Tag: no headphones

march 6/RUNGETOUTICE

3.5 miles
locks and dam no. 1
48 degrees / drizzle

A few more warm days, then cold again. I didn’t mind the drizzle, everything was gray and soft and misty and wet. Dripping and whooshing and seeping. Of course, now that I’m home, the rain has stopped and the sun is almost out. I ran to the bottom of the locks and dam no. 1 hill and admired the ford bridge. It looked more like a painting than an actual bridge — although it sounded like a bridge, with trucks rumbling overhead!

I love the reflections in this picture I took, especially the upside down street lamps and railings.

an arched bridge stretching from one end of the frame to the other with a clear reflection on the river surface

If the sky were a little darker, the river a little lighter, you might not be able to tell which bridge is up, which is down — at least, I wouldn’t be able to tell!1

Smiled at several runners and walkers and bikers. Made note of all the empty benches and parking lots. There were not too many people out there. For the last bit of the run I was able to get deeper into the mist by running on the Winchell trail. Very haunted and other-worldly!

I listened to water for the first half of the run, and “Bunnies and Rabbits” playlist for the second. A new song popped up: Rabbit // Hole by Siddhartha Khosla. It’s part of teh music for a one-season series called Rabbit // Hole with Kiefer Sutherland. It’s a great song to run to. Near the beginning, the music breaks up for a few seconds then plays again then breaks up. I imagined a fast moving rabbit passing by an object when the music broke up, then being in the clear (when the music resumed), then passing my another object when the music broke up again.

Rabbit Recap, part 3

Can I finish this rabbit recap today? Nope. I got distracted with other stuff.

11 — 20 feb 2026

All late fall and winter, 2 or more bunnies have been hanging out under our crab apple tree — at night, in the afternoon, at sunrise and sunset. They’re very bold, these bunnies, not running off when I walk by. When this happens, I’ve started saying, these bunnies are as bold as brass! Why? Not sure. And, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea: I like bunnies or rabbits about as much as I like squirrels, which is not at all.

Get Out ICE

Yesterday afternoon, Scott came to my desk n the front room and said, Do you want to hear some good news? I mean, some actual good news? Kristi Noem was fired!

from Needle & Skein (the red hat people)

As of March 5th, we have raised an incredible $705,000 to help our immigrant communities here in MN. This is just us. Other yarn shops in Minnesota and around the country have also raised money and generously donated both here and locally. ICE is still here. Our fight is not over. Join us. ❤️

If you are a business who has raised money, please send us a message. We would love to try and get a full picture of what the amazing fiber community worldwide has accomplished.

Facebook post

Read the comments for more on how the fiber arts community is showing up!

New Yorker experiment #5

These experiments are slow-going. I run out of time to work on them. I struggle to see what I’m doing. I’m messy and haven’t figured out how to work with glossy magazine paper. So why am I continuing these experiments? I asked that to Scott and FWA in the kitchen the other day and then answered it myself: For some reason, I2 want to do these erasures, so I’ll keep doing them until I don’t want to or can’t (because it is too hard with my bad vision).

a flash of an idea: As I was writing that last paragraph, I was thinking about how visual poetry is increasingly inaccessible to me as my few remaining cone cells die (are the dying or just malfunctioning?) Then this popped into my head: yesterday’s erasure involved using marker to cover almost the entire text. When I had FWA and RJP read it, they both got marker on their hands — not in big streaks, but in tiny marks that almost looked like cuts or scratches. What if I made these erasures about touch too? My first thought was about doing the erasure in such a way that created a residue. Second thought: what if these erasures involved texture and touch — here, I’m reminded of the kids’ book Pat the Bunny and its different textures to touch: the soft bunny fur, the rough bunny . . . nose? I can’t remember what was the rough thing in the book. If you can touch these erasures and their textures, which would somehow speak to the words/ideas on the page, maybe you can hear them too? I’m thinking of scales, and thick layers of paper, maybe some holes where the paper has been ripped open, some extra rough sections, some smooth, like a thin film, crinkly, soft, sharp-ish. And — maybe in terms of the visual aspect, find ways to cover it that reflect or glow or shimmer or sparkle. I can see these textures in a way that I can’t see the typical flat, black expanse of an erasure. So things like glitter, little mirrors, metallic surfaces, ridges. What about covering it with things that offer colors only visible in the light — thinking of bird feathers here. So many ideas! Again, difficult to execute without it looking like a mess, but fun to try.

Before I had that last flash of inspiration, I was thinking about how I’ve decided (as of yesterday) that the overarching theme of these found poems is my vision and how I see. Then I thought, I should apply my blind spot to these pages. Create an amsler grid out of the text, and then place a cut-out of my blind spot (found while starting at a blank wall and then drawing what I see) on top of the words to find the poem.

Maybe some of these erasures could be all/only about texture, some all/only about my blind spots, and some both. And just now, another thought: What if these erasures were all about my blind spot and the idea of blind spots? Would this work: one of the erasures could be covered in spots or dots or holes in the paper?

So many fun ideas to try. I imagine that some of them will only ever be ideas that are good in theory but don’t work on the page.

Oh — I almost forgot, until I looked over at an open tab that reads, “tools to use for magazine erasure poems,” I started writing about this experiment because I wanted to mention my need for better materials. I love how writing in this log opens me up and helps me to see new things to try! Before writing about textures, the supplies I thought I needed were: sharpies, an exacto knife (can I see well enough to use this?) and possibly paint. Texture through thicker and thinner layers of paint is an interesting idea. Now I’m thinking I need scraps of fabric — next week, RJP and I should go to the fabric scrap store at the Textile Museum! — that are soft and rough and bumpy and gauzy. I need glitter and sparkles and little things that reflect and crinkle. Fun!

Here’s a new version of experiment #3. I decided to paste the text into a document so I could have an easier time drawing on the text. Is this a good solution? I’m not sure, but I do like how this version looks:

an erasure poem, spelling out: swap the dead-eyed liturgy of / doomed / vision / with / shadow / acts / wild / and / improbable
swap the dead-eyed liturgy

Bummer. I just realized that I erased the ed on doomed. It is supposed to read: of doomed vision (I guess doom vision could work?).

text:

swap the dead-eyed liturgy of
doom OR doomed3
vision
with
shadow
acts
wild
and
improbable

And now I’m redoing yesterday’s experiment:

text:

Another name for
barely

not
blind
is a hole in
your vision
that
makes
for
an
uneasy fellowship
with
the world.

march 5/RUNGETOUTICE

4.65 miles
veterans home and back
46 degrees

Still feeling like spring, another run with bare arms for the second half. Chirping birds, rushing falls, a knocking woodpecker. Kids on a field trip, walking on the river road trail. Only a few random clumps of snow remaining in the grass. I’m sure we will still get snow, either later this month, or in April, but it won’t stick around. Spring is coming!

I recited Alice Oswald’s “The Story of Falling” and Lisa Olstein’s “Dear One Absent This Long While.” I intended to think about my mom on her birthday, but I forgot to, or did I? I’m sure she was there when I recited — in my head — the last lines of Olstein’s poem: Your is the name the leaves chatter/at the edge of the unrabbited woods.

As I listened to the rushing falls, I recalled my discussion yesterday about the poster with the words, Believe Your Eyes. I thought more about why you should Believe Your Ears and Your Eyes, although less catchy, is more accurate. I recorded a thought into my phone:

5 march 2026

transcript: the sound of minnehaha falls and, occasionally, some wind. “I’m thinking about my poster and switching it from Believe Your Eyes, to Believe Your Ears and Your Eyes. And I’m thinking about, on their own, they’re both unreliable, but when they work together, and with the other senses, they offer a more accurate representation of what’s happening.”

Listened to the birds, my feet striking the grit on the path, someone say, I’m a classroom teacher near the overlook, the falls, sounding like a June rainstorm on the first half of my run. Listened to my “Bunnies and Rabbits” playlist on the second half. I started with “Rabbit Fur Coat,” and was struck by this verse:

She put a knife to her throat
“”Hand over that rabbit fur coat””
When my ma refused, the girl kicked dirt on her blouse
“”Stay away from my mansion house””

My mother really suffered for that
Spent her life in a gold plated body cast.

