Make You Feel. Popular answers: calm, excited, stimulated, compassionate, optimistic, natural, fertile. Some that weren’t mentioned, but that I think about: energized/over-stimulated, mystery, envy, greed, naiveté, queasiness, growth/abundance/excess.

reciting while running: What Would Root

Recited What Would Root again as I ran. The entire poem took about a mile to speak in my head–with a few stops and starts with the words. I thought a little bit about the refrain “I could see everything; it was all green.” Then I thought about how I, with my damaged cones, sees green. Am I actually seeing green–and, how much? Is some of this seeing the memory of green or the logic of green—my brain knows that in spring and summer, trees are green, so it “tells” my eyes to see green? I don’t know. I feel like I’m actually seeing green but how many functional cones do I have left? Could I be seeing green through my peripheral? Lots of questions.

When I finished my run, I recited the poem into my phone as I walked home. I got it almost totally right–I forgot the line, “I sat down, feeling the hairs on the back of my neck, understanding for the first time that they were not hairs, but roots.” It is fascinating to have the poem in front of me and then listen to my recitation, seeing what I get right, what I don’t, which articles/words I add or omit.

what would root, may 21

may 20/RUN

4 miles
last chance before franklin loop*
61 degrees

*edmund, north/river road, north/seabury, south/river road, south/edmund, south. This loop is called the last change before Franklin because its most northern point where I turn around is the last chance to turn onto Seabury before the the river road slopes down.

Spring! Warmer weather! No layers today, just shorts and a short-sleeved shirt. Windy, overcast, and green. Was able to run right above the river for a few stretches. Streaks of blue breaking through the persistent green. Classic color combination–sky blue + straight up green (not fern or asparagus or pine). Don’t remember seeing–or hearing–any roller skiers. Encountered some annoying road-hogging walkers but was able to cross the road to avoid them.

Recited this week’s poem, What Would Root. I have the entire thing, all 402 words of it, memorized! Running back on Seabury, heading south, I was able to think about the story and meanings in the poem. One thing that’s great, at least for me, about memorizing a poem is that the longer I spend with the poem, the better I can understand it–not completely understand it on every level, but understand it on a basic level. Perhaps everyone else gets these things right away, but it has taken me dozens of readings to get that the line

                 My right eye would not close to this
view; why would it; but when I reached up to touch it, I
felt that there was a twig emerging, and another from my
other eye;

is about how twigs were coming out of both eyes and not just the other eye. Maybe it was because I was trying to quickly memorize so many lines or maybe it was because the idea of twigs emerging from eyes is so strange to me that I couldn’t make sense of the sentence. Whatever the reason, spending time with the words is enabling me to understand them better.

Another revelation: near the beginning of the poem, the narrator “stopped to lean against a rock.” While running, I suddenly realized, they never leave that rock–the entire poem takes place there! I figured this out as I wondered about the rock in the line near the end, “I had to wiggle a bit to/ find a place to lay my head; the rock was very hard.” When I got home, I thought my theory wasn’t quite right because of the line: “soon, I crested a rise,” but now, as I write this, I’m wondering about what crested means here–to walk up a rise? to have their eyes travel to the top of it?

I like the idea of this long, wild story, being rooted at the rock from the beginning of the poem. And I love this idea of rooting, being rooted and how the story unfolds around it. I want to spend some more time thinking about what it means to root, be rooted, take root. I’d also like to write a poem like this–with a story at the gorge–about sinking.

One more thing: re-reading this poem just now, I’m thinking about how important seeing and eyes are. “I could see everything” is repeated 4 times, twigs emerge from the narrator’s eyes, and the poem all starts because the narrator is struck with “some sort of flying detritus” in both eyes. What’s up with that? Maybe tomorrow I can think about it as I run?

Right before climbing the hill at Edmund, I stopped in the grass, looking over at the fence above the tunnel of trees, and recorded myself reciting the poem.

what would root, may 20

I can’t believe I screwed up the first line and forgot the “cathedral”! I love the idea of a cathedral of trees. Overall, I’m happy with this recording. I messed up a few of the words, but I got almost all of it right. I’ll keep working on it for the rest of the week. I think it’s funny that I added “toss a coin” to the line “I wished for seed so I could toss it into that green”

may 19/RUN

2.55 miles
42nd st loop
57 degrees

Did a shorter run today. Warmer, overcast, not too windy. Heard some black capped chickadee’s doing their fee-bee call before I headed out, then the loud drumming of a woodpecker about a mile into the run. As usual, everything was green. Anything else I remember from my run? Saw and heard some roller skiers clickity-clacking. Also heard a kid calling out to an adult–“Let me go first!” And heard a woman, with a lot of anger in her voice, recounting a story about what some other woman had done–I don’t know what it was but I know that “she REALLY shouldn’t have done it!”