This last bit about the gold plated body cast — what a great way to describe someone who is obsessed with objects, like gold or fur coats, that bring status and luxury.

Happy Birthday Mom

If she hadn’t died in 2009, my mom would be celebrating her 84th birthday today. 17 years gone. Some memories of her have softened, lost their edges, others have been condensed into a flash or a few words. I was reminded of some of those words the other day when I heard Heather Cox Richardson say, oopsie poopsies. As I remember it, Mom was driving me and my best friend (JO) home. When we pulled into the garage, she called out, Front door service, Missy Doodles! I can’t remember our reaction in that moment — did JO and I exchange looks? did we laugh at her? — but I do remember that it became something we repeated to each other later for a laugh and as a way to mock my mom (mostly good-naturedly, I think).

Why does this dumb sentence stick, when others don’t? Maybe it’s partly because my mom often had a strange way of saying things — happy as a clam bake is another one that comes to mind; also, the way she pronounced absurd — abzurd — and milk — melk (I do that one too). There must be many more that I’m not remembering now; I should ask my sisters. These strange ways of speaking were part of her charm. Front door service, Missy Doodles fits with these others. I googled it just now, thinking it might be a famous catch-phrase from before my time, or that Missy Doodles might have been a character on some show from the 50s or 60s. Nope.

Returning to HCR’s oopsie poopsies, I’m thinking about how she uses it instead of swearing.1 Another connection to my mom surfaces: not swearing, or rarely swearing, or swearing in French or German. And now I’m thinking about her shit rock, which is now my shit rock. I created a digital story about it 10 or so years ago. I also posted about it on my TROUBLE blog. I need to find the video and a transcript of the story somewhere on a hard drive. I’ll post it when I find it.

the Rabbit Recap continues

Yesterday, working backwards, I made it through page 5, page 4, and half of page 3 of entries tagged, rabbit.

6 — 15 nov 2022

The optical illusion: the rabbit or the duck

I surmise that my general visual experience is something like your experience of optical illusions. Open any college psychology textbook to the chapter on perception and look at the optical illusions there. You stare at the image and see it change before your eyes. In one image, you many see first a vase and then two faces in profile. In another, you see first a rabbit then a duck. These images deceive you because they give your brain inadequate or contradictory information. In the first case, your brain tries to determine which part of the image represents the background. In the second case, your brain tries to to group the lines of hte sketch together into a meaningful picture. In both cases there are two equally possible solutions to the visual riddle, so your brain switches from one to the other, and you have the uncanny sensation of “seeing” the image change. When there’s not much to go — no design on the vase, no features on the faces, no feathers, no fur — the brain makes an educated guess. 

When I stare at an object I can almost feel my brain making such guesses.

Sight Unseen / Georgina Kleege

7 — 27 sept 2022

Those who have it to give are
like cardinals in the snow. So easy
and beautifully lit. Some
are rabbits. Hard to see
except for those who would prey upon them:
all that softness and quaking and blood.
(I’ve Been Thinking about Love Again/ Vievee Francis)

rabbits — visible only to those who prey upon them — all that softness and quaking and blood.

8 — 1 dec 2021

You only spot the rabbit’s ears and tail:

when it moves, you locate it against speckled gravel,
but when it stops, it blends in again;
(First Snow / Arthur Sze)

So, does a bunny have two distinctive aspects to their form: ears and tail? Ears if it’s only the head, ears and tail if it’s the entire silhouette. Most things blend into the backyard if they’re still for me. I only see them by their movement and maybe the flash of a tail streaking away.

9 — 25 dec 2025

A child’s plush stuffed rabbit. 
(Ode to Gray / Dorianne Laux)

Why are stuffed animal toy bunnies usually gray when real rabbits are more often brown?

10 — 15 may 2025

“It suggests the fatal indecision of a rabbit caught in a hunter’s flashlight. . . .” Rabbits as prey, always needing a way to be escape, when cornered, they shut down. Survival strategy: run until you can’t then go stiff, play dead. The idea of always looking for an exit resonates for me. I would much rather avoid a bad/dangerous/uncomfortable situation than confront it. Wherever I go, I always look for the exits, or the entrances into other worlds.

And now I’m wondering about rabbits playing dead and how that works. According to a few different sites, it’s called tonic immobility or trancing and it is”

a behavioural response to a perceived threat, characterised by muscular rigidity, profound motor inhibition, and suppressed vocal behaviour. This behaviour occurs when freezing in response to a predator approach, fight, or flight are no longer perceived as options (Gallup 1974, Gallup 1977).
McBride et al. (2006) observed that rabbits held in a tonic immobility position had elevated respiratory rates, heart rates, and plasma corticosterone concentration. Additionally, they expressed fear behaviours such as widened eyes and flattened ears, and demonstrated more hiding behaviours and fewer grooming behaviours post-trancing.

Trancing / Tonic Immobility
  1. In yesterday’s Politics Chat, talking about her reaction to the news that Trump was bombing Iran, she said, “I said all the swear words you never think I say.” ↩︎

Get Out ICE

From Recovery Bike Shop in Northeast Minneapolis:

This is what community looks like. This is what “bustling” looks like. This is looking out for our neighbors. This is taking care of our own. This is supporting our city.

We feel safer when other people are around. We are those people. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. And when we make our street a place that’s comfortable for walking, more people will feel comfortable walking. It’s a virtuous cycle. And it’s something we can do.

So come walk with us every Thursday evening at 5:30. Meet at Recovery Bike Shop. (And next week we’ll be walking in the sun!)

Note: any time you are out walking, you are making your community safer.

Recovery Bike Shop

Any time you are out walking, you are making your community safer. I love this idea!

New Yorker Experiment #4

But before I move onto #4, I added some numbers to #3, so it was easier to follow the path of the poem:

text, moving from bottom right to top right to bottom middle to top middle to mid left: 1. swap the dead-eyed liturgy of 2. doomed 3. vision 4. with 5. shadow

Experiment #4: A Screaming Skull / New Yorker 18 august 2025

text:

You may
feel
like a shadow.

Another name for
blind
is
a hole in the
vision

You may feel like a shadow.

I tried photocopying the pages from the New Yorker, but the quality is terrible. Also, I ran out of time. I like the idea of another name for blind is . . . but I could find the right words to fill that in. I’ll work on this one more tomorrow. I think that my theme for these is my vision.

march 3/RUNGETOUTICE

5.2 miles
bottom of franklin hill
44 degrees

Another SPRING day! It felt so warm that halfway through the run, I took off my pull-over and ran with bare arms. No gloves, nothing covering my ears. Even with less layers I was warm. The walking path was clear enough that I was able to run past the Welcoming Oaks and the tunnel of trees. There were a few puddles and chunks and sheets of ice and for one stretch near the lowest point, snow covered almost the entire path. A few times my foot slipped a little but never enough to make me worry I’d fall.

I felt good and my legs felt strong. I was able to run up 3/4 of the franklin hill before I stopped for a walk break. The only part of me that hurt was one of my toes on my right foot. I was wearing different shoes than I normally do — a Saucony Ride instead of a Brooks Ghost — and something about this version of the has never worked for me. I’ve had these shoes for more than a year — 2 years? — and they always cause something to hurt, like my toe or my calf.

10 Spring Things

  1. open river! down in the flats, when I could get very close to it, I watched the small spots of foam as they slowly floated downstream
  2. sh sh sh — the sound of my feet running over the grit on the edge of the trail
  3. good morning! hello friends! — greeting the Welcoming Oaks
  4. the loud and steady sound of water rushing down over the ledges in the ravine
  5. a woman running in shorts and a jog bra
  6. mud, on the edge of the path — once, as I turned a corner, I stepped in it and almost twisted something
  7. whoosh! car wheels speeding through a puddle, water flying up
  8. along with the mud, bare dirt, some grass
  9. last week, running under the franklin bridge when it was even wetter than today, I noticed a black jacket on the ground, soaked. Today that same jacket was hanging from a branch, dry
  10. like yesterday, where there was ice on the path, there were also dead leaves — suddenly realized: someone from Minneapolis Parks had most likely spread the leaves as a natural way to make the path less slippery (as opposed to ice-melt and all of its chemicals)

Rabbits in Art

1 — Rabbit by Jeff Koons

I’m fairly certain that I’ve seen and/or heard of Koons’s Rabbit, but I only thought of it for this “rabbits in art” exploration when it came up in my google search.

DETAILS

Jeff Koons (b. 1955)
Rabbit
stainless steel
41 x 19 x 12 in. (104.1 x 48.3 x 30.5 cm.)
Executed in 1986.D

You can find the image, both close-up and to scale, on Christies auction house site. I’m choosing not to post the image in this entry because of copyright concerns. Even though my use of the image should easily fall under fair use.1

In 2019, this controversial sculpture sold for $91 million. Christies’ page for this auction item has a lot of good information about the sculpture — it’s history, significance, probably all of the citations to articles about it that you might ever need.

Here’s the opening paragraph of Christies’ essay about it:

Since its creation in 1986, Jeff Koons’s Rabbit has become one of the most iconic works of 20th-century art. Standing at just over three feet tall, this shiny steel sculpture is at once inviting and imposing. Rabbit melds a Minimalist sheen with a naïve sense of play. It is crisp and cool in its appearance, yet taps into the visual language of childhood, of all that is pure and innocent. Its lack of facial features renders it wholly inscrutable, but the forms themselves evoke fun and frivolity, an effect heightened by the crimps and dimples that have been translated into the stainless steel from which it has been made. Few works of art of its generation can have the same instant recognizability: it has been on the cover of numerous books, exhibition catalogues and magazines; a monumental blow-up version even featured in the 2007 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. For an artist such as Koons, who is so focused on widening the sphere in which art operates and communicates, Rabbit is the ultimate case in point.

Christies

Childhood — all that is pure and innocent. Fun and frivolity.

And here’s what Jeff Koons says about it, cited in Kurt Varnadoe’s essay for Art Forum, 1986: Jeff Koons’s Rabbit:

This snarky little thumper has other stories to tell too. Koons said, “To me the Rabbit has many meanings. It is a symbol of the playboy, of fantasy and also of resurrection.” (The joining of those last two terms alone can provide food for long thought, or skepticism.) “But to me, the Rabbit is also a symbol of the orator making proclamations, like a politician. A masturbator, with a carrot to the mouth.” 

1986: Jeff Koons’s Rabbit

2 — Rabbit as Symbol

Drawing from “Going down the rabbit hole” and “Rabbit as Symbol: The Significance of Rabbits in Dreams, Literature, and Art,” here are some things that rabbits represent:

  • mortality (They are born, live and die within a short time, in line with the seasons)
  • fertility / abundance / sensuality (their rapid breeding rate)
  • innocence and vulnerability (a prey animal)
  • the Diaspora (introduced to the UK from Spain by the Romans)
  • a reliable source of food (The ability to keep rabbits would mean a fairly consistent source of meat for a struggling family)
  • treasured pet2
  • magic/mysticism/wonder/curiosity
  • gentle
  • agile
  • playful

3 — Medieval Killer Rabbits

I mentioned Monty Pythons killer rabbit last week. It comes up again in this article about drawings of bad bunnies in medieval art.

Rabbits can often be found innocently frolicking in the decorated borders or illuminations of medieval manuscripts, but sometimes, for reasons unknown, these adorable fluffy creatures turn into stone-cold killers. These darkly humorous images of medieval killer bunnies still strike a chord with modern viewers, always proving a hit on social media and popularised by Monty Python and the Holy Grail’s Beast of Caerbannog, ‘the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered rodent you ever set eyes on!’.

Medieval Killer Rabbits

I like this explanation for why bunnies were depicted as killers:

In real life, rabbits and hares are docile prey animals. But in decorated initials and marginalia, medieval artists often depicted ‘the world turned upside down’, where roles are reversed and the impossible becomes the norm. So here, rabbits are violent hunters hellbent on punishing anyone who has committed crimes against rabbit-kind.

Medieval Killer Rabbits
the Beast of Caerbannog

Last week when I mentioned Monty Python, I didn’t know they were referencing a trend in medieval art/manuscripts of rabbits behaving badly, I thought they made it up as a joke!

I think it might be time to synthesize/summarize some of this bunny information. But, that’s a project for this afternoon! Now it’s time for day two of my New Yorker Found Poem experiment!

  1. “Fair use allows limited, unlicensed use of copyrighted images for purposes like criticism, commentary, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research. It is a legal defense based on four factors: purpose (e.g., non-profit, educational), nature of the work, amount used, and effect on the market” (source). I have been unfairly fined before, for using an image on an academic blog (over $700 in 2012).   ↩︎
  2. “It is rare for a domesticated animal to be both considered food and a treasured pet” (source). ↩︎

New Yorker Found Poem Experiment #2

10:30 am — Before starting to work with an article, I decided to sort through RJP’s old markers and find ones that still work. At some point during the process, I realized that this looking through old markers was making me dizzy; something about it was too much for my brain and my cone-starved eyes. I stopped sorting. I should have taken a break, instead I did something else. A few minutes later, I felt woozy and needed to sit down. My hands were shaking and my legs felt tingly. My pulse was fine, but my blood pressure was elevated — 158. I think I was having a mild panic attack, triggered by the dizziness from my bad vision. Boo. It seems as if my anxiety is back. I had a nice stretch of a year+ without it. It also seems like I will need to be more careful with how I use my eyes. Too much trying to closely see something might trigger another one of these. Am I right in my assessment?

I am noticing that my vision has deteriorated more. It’s even harder to recognize the faces of actors on tv, harder to see my kids’ faces when they talk to me. Am I getting closer to the complete end of central vision?

Because of this incident, I did not start my second experiment this moring. Should I now, at 2:10 pm, or will it trigger more dizziness and anxiety?

Yes, I did it. I need to make sure I test out/find the right tools and be more deliberate in what I’m doing. I’m very messy — which is mainly because of my vision, but not completely. I’ve always been an almost and a that’s good-enough girl.

These poems are from a July 2025 article, Money Talks:

1 — Let me ask you a question

a page from an essay. Lines are blacked or covered in question marks, except one: "Let me ask you a question"
Let me ask you one questions

I like the idea of this, with all of the questions marks, but it is really sloppy and it doesn’t highlight the text that I’m using, “Let me ask you a question.” I would try this one again, but if I plan it more carefully and work on my question marks!

2 and 3

2: In the middle of a story, you are either in or you are out
3 — About nothing: it is a junk drawer for everything nobody ever heard of

Again, messy and poorly executed. I like that I used less words than the last one. I need to figure out a way to draw that I can do with my unreliable vision. It’s hard to see enough to color within the box or to draw straight lines, even with a ruler!

I like the idea of nothing as a junk drawer. It might make even more sense if I found a much, and could make nothing into nothing much.

I am listening to HCR’s politics chat for today and she said, as she often does, OOPSIE POOPSIE. I love when she says that!

march 2/RUNGETOUTICE

4.35 miles
minnehaha falls and back
39 degrees

Spring-y! Sun, above freezing, and a clear walking path! I was able to take the trail that dips below the road between the double bridge and locks and dam no. 1! Also: birds and grass and no gloves. A good run. I feel more power in my legs and able to run for longer without stopping. I heard kids on the playground, the call of a bird that sounded mechanical — similar to the strange, high-pitched siren I heard earlier today, and the doppler effect on the light rail bells as I ran south to the falls. I heard Panic at the Disco, Radiohead, Gene Autry, and The Jazz Crusaders on the way back home.

Speaking of hearing, as I write this at my desk, I can hear a woodpercker outside my window pecking on a tree in our front yard that I think is dead or dying. Every peck is saying, right right right right (you’re) right. Ugh! Is it time to call a tree service?

At some point during the run I thought about I wasn’t thinking about much of anything. Then I thought, the purpose of today’s run is not to work out a writing problem, or encounter some inspiration, but to move and breathe, feel the sun on my face, and be by the river.