Memorized the rest of the Katie Farris poem, What Would Root. An epic undertaking! 402 words. Too much for reciting while running, I think. I do really like this poem and am glad to have memorized it. Will I try another this long again? Not sure. Sometimes Farris uses articles (like the) and sometimes she doesn’t. Sometimes she includes a that, sometimes she doesn’t. I find it hard to always remember when. I like how she repeated the phrase “I could see everything” 4 times.

Listening back to the recording I made, right after I finished my run, staring into the sink hole at 7 Oaks, I noticed I dropped or added a few words. And I forgot one of my favorite lines: “that they were a part of my body I could not doubt, there were living and enervated and jutting out.”Not too bad for my first attempt at memorizing the entire thing. What a strange, wonderful poem. What does it all mean? Not sure about that yet. After I fully memorize it, I’ll have to dig into the lines, maybe on a longer run?

What Would Root, may 19

Last night, I worked some more on my Ode to Green poem. I’m still trying to figure out the form of the lines–tercets? a prose poem? one long series of lines? In “Ode to My Right Knee” Rita Dove uses couplets but I don’t think those works with my lines. Here’s the tercet version:

Ode to Green/ Sara Lynne Puotinen

Greedy gorge gobbler grifting
vistas. Vanishing views.
Overrunning overlooks. Orchestrating

take-overs–trees tressed,
scenes stolen, senses smothered. Stop.
Yield your yearly

domination. Dress down. Decide
against always
exuding excess.

Oh overabundant obstruction,
we want windows, ways
out, openings, other

perspectives, possibilities. Please
share some space. Surely
room remains

for faithful friends forever
craving crowd-less calm
where water waits, wants witnessing, where

laboring lungs long
to take
bigger, bug-less breaths beside
river’s rim?

may 18/RUN

3.5 miles
47th st loop
54 degrees

Sunny but windy this morning. So green! Was able to run right above the river for a few minutes. Hardly any view, mostly variations of green. At one spot, near the bench next to the boulder, I caught a glimpse of the river. So bright, it was almost white. Heard some birds but cannot remember what kinds or what their songs sounded like. Encountered some bikers, walkers, runners, all from more than 6 feet of distance. Forgot to look for the turkeys down by the tree graveyard/turkey hollow (I think I might have named it turkey meadow last week, but I like turkey hollow better). Avoided the big muddy puddles in the grass on the dirt trail near Becketwood by running in the road. Don’t remember much else because I spent most of my time reciting the first half of my next green poem: What Would Root.

Reciting While Running: What Would Root/Katie Farris

Started memorizing this poem about an hour before my run. I decided because it was longer, I’d divide it up and only memorize the first half now, then the rest later. Love this poem! It helps so much to memorize it. It forces me to pay close attention to all the words and to do more than just try to get to the end–which is something that can happen when I’m reading.

When I was finished running, I recorded myself reciting it into my phone. I got most of it right–except for the title and a word here and there. I think I screwed it up partly because I was self-conscious, walking near (but not too near, always 10 feet away) to others. One day, I will not be self-conscious at all. I am already better than I used to be.

what would root, may 18

I like the line, “scolded by squirrels/in their priestly black, their white collars/wagging with the force of their scolding,” although I can’t picture these squirrels. None of the ones around me are priestly black with white collars–about once or twice a year I might see a black squirrel, but the ones in my yard and by the gorge are brown. My favorite lines today: “and stopped to lean against a rock/to scrub it (I thought) away. It was May/it was May, it was May” I love the assonance with stopped, rock, and thought and the rhyme with away and May. And I love the break and refrain of “it was May, it was May, it was May” I also like the line, “it was all green, really;/even the red was anti-green”

a word I didn’t know or know how to pronounce

penstemon: pen stee muhn [from Merriam Webster] “any of a genus (Penstemon) of perennial, chiefly North American herbs or low shrubs of the snapdragon family typically with spikes of showy, two-lipped, tubular flowers with two lobes on the upper lip and three lobes on the lower lip”

Also called beardtongue because the flower often looks like an open mouth with a fuzzy tongue protruding.