10 Things

  1. a thin skin of ice on the river
  2. larger areas of the creek open with dark water, some snow stretching out from the banks
  3. an occupied bench! someone is sitting on the bench at the 44th street parking lot
  4. overheard: some guy talking to his two friends about something being only 2 loops — when I passed them a few minutes later, I noticed they had on shorts and running shoes on
  5. that same truck that seemed to be hiding under the bridge last week was back again today — why?
  6. a few parts of the trail that still had any ice or snow were also covered with dead leaves
  7. enough snow had melted so that I could cross the road and walk on a wide strip of grass instead of mud and snow
  8. vision mistake: up ahead of me, it looked like a truck was parked on the path, blocking the way. I crossed over to the parking lot then immediately realized the curve in the trail made it look like the truck was blocking it, but it wasn’t. Oops
  9. more people near the falls, more cars parked in the parking lot
  10. stopped at Rachel Dow Memorial bench to admire the view through the slender tree trunks and to take a few pictures.
bare branches, some thick, some thin, against a gray sky with hints of blue
sitting beneath the bench looking up at the trees / 2 march 2026

more rabbits bunnies

It started on 20 feb, this occupation with bunnies.1 When will it end? Not today! Here are some more bunny things I’d like to archive:

1 — buuuuunnies

In footnote 1, I mention that bunny is fun to say. That might be partly because when I say it, I think of how Tom Haverford says it on Parks and Recreation2:

2 — Boynton Bunnies

At first he was skeptical, but I’ve managed to get Scott thinking about and noticing bunnies and bunny-related things everywhere! This morning he sent me an image someone posted on social media:

text: MARCH rabbit rabbit rabbit rabbit combined with cartoon rabbits, looking cute (and not remotely real)
you say rabbits, and I say bunnies / you say comics, and I say funnies

Actually, I don’t say funnies — who says funnies? — but it worked for the reference to “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off.” Is Sandra Boynton still popular in 2026? I remember her greeting cards in the 80s and her kids books in the aughts. What was the one with the cd/songs that FWA and RJP loved? did they love it? I can’t remember; I think they at least liked it, or was that just me who did? I think the book/album was Philadelphia Chickens.

In addition to sending me random bunny images he finds, Scott was willing to watch the Disney Alice in Wonderland, which was awesomely weird, and sadly could never be made now, I think. Some of the nonsense in it, which was fabulous, reads not as kooky kid imagination but as being under the influence of psychedelics. There was also this menacing edge to the characters Alice encounters: they seemed fun or dangerous at any given moment. Two examples: the flowers in the garden — that head Rose! — and Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum — doing fun acrobatics but also stopping Alice from leaving.

3 — the Bronze Bunny

Their official name is “Cottontail on the Trail” because they are a bronze statue of a cottontail and they are right on the minnehaha bike trail, but I always call them the bronze bunny. Other people call them the Minnehaha Bunny.

The sculpture has garnered the nickname of the “Minnehaha Bunny” from residents.[4] Children often climb on the sculpture and people who live nearby have frequently costumed and decorated it based on seasonal occasions or topical events such as leaving eggs by the sculpture during Easter or cladding the mouth of the sculpture with a large cloth face mask during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Wikipedia entry

I’ve written about this bunny on here before. They’re 4.5 or so miles from my house so I only see them on bike rides and long runs when I am training for the marathon. Passing the bunny on a run is a big deal; it means that I’m fit enough to run for 10 miles or more.

This bunny was erected in 2002, but it seems like it’s been here much longer.

  1. I’ve tried to say rabbits, but I just like bunnies better. I think it’s partly because of how it sounds as I say it. ↩︎
  2. Finding and creating this clip took WAY longer than it should have. I kept at it because I was determined to get the clip, not because Tom saying “buuunnies” was worth it (I think I spelled buuuunnies with one n in my title, ugh), but because I wanted to figure this out. Before losing most of my cone cells it was so much easier to do stuff like this. ↩︎

Get Out Ice

Here’s an example of an existing group using their established community to provide mutual aid and support to people during the ICE occuption: How a Dungeons & Dragons meetup turned into mutual aid during ICE operations. Members have organized “know your rights” workshops, accompanied immigrants to appointments, coordinated food donations, and made barbecue for families in need.

This quotation fits with the erasure poem I’ve been working on this morning:

“In a story, you can be the underdog who defeats the big, bad, evil entity,” said D&D player Kat Hennan. “I think that having that kind of thought exercise and storytelling right now is extremely important.”

New Yorker Found Poetry Experiment, Day 1:

Picked a random old New Yorker. Found an interesting article, “The End of the Essay: What comes after A.I has destroyed college writing? / Hua Hsu. Put my watch timer on for 30 minutes.

Poem:

question: Has there ever been a time in human history when the arts could not offer hope and help us to be open to more possibilities?
answer: Never

A good first try. It’s funny that I want to do these visual poems when I struggle so much to see the words or how to make the boxes and lines that I need, but something in me keeps persisting, so I’ll keep trying. Hopefully it will get easier.

It’s messy — and with my vision, it will always be. and I added an extra to that’s just floating out there, disconnected. It’s too busy with too many lines. But it was fun and challenging and I like the poem I came up with a response to an article about AI ruining college writing.

When I showed it to Fletcher, he liked it and said there were ways to refine it. I agree, but not to this poem. I wrote on the original essay and I don’t have another copy. The question: next time should I scan the essay before drawing on it, or is the risky (you only get one shot) approach part of the challenge and the fun?

a found poem
experiment #1 / 2 march 2026

note: I also need to learn how to take better pictures of my work!

feb 28/RUNGETOUTICE

3.95 miles
wabun hill loop*
20 degrees

*wabun loop = river road, south/ go down locks and dam road / go up the steep hill that leads to wabun / through the park and back down to the river road / river road, north

future Sara might want to remember this, present Sara hopes it’s more like Venezuela, less like starting WW3: Trump, without approval from Congress, and Israel bombed the hell out of Iran last night or early this morning.

Colder today, but hardly any wind or sun. Last night the temperature dropped so quickly that there was a very wide ring around the moon. Showed it to Scott and he said it was a moon dog. I don’t recall ever seeing one of these before. Yesterday meteorologists were predicting snow today/tonight, but the forecast has shifted again. No snow, just cold.

My legs felt awkward for the first 5 minutes of the run, but then I warmed up and they felt better. By the third mile, they felt strong and efficient. It feels like I have more energy and power in my legs. Are the iron pills I’m taking to raise my ferritin working, or is it just a placebo effect?

When I got to the lock and dam no. 1, I decided — just seconds before I did it — to turn and run up the steep hill that leads to Wabun Park. It was mostly covered in ice, but also dead leaves, so it didn’t seem too slippery. As I neared the top, I walked for a stretch. At the top, I stopped to admire the view through the chainlink fence of the river and the island and the St. Paul side, then I walked until the ice had stopped. In the park, there were several small ice rinks where melted water had refroze.

10 Things

  1. someone was on the frisbee golf course at Wabun park — I couldn’t quite see, but I’m assuming they were playing
  2. at the top of the bluff, a big stretch of the paved path was covered in a thick sheet of ice
  3. also at the top of the bluff, on the other side neared to the park, there was a small clearing with a decomposing trunk and thick logs — do people come here to sit at night and watch the lights on the bridge?
  4. the hill leading up to wabun was mostly thin layers of ice mixed with thick, jagged layers of ice, butat least part of the trail was coated with dry leaves
  5. although there were walls of snow or thick chunks of ice at some of the entrances and exits, the walking paths were mostly clear
  6. empty benches, empty parking lots
  7. running, looking down at the winchell trail and seeing a person walking — they looked so far down, I felt so high up
  8. stopping to walk on the double bridge, hearing the loud shuffling of a runner’s feet approaching from behind
  9. do I remember any color, or was it all just pale gray and white today?
  10. the low rumble of a LOUD truck driving too fast on the river road

Like yesterday, I don’t remember what I listened to when I wasn’t listening to headphones and my “Bunnies and Rabbits” playlist. Traffic? The shuffling of my own feet? No birds or bells or fragments of conversation from other runners or walkers. A memorable song on my playlist: The Young Rabbits / the Jazz Crusaders

Rabbit Eyes: how they se, what they see

Rabbits have 3 eyelids, 3 tear glands, one tear duct. They rarely blink — only 12 times an hour — and can sleep with their eyes open which helps keep them safer. How? It

allows their light receptors to remain active. If a predator nears, their brain receives signals faster, enabling a quicker response than if their eyes were closed.

Rabbit Eye: a Complete Guide

To see without actively seeing. Two immediate thoughts: 1. I’m fascinated by passive seeing and how it works in the human brain (especially mine) and 2. how exhausting to sleep with your eyes open! I’d like to learn more about how this works.

How to tell when a rabbit is sleeping? Their nose stops twitching.

Here’s something I have in common with rabbits: they can’t see red and have a lot less cone cells than a normally sighted human. I can see red, but not that often. Also, they rely more on rod cells (and they have more of them than humans) and see better (best?) in low light. Peripheral vision!

rabbit eyes were built to excel in low light situations. Rabbits are usually the most active in the hours around dawn and dusk, when it’s not too bright out but also not pure darkness. This is a time of day when rabbits have the advantage over both predators that are nocturnal and see best in the dark, and predators that are diurnal and see best when there is bright light. 

7 fun facts about rabbit eyes / the bunny lady

Crepuscular!

360 degree view: “the rabbit visual system is designed–not for foraging and locomotion–but to quickly and effectively detect approaching predators from almost any direction. The eyes are placed high and to the sides of the skull, allowing the rabbit to see nearly 360 degrees, as well as far above her head” (What Do Rabbits See?)

Rabbits have a blind spot in front of their face.1 Like me! I wonder how the sizes of our blind spots compare? “The central blind spot in the rabbit’s field of view precludes a three-dimensional view of nearby objects. When your bunny cocks her head and seems to be looking at you “sideways,” she is actually looking as straight at you as is possible for a bunny” (What Do Rabbits See?). Sideways! Periphery! Me too. To really see something straight on, like where eyes are on a face, I need to look off to the side, at a shoulder. Sometimes when I watch tv, I look off to the edge of the screen to see what’s happening in the center.

And this!: “The image formed by the area centralis is relatively “grainy” compared to the one formed by your (normally sighted human with all cone cells intact) fovea, but it serves the rabbit well. Using this image, your voice, body movements and scent as cues, your rabbit can recognize you (his favorite human)–as long as you’re not carrying a scary box that completely changes your familiar shape!” (What Do Rabbits See?). Yes! Sometimes, like when I’m in a store and have separated from whoever I’m with, I use a combination of voice, body movement, overall silhouette, known distinctive features — like glasses or haircut or unusual dress — to identify them. My sense of smell is not good enough to identify by scent, though.

lack of depth perception and parallax motion: “rabbits have evolved in creative ways to overcome this limitation, enhancing their ability to spot predators and make a quick escape. Rabbits employ a method known as “parallaxing”, moving their heads back and forth to gauge the distance and size of distant objects” (Rabbit Eye: A Complete Guide). Sometimes I have trouble with depth perception. Could I use parallaxing to help me navigate better? I googled, “Can visually impaired humans use parallax motion to detect depth.” Yes! I should practice this parallaxing when I’m out running above the gorge! I found this answer on a Reddit thread that was started with this question, if we need both eyes in order to see depth (depth perception), why is it also possible to see said depth when you close one eye? What a useful thread about how our brains fill in gaps and determine depth based on patterns and a library of known depths. And even better than this thread, here’s an article about a scientific study that was designed to explore and answer the question, “Can people with different forms of low vision use motion parallax to improve depth judgments?” The answer? Yes! And many people with low vision use it without realizing. And it should be introduced to people with low vision as a tool early on in their vision loss. And not enough research has been done on it. This study is from 1997. Has more research been done since then? Has it been adapted by low vision educators?

Here’s something I found from Duke Health in 2013. It’s specifically about low vision as having vision only in one eye, but it’s still helpful:

Adults who lose vision in one eye also have more collisions when walking, especially on the side where they lost the vision. That’s where sessions with an orientation and mobility specialist can help.

“The emphasis is on helping people to judge distances by using monocular clues, such as something called motion parallax. If you’ve ever seen a cat moving its head or eyes side to side before it jumps, that’s motion parallax,” Dr. Whitaker said.

Duke Health

Returning to the parallaxing quote: “This behavior is less common in familiar environments (such as their home), as rabbits memorize their surroundings. However, introducing a rabbit to a new home or a new furniture layout often prompts this scanning technique during initial explorations.” Yes! I’ve memorized my surroundings, which has made it easier to navigate both my physical environment and my new reality of living with a lot less vision — inside my familiar world, I am far less aware of a loss. New environments can be scary, unsettling, upsetting. I need to be brave2 and build up skills and explore new environments.

This last sentence, and footnote 2 below, highlights something that I am doing with my poetry/attention/moving practice. Not only am I working on my craft (writing poetry) and increasing my capacity for care and attention and my commitment to where I live and the many creatures I live with, I’m also acquiring tools and learning how to see in new ways. For example, today I’m studying rabbits in a wide range of ways because it’s fascinating and delightful and because how they see shares some similarities with how I see. Like the bat (and echolocation), rabbits offer strategies for seeing with less (or without) central vision.3

hinged skulls/big feet: “When they do smell, see or hear a predator, rabbits have to be able to make quick escapes. To help with this bunnies have very large back feet, and hinged skulls to absorb shock. Their cranial hingeallows rabbits to run at speeds above which the impact of their feet would rattle their brain around” (Rabbits have hinged skulls).

family:  Leporidae / order: lagomorpha / backyard rabbits: eastern cottontail, sylvilagus floridanus

Looking through the wikipedia entry for eastern cottontails, I found this about habitat:

The eastern cottontail is a territorial species that relies on speed and agility to evade predators. When chased, it typically escapes in a zigzag pattern and can reach speeds of up to 18 mph (29 km/h). Cottontails favor habitats where they can feed in the open but quickly retreat to cover when threatened. Preferred environments include forest edges, swamps, brushy thickets, hedgerows, and open fields with nearby shelter. Instead of digging burrows, eastern cottontails rest in a form—a shallow, scratched-out depression in grass or beneath dense vegetation. . . .

The rabbit eye in A Young Hare

There was a moment in the year 1502, so the story goes, that the eye of a dead rabbit reflected the real window of Albrecht Dürer, who, with his watercolors and genius and passion for detail, painted that eye with the window in it. It then became art, and, then, art again: the painted eye with the painted window in Diane Seuss’s “Young Hare” that connects the artist to the poem’s speaker. “Why does the window feel so intimate in the hare’s unreadable eye?” the speaker asks, and the answer is that the window in the eye represents a straddling between worlds, between then and now, between artist and viewer, between life and art.

Diane Seuss

I’ve tried looking at the painting online and my eyes cannot offer enough detail to see the hare’s eye and the window in it. I have read Diane Seuss’ poem about it, The Young Hare, and believe I don’t need to see the eye myself to understand its significance or its beauty.

The Young Hare / Diane Seuss

Oh my love, Albrecht Dürer, your hare

is not a spectacle, it is not an exploding hare,

it is not a projection of the young hare

within you, the gentleness in you, or a disassembled hare,

nor a subliminal or concealed hare,

nor is it the imagination as hare

nor the soul as a long-eared, soft-eared hare,

Dürer, you painted this hare,

some say you killed a field hare

and brought it into your studio, or bagged a live hare

and caged it so you could look hard at a wild hare

without it running off into thorn bushes as hares

will do, and you sketched the hare

and laid down a watercolor wash over the hare

and then meticulously painted-in all the browns of hare,

toast brown, tawny, dim, pipe-tobacco brown of hare,

olive, fawn, topaz, bone brown until the hare

became dimensional under your hand, the thick hare

fur, the mottled shag, the nobility of the nose, the hare

toenails, black and sharp and curved, and the dense hare

ears, pod-shaped, articulated, substantial, erect, hare

whiskers and eyebrows, their wiry grace, the ruff of hare

neck fur, the multi-directional fur over the thick hare

haunches, and did I say the dark inside the hare

ears, how I want to follow the darkness of the hare

and stroke the dark within its ears, to feel the hare

ears with my fingers, and the white tuft, the hare

anomaly you painted on its side, and the fleshy hare

cheeks, how I want to squeeze them, and the hare

reticence, how I want to explore it, and the downturned hare

eye, it will not acknowledge or appease, the black-brown hare

eye in which you painted the reflection of a window in the hare

pupil, maybe your studio window, in the hare’s

eye, why does that window feel so intimate in the hare’s

unreadable eye, why do I press my face to the window to see the hare

as you see it, raising your chin to look and then back to the hare

on the page, the thin hair of your brush and your own hair

waving gold down your back, hair I see as you see the hare.