Have I seen any of these? Probably, although it’s hard for me to tell from the images I found.

may 16/RUN

4.3 miles
Edmund, north/river road, north/seabury, south/river road, south/edmund, south
57 degrees

What a wonderful morning run! The overcast sky made the green glow even more. Even as there were people out on the trails, there were stretches of solitude. Often, the closed road was empty. I was able to run right above the river a few times. Why can’t I remember what the river looked like? Encountered a large group of bikers–over 10, maybe 15 or 20?–by the railroad trestle, getting ready to head out somewhere. Glad I didn’t see them again. Heard some voices way below me, peered down the old wooden steps just north of the trestle to the Winchell Trail–so green and mysterious and buggy, I bet. Heard a murder of crows, then looked up and watched them circling in the sky. Also heard some Northern Cardinals and the strident, irritating call of a few bluejays (I think?).

Recited my poem a few times more. The line about the baubles and trinkets seems to have a bit more movement. Recited it into my phone right after I finished walking, when my heart rate was still high and my breathing heavy, but got distracted by some approaching walkers and momentarily forgot a line. Still made it through the whole poem.

Instructions on Not Giving Up, may 16

open swim

Last night I found out that they are not cancelling open swim. This confuses me. How can it be safe enough to gather and swim? And it saddens me. As much as I love my fellow swimmers when we are all in the lake, I am not confident we can social distance in the water. How can I? With my bad vision–barely able to see buoys or bobbing caps–I might run into someone else. It was difficult to miss out on swimming when I thought it was cancelled. It is even harder to have to make the choice not to do it when it’s still happening.

Thought I’d end with another rumination on green. This time, green grass and one of my favorite parts of Song of Myself.

Song of Myself, 6 [A child said, What is the grass?]/ Walt Whitman

A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say Whose?

Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation.

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them, soon out of their mothers’ laps,
And here you are the mothers’ laps.

This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.

O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues,
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing.

I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps.
What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

Favorite line for a long time: “the beautiful uncut hair of graves”

may 15/RUN

4 miles
32nd st loop
51 degrees

Decided to run the whole loop, from 32nd to 42nd to 32nd again to see how long it is: 3.2 miles. Added on some extra in the neighborhood to make it to 4 miles. Not too bad. I wonder how many loops I could do? Should that be a goal this summer? Maybe. I suppose if I can’t loop in the lake, I’ll have to do it on land.

Another beautiful spring morning. Not too windy or crowded. I think I remember hearing a black capped chickadee (and I can hear them outside of my window as I type this). Not sure about any other birds–I bet they were chattering but I tuned them out. Noticed the soft green glow of the leaves over the gorge offering less of a view and more of a mood or a feeling. Was almost able to get a glimpse of the river but the rim of the bluff was too far away and it was too green. I didn’t run on the trail at all today, just the road.

reciting while running

Recited “Instructions on Not Giving Up” over and over again. A few times I even whispered it out loud. Didn’t really stumble over any words, except for maybe, “the world’s baubles and trinkets,” because it seems to stop the flow of the sentences. Does it or is it that I haven’t fully memorized the poem yet? My favorite line today: “more than the neighbor’s/ almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving/ their cotton-candy color blossoms to the slate/ sky of spring rains.” I remember now how I stumbled over “cotton candy color blossoms” a few times–I’d think candy cotton or cotton-candy colored instead. Why does she use color and not colored? Or, why do I assume it should be colored–because of phrases like “rose colored glasses”?

update, may 21: Looking over this poem again, I noticed that it DOES say “cotton-candy colored.” Why did I see it as cotton-candy color before? Must be my very bad vision.

Right after I finished running, I pulled out my phone and recorded myself reciting the poem. I almost got it all right, except: 1. I said through instead of out of the crabapple tree, 2. their green skin instead of the green skin, and 3. continuously living instead of continuous living.

Instructions on Not Giving Up, may 15

Found this poem the other day and bookmarked it. I love poems that give advice in unconventional ways.