In the hare’s eye you see me there, my swaying black hair.

Oh, I love this poem and how it allows me to reflect on what it means to study/explore/be inspired by something and someone.4 And what wonderful work she does with her linking of hare with the hair of the paint brush, the hair of the artist, the hair of the person viewing the painting/writing and reading? the poem!5

  1. They also have a blind spot in the center of the back of their head, preventing full 360 degree vision. ↩︎
  2. I don’t usually like the use of the word brave to describe how I’m navigating new ways of seeing — as in, someone responding to hearing that I’ve lost vision with, you’re so brave! As if just continuing to exist with such a diagnosis, which they really imagine as a death sentence, is being brave. But seeking out unfamiliar situations that frighten/unsettle me in order to get better at navigating because I want a fuller life is me being brave. ↩︎
  3. Additionally, the language used to describe how low light animals see/navigate can be helpful in understanding and communicating to others the strange ways I see. Maybe I can borrow that language as I try to describe how I see? ↩︎
  4. Taking this discussion back to its origins a week ago, I’m returning to the muse. I don’t see the rabbit as my muse, but as both a gate — an opening — and a teacher. ↩︎
  5. Reading this poem is making me want to read Seuss’ “Two Dead Peacocks” collection again, and more closely, as part of my ekphrastic project. I just ordered it from Moon Palace Books! ↩︎

Get Out Ice

As a reminder of some of the ways Minnesotans have resisted ICE this winter, Racket offered this list:

Fifty-thousand people thronging the streets of downtown Minneapolis in subzero temperatures to protest ICE’s presence in the Twin Cities. Thousands more pedaling their bikes through south Minneapolis, many in “peaceful observer, don’t shoot” vests, to honor a cyclist killed by state violence. Massive papier-mâché puppets presiding over rallies and memorials as brass bands play songs of liberation, and luminaries on frozen lakes spelling out messages like “ABOLISH ICE” and “ICE OUT 4 GOOD.” 

Anti-ICE Ice Fishing, Subzero Marches, and Art Sled Activism: A Winter of Protest in the Twin Cities

The rest of the article describe the bike ride, sponsored by Angry Catfish, in honor/memory of Alex Pretti.

feb 25/RUNGETOUTICE

2 miles
river road, north/lena smith, south
22 degrees

Sunny, cold, shadowed. Most distinctive shadow: the ball-like one, made by the light of the street light. It was nice weather for a run. Not too cold, or too warm, clear trails. Unfortunately, I struggled. Sore legs, unfinished business, and some fatigue. And now I’ll struggle not to worry about what caused the bad run — this worrying about my health is the way my anxiety is expressed. No fun.

Even with my not-so-great run, can I remember 10 things I liked (or loved)?

10 Things

  1. the feel of my feet sliding on the grit as I ran up the lake street hill
  2. the bright orange graffiti under the lake street bridge
  3. the surface of the river, covered in a thin skin of ice, a pale gray
  4. the bright blue and empty sky
  5. the deep footprints on the snow-covered walking path, descending just below the road
  6. feeling strong and relaxed as I ran up the hill from under the bridge
  7. the sheen of the thin glaze of ice on the shaded sidewalk
  8. some puddles on the sidewalk where snow from a yard had melted
  9. looking through a net of bare, slender trunks
  10. chirping birds, all around

For the first part of my run, I listened to the traffic and my feet striking the gritty ground. For the second part of the run and the walk, I put in my new “Bunnies and Rabbits” playlist — see below. I heard these songs today:

  1. Rabbot Ho / Thundercat
  2. Baile InoLVIDABLE / Bad Bunny
  3. Rabbit Fur Coat / Jenny Lewis
  4. Abracadabra / Steve Miller Band
  5. I’m Drivin’ My Life Away / Eddie Rabbit

I’d liked the speed/fast beat of the Bad Bunny song, the storytelling in “Rabbit Fur Coat,” the 80s kid nostalgia of Abracadabra, and the little North Carolina Sara nostalgia of Eddie Rabbit (from June 1980, when I was 6). Jenny Lewis’ story about her poor (both, no money and tragic figure) mom made me think of Diane Seuss and her use of a rabbit motif — see below and this diane seuss and rabbits.

Rabbits, Rabbits, Everywhere — written earlier today

As is usually the case when I give attention to something I haven’t given much attention to before, that something is suddenly everywhere, or not everywhere, but the instances of it seem to grow exponentially (you might say, they breed like rabbits). The rabbit/bunny/hare floodgate has been opened! This morning, I’m finding so many rabbit references!

And what’s the point of all of this? Following the rabbit down the rabbit hole is a wonderful distraction. It is also an excellent opportunity to learn. And to learn more about rabbits, which leads to caring about them as living things and as symbols. This caring might (is) enabling me to open up a closed part of myself (closed = strong dislike of rabbits). And it is helping me to think more broadly and specifically about the impacts of humans and human encroachment on environments and the consequences of that encroachment for humans and non-humans. Plus, all (or any) of it could inspire new poems.

Here are a few rabbit-related things:

1

The killer rabbit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I should rewatch this movie because I remember the rabbit in the cave (or is it a bunny) at the end, but not that clearly. Is the joke that rabbits/bunnies are soft and cute and frail and couldn’t possibly be vicious killers?

2

Bunny Lebowski in The Big Lebowski. It’s been long enough since I’ve seen this film that I all I can remember is that she is the young wife of the Big Lebowski, who is kidnapped and is a catalyst for much of the action. Is that right? I could look it up, but I’d rather use this lack of remembering as a reason to watch the movie again.

3

Rabbit in Red matchbox from Halloween. Near the beginning of the movie, the nurse who has accompanied Dr. Loomis to pick up Michael Myers from the mental hospital and bring him to his parole hearing lights a cigarette using a match from this matchbook just before Micheal Myers attacks them and escapes in their car. Later that same matchbook appears in the grass near the dead body of a mechanic. A clue! Michael Myers must have been here! And now he’s going home to finish what he started!

4

Harvey, a Jimmy Stewart movie from 1950 in which Stewart befriends a 6 foot tall invisible rabbit. I have never seen it, but when I was younger, after having watched Rear Window, I developed a bit of a crush on Jimmy Stewart. Maybe that’s why I thought of this? I looked to see if it was streaming anywhere or available from the library. Nope.

5

Max and Ruby, Ruby and Max. A cartoon with baby brother/big sister bunnies. My kids watched this when they were young, thanks to hand-me-down dvds from my sister whose kids watched it when they were young. When and where did it air? What I remember most about this show was that the adults were almost non-existent and Ruby was the suffering big sister who rarely got to have any fun because she had to mother clueless Max. The gendering in this one — wow!

6

The documentary from PBS, The Pill. When I taught a class about debated issues within feminism, we usually started with a section on Reproductive Justice. Instead of focusing on abortion, we looked more broadly at women’s reproductive health and their access to care and control over their own bodies. I often screened this documentary and I recall a section with rabbits in a lab that also included the story of how they experimented on women in Puerto Rico. I can’t easily stream this again, so I’m relying on my memory and the transcript. The section is called, “A Cage of Ovulating Females.” Here’s the mention of the rabbits:

Margaret Marsh, Historian: Gregory Pincus wasn’t a physician, he was a scientist. And so he could give the pill to as many rabbits as he wanted to. Rabbits everywhere could take this pill. But he couldn’t give the pill to women. He wasn’t a doctor. He couldn’t run a clinical trial on human beings.

The Pill

And here’s one bit about Puerto Rico:

Getting the pill to market would require approval from the Food & Drug Administration, and that would entail a large-scale human trial. In exasperation, Katharine McCormick, asked, “Where can we find a cage of ovulating females?”

Puerto Rico had a network of birth control clinics and no Comstock laws. Pincus called it “the perfect laboratory.”

The Pill

The experiments on Puerto Rican women were considered a success, but some of the women suffered terrible side effects: headaches, nausea, dizziness, vomiting.

7

Rabbit from Winnie-the-Pooh — Winnie-the-Pooh’s neighbor who sometimes wishes he wasn’t — there’s a real Dennis the Menace vibe happening here, with Pooh as Dennis, Rabbit as the menaced neighbor. Yesterday I read about how Lewis Carrol intended the White Rabbit to be a sharp contrast to Alice:

For her ‘youth’, ‘audacity’, ‘vigour’, and ‘swift directness of purpose’, read ‘elderly’, ‘timid’, ‘feeble’, and ‘nervously shilly-shallying’, and you will get something of what I meant him to be. I think the White Rabbit should wear spectacles. I’m sure his voice should quaver, and his knees quiver and his whole air suggest a total inability to say ‘Boo’ to a goose!”

The White Rabbit in Fandom

I see a similar contrast between Pooh (as Alice) and the Rabbit (as White Rabbit):

8

Cadbury Creme Egg Bunny. Growing up, I LOVED these eggs. Unlike now, in the 80s and 90s you could only get them around Easter. More than any other, these eggs are my favorite childhood candy. Do they hold up? Not really. I remember the commercial with the bunny that sounds like a chicken:

the 1983 commercial with copy read by the Smuckers guy!

9

9

Diane Seuss and rabbits. Yesterday I remembered a line from a favorite Diane Seuss poem, I Look Up at my Book and out at the World Through Reading Glasses:

The load of pinecones at the top,
a brown smudge which could be anything: a wreath
of moths, a rabbit strung up
like a flag.

She’s referencing some famous still life painting with the rabbit, I think — this is in her collection all about still life paintings, Still LIfe with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl. I looked up “Diane Seuss and rabbits” and found two other poems by her with rabbits in them!1

excerpt from backyard song / Diane Seuss

Uncorked, I had a thought: I
want the want
I dreamed of wanting once, a
quarter cup of sneak-peek
at what prowls in the back, at
what sings in the
wet rag space behind the garage, back
where the rabbits nest

Her first poem had a rabbit/ Diane Seuss

in it. Life
story at age fourteen sifted
through a rabbit.

It had a tattoo on a hand
in it. And cherries, the kind
that come in a can.

She tended
toward rabbits back then.
Toward the theoretically mild

that are really
wild. Like ducks on a pond
that is really a moon

full of menacing weeds.
The duck gets ready for noon,
she wrote. Yes,

nonsense, I guess.
She embroidered a poem
on a foam

pillow with a felt pen.
Pinned an actual
cherry on it back then

life story sifted through a rabbit — drawing upon this poem and a few others, AI suggests that Seuss frequently uses the motif of rabbit to explore themes of wildness, vulnerability, and the grotesque. In the summary, it (AI) misnames the poem “Basket,” which is the name of the journal, not this poem.

theoretically mild, really wild

Ducks on a pond, right next to the rabbit? That has to be reference to the optical illusion — do you see a duck or a rabbit? — right?

11

The Runaway Bunny — This was one of my favorite books as a kid. At first, I wondered why I thought that, then I found the book and opened it and saw why:

book inscription: To little Sara on Easter 1978 -- from Mommy and Daddy
my copy from 1978

added, 28 feb 2026: I was never a big Velveteen Rabbit fan, but there is another bunny book I loved as a kid, Pat the Bunny.

11

Looney Tunes: I want hasenpfeffer! I am almost certain that when I watched this cartoon as a kid, this was the first time I had heard of hasenpfeffer or imagined that rabbit was something you could eat. I still never have, but whenever I hear the word hasenpfeffer I think of this cartoon.

Hasenpfeffer

From a comment: “The King wants Hasenpfeffer which is traditional Dutch and German stew made from marinated rabbit or hare, cut into stewing-meat sized pieces and braised with onions and a marinade made from wine and vinegar.”

What to do with all of this rabbit-holing? I want to orbit around all, or at least many, of these ideas. Bring them into poems. Write a series of small poems about rabbits and bunnies and hares. As I was writing this last line, another bunny zapped into my head — The Runaway Bunny! I’ll add it above. What form should these rabbit poems take? Could this be an inspiration — Seven American Centuries? Whatever the form, I like the idea of returning repeatedly to century bunny/rabbit themes, and telling a story across the poems, not in one poem.

  1. Yesterday I realized I could easily do footnotes and I’m here for it! Googling “Diane Seuss and rabbits” the AI explanation seemed useful and it was, but also a bit suspect. When I clicked on the links offered at the end of the AI summary and read the source, it often wasn’t saying what AI claims it saying. AI takes some liberties, I think. ↩︎

a Rabbit/Bunny/Hare playlist

When Scott reminded me of Thundercat’s song “Rabbot Ho,” I knew I needed to make a playlist for this recent preoccupation!

  1. Rabbot Ho / Thundercat
  2. Baile InoLVIDABLE / Bad Bunny
  3. Rabbit Fur Coat / Jenny Lewis
  4. Abracadabra / Steve Miller Band
  5. I’m Drivin’ My Life Away / Eddie Rabbit
  6. The Young Rabbits / The Jazz Crusaders
  7. Let’s Pretend We’re Bunny Rabbits / Magnetic Fields
  8. Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up) / Florence + the Machine
  9. Rabbit Fighter / T. Rex
  10. Jack Rabbit / Elton John
  11. Here Comes Peter Cottontail / Gene Autry
  12. White Rabbit / Jefferson Airplane
  13. White Rabbit / George Benson
  14. Rabbit Will Run / Iron & Wine
  15. Breathe (in the Air) / Pink Floyd
  16. Pink Rabbits / The National
  17. Mycomatosis / Radiohead
  18. Alice / Peggy
  19. Mad as Rabbits / Panic at the Disco
  20. Bunny is a Rider / Caroline Polachek

feb 24/RUNGETOUTICE

4.3 miles
minnehaha falls
35 degrees
25% puddles

Sitting at my desk in the morning, I heard some noise — rustling, I think? — just outside the window. Freezing rain or snow — graupels. Then it started snowing, not too hard, but enough to cover everything. No! I wanted to run today. Luckily, it warmed up and by the time I was ready to run, everything had melted.

10 Things

  1. a police car parked parallel to the road in the first falls parking lot
  2. aside from the police car, the lots were empty
  3. a lime scooter leaning against a bench
  4. one guy standing at the bridge overlooking the falls, with an orange hat or an orange something else (I couldn’t see)
  5. voices below on the other side of the wall, down in the falls
  6. no one else in the park
  7. big puddles everywhere — my one foot was soaked only 5 minutes into the run
  8. kids yelling and laughing on the playground
  9. the river was covered with ice and snow with one sliver of open water
  10. a walker approaching me, walking 3 tiny dogs — this made me smile

The run was mostly great. At times, my legs felt heavy (or, at least, heavier than they usually do) and I stopped to talk a few extra times. Were they sore or my lack of ferritin or some other ailment? The second half felt easier.

bunnies — nudge? muse? pest? ghost?

note: I started writing this section yesterday and have spent over four hours this morning wandering through the spaces it created . There’s a lot of movement in it — traveling from thought to thought to thought, here to here to here. Future Sara, and anyone else reading this, you might get lost.

So far I’ve written two bunny poems without really trying to. I’m starting to believe they want me to write about them. This very idea suddenly appeared in my third poem. I started writing about the moment when I first noticed the bunnies in the backyard at night and realized they had probably always been there. Then I wrote in my Plague Notebook 27: I didn’t choose to notice them as much as they decided to be noticed. And I thought: muse! Could this poem be about bunnies in the backyard and about bunnies as the thing that has decided it’s time for me to write, and write about them? For years now, I’ve disliked bunnies, and never imagined writing about them. But now here I am, writing about them, and I fear that I might learn to like bunnies.