ADVICE FROM A BAT/ Michael T. Young

Hunt only at night. Fly erratically.
Defy even your own expectations.
Feed on beetles, moths, and mosquitoes,
whatever is small and annoying.
Cultivate the myths about you
until every predator fears your legend.
When hunting, be guided by a language
only you can hear. The same is true
when courting the one you love.
Clean fangs and fur nightly. Crawl
or climb to confuse the observant.
Retreat to a cave no one believes in.
Let the day and the world pass
while you sleep, and sleep upside down,
ready to wake and fall into flight.

A few favorite lines: “Defy even your own expectations”, “Feed on…whatever is small and annoying”, and “Retreat to a cave no one believes in.”

may 13/RUN

3.5 miles
32nd st loop*
52 degrees

*edmund, north/32nd st, east/river road, south/42nd st, east/edmund, north/34th st, west)

Tried a variation on the loop I did yesterday by making it a little longer. My loop yesterday from home to 36th to 42nd to 36th again was about 1.8 miles; the loop today from home to 32nd to 42nd to 34th was about 3 miles. Next time, I should try continuing on until 32nd and see how long a complete loop is. It’s fun to figure out different routes. I’m thinking this might be the summer of loops.

It’s overcast this morning. Rain coming soon. Everything was green and quiet and expectant. Up on edmund early in the run, I saw a roller skier down below. A few minutes later, I passed them on the hill. Can’t remember if I heard them clickity-clacking. Saw a few other runners, walkers, and bikers. Not too crowded except for the spot on the road right before the tunnel of trees. Trucks were blocking half the road, working on high speed internet lines. Couldn’t see the river because I was too far away from the bluff. At some point, when I was closest to the bluff, I heard some rustling in the bushes just beyond the trail. What was down there? A squirrel? A bird? A coyote?

bird sounds

Didn’t hear any black-capped chickadees this morning but as I was nearing 42nd, I hear a few other birds that sounded like laser beams or guns from 70s science-fiction movies. Pew pew pew. Looked it up and I’m pretty sure it was a few northern cardinals. As I was turning onto Edmund, I thought about how much more I’m paying attention to bird sounds this year and how my language/description is getting more specific. In the past, when I talked about birds, I might describe them as singing or chirping or trilling but I wasn’t really thinking about the specific sounds they were making. I was using those verbs generically. I should start making a big list of words for bird sounds that I find.

reciting while running

Recited The Trees again this morning. Over and over. Thought about the meter and how it was easy to lock into a cadence that sounded too rhythmic until I got to the line, “Yet still the unresting castles thresh.” Can’t remember that much else about the poem while I was running but later, while walking Delia the dog, I thought about the first line and the unique, musical and literal way he describes the leaves returning to the trees–“The trees are coming into leaf.” Then I thought about the second line–“Almost like something being said.” Later in the poem, Larkin tells us what they seem to say: “Last year is dead” and “Begin afresh afresh afresh” I wonder, what else might the leaves be saying? What do I hear them saying?

sidewalk poetry

Yesterday, during our evening walk, Scott and I noticed some writing on the sidewalk. If I had stopped and spent a few minutes staring at it, I could have read it, even with my bad vision. Luckily I didn’t have to; Scott could read it instantly. A haiku by the famous Japanese poet Issa about a snail climbing Mt. Fuji slowly. I am familiar with Issa but haven’t really studied them–I’ve read up a little more on one of the other notable Japanese poets, Basho. Very cool. I love how literary my neighborhood is–we live in the Cooper (as in James Fenimore Cooper) part of Longfellow (as in Henry Longfellow) neighborhood. Within a few blocks of me are 2 different poetrees (trees with poem prompts affixed to them). I’d like to chalk some Emily Dickinson on our sidewalk–maybe “In the name of the Bees—And the Butterflies—And the Breeze—Amen!”

Speaking of Issa, when I looked him up on the poetry foundation site, I found this delightful poem:

[the snow is melting]
BY KOBAYASHI ISSA, TRANSLATED BY ROBERT HASS

The snow is melting 
and the village is flooded 
      with children.

may 12/RUN

4 miles
river road, south/42nd street, west/edmund, north x 2 + extra on edmund at end
42 degrees

Decided to try looping today. Starting at the end of my block, turning right at the river, looping back on edmund twice = 3.44 miles. Stayed on edmund after the second loop past 36th and kept running until 34th. Not too bad. Maybe next time I loop, I’ll try turning left on edmund, running north until 33rd, running south on the river road until 42nd. How much more distance will that add?

Wore a new pair of running shoes today: some Saucony grid cohesions that I bought 6 months ago. Slate gray with mint green accents. I had thought, when I ordered them online, that they were black (because the description said they were black) but gray will do. The favorite color I’ve had so far? Electric blue. I wish I could still get those.

A good run. Still cold outside but not for long. Maybe the 80s next week. I wore my winter vest + long sleeve green shirt + winter tights. I’m ready to put away all these layers!

Sounds

  • a black-capped chickadee singing the “feebee” song
  • a woodpecker drumming on a tree
  • a few crows
  • the clickity-clack of a roller skier
  • some part of my vest banging against my shoulder, sounding like another runner approaching from behind
  • a tin whistle chirp from some bird I couldn’t identify (I think it’s a Robin)
  • car wheels slowly approaching from behind
  • a group of three walkers talking

Made sure to look down at the river for the short time that I was able to run right above the gorge. Blue framed in green. Don’t remember noticing it sparkling or shimmering or undulating or doing anything but being below me. After I crossed over to the road, I noticed the soft green glow of the new leaves lining the bluff. I think this spring and summer are going to much more about green than blue.

reciting while running

On my second day of reciting The Trees by Phillip Larkin, I did a much better job of remembering all the lines. I don’t think I stumbled over any this time. Thought a lot about the line, “Last year is dead, they seem to say/Begin afresh, afresh, afresh” For me, when does a new year begin–the fall or the spring? And where does winter fit into all of it? Also thought about the line “Their greenness is a kind of grief” and the contrast between Larkin’s grief as the greening of the trees and Gerard Manley Hopkins’s golden unleaving grief. How do these griefs differ for me? Which one is more difficult? At the end of my run, I recorded myself reciting the poem. Not perfect, but okay. The only glaring mistake is the last line. Instead of saying “Begin afresh” I say “Be afresh.” Begin sounds so much better, makes much more sense, than be.

The Trees, may 12

Since I mentioned Hopkins, I thought I’d put in Spring and Fall again (which is one of the first poems I remember memorizing and loving back in high school):

Spring and Fall 
BY GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

to a young child

Márgarét, áre you gríeving 
Over Goldengrove unleaving? 
Leáves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you? 
Ah! ás the heart grows older 
It will come to such sights colder 
By and by, nor spare a sigh 
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie; 
And yet you wíll weep and know why. 
Now no matter, child, the name: 
Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same. 
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed 
What heart heard of, ghost guessed: 
It ís the blight man was born for, 
It is Margaret you mourn for.

may 11/RUN

3.7 miles
47th ave loop, short
43 degrees

A little too cold but beautiful and sunny and not too crowded. I don’t remember getting close enough to look down at the river but I do remember noticing the trees glowing in a soft green light. Ran on the trail, the grass, the road, the dirt, and the sidewalk. Felt relaxed and strong and not consumed with worry.

reciting while running

I began reciting my new poem today, the first in my “green” series: The Trees by Phillip Larkin. Before heading out for my run, I memorized it while sitting at the dining room table. Then I repeated it over and over again in my head as I ran. 3 quatrains, abba rhyme. The more I recited it, the more I locked in the iambic tetrameter. Except for the first line of the third stanza: “Yet still the unresting castles thresh.” This line seems strange to me. It doesn’t quite fit the meter; there’s an extra beat with the word “the.” Would it work better without that word–“Yet still unresting castles thresh”? Why does he add “the”? Today my favorite lines were: “Is it that they are born again,/ And we grow old? No, they die too./ Their yearly trick of looking new/ Is written down in rings of grain.” I especially enjoyed discovering the rhythm in the first 2 lines as I ran.

birds! birds! birds!

I saw 6 wild turkeys grazing in the tree graveyard. I slowed down to count them. Almost stopped to take a picture or a video, but decided against it. Heard the low drumming of a woodpecker–was it our Pileated friend? About 3 miles in, I heard a male black capped chickadee singing the 3 syllable “hey sweetie” song. Until now, I’ve only heard the 2 syllable “feebee” song. So cool! I tried looking for a recording of the 3 syllable sound but I couldn’t find it. I wish I would have stopped to record it! I thought about doing it but I didn’t. Why don’t I ever stop? Just to be sure, I checked the site and re-read the song description: “In most of North America, the song is a simple, pure 2 or 3-note whistled fee-bee or hey, sweetie.”

added 11 may 2024: Looked it up and found the 3 note call. It’s the first song on the sounds page.