All of this has me wondering, what is a/my muse? I’m familiar with the term, but have never seriously studied it, either as a concept or through examples of it in the popular imagination. Do I want to now? Is it necessary for my poem? Maybe instead of devoting a month to it — although that could be fun! — I’ll give it a day or two?

Muse/ Linda Pastan

No angel speaks to me.
And though the wind
plucks the dry leaves
as if they were so many notes
of music, I can hear no words.

Still, I listen. I search
the feathery shapes of clouds
hoping to find the curve of a wing,
and sometimes, when the static
of the world clears just for a moment

a small voice commes through,
chastening. Music
is its own language, it says.
Along the indifferent corridors
of space, angels could be hiding.

If the bunnies are my muse, I didn’t seek them out. I looked out the window one winter night and saw them on the lawn, not knowing what they were. Did they seek me out, or are they indifferent to me? Did they reveal themselves, or did I just happen to notice them one day? I think I do less trying to find a muse, more trying to create the conditions where it could be possible. I noticed the bunnies because I was doing a month-long practice I called the purple hour. It involved using the time when I woke up in the middle of the night, unable to sleep, to notice purple and write about it. One night, I was studying the different purples in the backyard and there they were, the bunnies. And maybe it’s more than creating the conditions where it’s possible; it’s also about being open to what could be a muse, letting it in.

Muse — to be occupied by, possessed, taken over, haunted, held captive, in the thrall of?

This idea of captivity reminded me of the poem, Captivity/ Siddhartha Menon which I posted on this log on 15 may of this year. In an essay, Menon wrote this about the final line of the poem:

“You are paralyzed.” It suggests the fatal indecision of a rabbit caught in a hunter’s flashlight, and snaps the poem shut” (Siddhartha Menon on Epigraphs).

My rabbit/bunny is back! This sentence is the only mention of a rabbit in a 872 word essay about a poem that features a bird. Where will my bunnies appear next?

Returning to definitions of muse, I googled it, and just past the dictionary entry — the nine daughters of Zeus, a person/personified force who is the inspiration for an artist — in the “People also ask” section was this question: What makes a woman a muse? Here’s the AI generated answer:

A woman becomes a muse through qualities like enigmatic allure, deep connection, and embodying creative energy, acting as a profound source of inspiration for an artist, often sharing a unique bond that fuels artistic expression, though not always romantically. Muses can be captivating personalities, friends, lovers, or even strangers who embody traits like wisdom, charisma, or mystery, prompting the artist to create, often embodying a living, breathing work of art themselves, inspiring everything from specific works to an artist’s entire focus. 

Eww. The uneven power dynamics here, between the subject (isn’t it most often a male artist?) and the object (a woman who is not an artist, or is not considered an artist) that inspires them bother me. After images of male artists and their models flashed in my mind, a phrase appeared: Manic Pixie Dream Girl. I recalled encountering a critical feminist essay about this trope back in the day (around 2007 or 2008, when I was teaching pop culture and queer theory at the University of Minnesota). I searched for it. Not an essay, a video from Feminist Frequency. Yes! I remember them. This video holds up. Around 4 and a half minutes in, they link the trope directly with the Muse:

manic pixie dream girl

And now I’m thinking about birds in poetry and how they’re used to do a lot of the heavy lifting of a poem. She’s not the only poet to write about it, but here’s a good example of this idea from Ada Limón:

does this bird want to be in this poem today? Maybe it doesn’t. You know, we always want to turn the animal into something else, right. And sometimes I want to let the animal be. Of course animals are symbols, of course they turn into our metaphors. I mean, that happens. But I also think there are moments when you just think, okay, the birds aren’t going to save me.1

VS Podcast Interview with Ada Limón

All of this makes me wonder: what am I doing as I keep putting the two bunnies in my backyard into my poems? And why do I insistent on calling these wild and mature eastern cottonwood rabbits bunnies? I’m not sure these rabbits are indifferent to me, but I think they notice me in terms of whether or not I am a threat to their main activity: grazing in the grass.

Now I’m remembering an interesting fact I encountered the other day: much of the eastern cottonwood rabbit’s time is spent eating, 6-8 of the day, both during the day and at night!) Okay, I looked it up again and I was right about the 6-8 hours a day, but here’s a delightful detail: primarily during dawn and dusk. Rabbits are crepuscular grazers. Crepuscular (cre PUS cular)?! What a word, and a good title for a poem?!

But, back to if rabbits (I still want to call them bunnies) notice me or not. Is my assumption correct about noticing me in terms of my threat level? Another google:

Wild rabbits are acutely aware of humans, perceiving them primarily as potential predators due to their innate, high-alert survival instincts. They utilize exceptional hearing and a keen sense of smell to detect people, often fleeing immediately to safety. While they may learn to tolerate consistent, non-threatening human presence over time, they generally maintain a healthy fear of people.

Yes! So, here’s something interesting: in the poem I’m working on right now, tentatively titled, Bold as Brass, my backyard bunnies do not care that I’m passing by; they keep grazing. They’re seemingly so indifferent that I’ve started calling out a pre-boomer phrase (and unironically!) to anyone around me: those bunnies are bold as brass! Where’s their healthy fear of humans? Is it that they can tell I am no threat, or are they being impudent? Or, has something screwed up their “normal” behaviors, and could that something be human-caused (like the over-developing of land, the loss of “natural” habitats, the increased need to live in the midst of humans?) Could that be the true heart of this poem?

Possibly, but first, another plunge2 down that rabbit hole! What do “experts” say about my theory of encroaching landscapes? Looked up “rabbits encroaching landscape” and What to do about wild bunnies? appeared. Here’s the subtitle: “Timid wild rabbits may occasionally eat plants in the garden, but usually live unnoticed on the fringes of our yards.” Usually unnoticed and on the fringes? Two favorite themes in my poems! Also included in one of the first paragraphs: edges, in-betweens.3 Back to “usually unnoticed,” here’s another useful bit from the article:

Here today, gone tomorrow is one way to describe rabbits in suburbia. Given the many predators who make meals of rabbits, their populations can rise and fall dramatically over the course of a year.

Come on, now, the pun was set up for you: hare today, gone tomorrow! Anyway, does my recent (for the last year) notice of backyard rabbits, almost every day, count as part of this normal rise and fall of rabbit populations? Or does it indicate something else?

The line about the gardens make me think of two things. First, a memory. My mom loved gardening and was especially proud of her West Des Moines garden (I created a digital story about it a few years ago). I recall the rabbits liked her flowers, especially her roses. On the advice of a neighbor, she sprinkled bone meal around the bush, which didn’t work. Not wanting to kill the rabbit, she managed to catch it — I can’t remember how, maybe with the help of that same neighbor — and drove 10 or 15 miles out of town and into the prairie to release the rabbit.

Second, a few feelings I recall having decades ago when reading the section in Peter Rabbit when Peter Rabbit’s coat gets caught on Mr. McGregor’s fence and he’s trapped and then when he manages (barely, at least how I remember it) to make it home and has to recuperate in bed. The feelings: not fear or relief but an understanding that life was dangerous and serious and an ambiguity as to who was in the wrong — the bold, misbehaving Peter who disobeyed his mother’s orders and stole vegetables, or the hard-working farmer who was planning to kill Peter as punishment. I recall thinking I was supposed to think Peter was in the wrong, but I wasn’t buying it.

What to do with these rabbit wanderings? And where has my plunge down the rabbit hole led me? It seems fitting to conclude this ramble with the rabbit hole, which is a reference to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and her following of the white rabbit down into Wonderland. Of course, “down the rabbit hole” is also a term used for getting lost on the internet:

“Down the rabbit hole” is an English-language idiom or trope which refers to getting deep into something, or ending up somewhere strange. Lewis Carroll introduced the phrase as the title for chapter one of his 1865 novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, after which the term slowly entered the English vernacular. The term is usually used as a metaphor for distraction.[1] In the 21st century, the term has come to describe a person who gets lost in research or loses track of time while using the internet.

wikipedia

Out-of-control curiosity. Distraction. Losing track of time. Getting lost in strange worlds. These are presented as bad things. Are they? Many of them are embraced within poetry. And they are great tools of refusal and resistance against late-capitalism and wannabe fascist governments — you’re not working for/perpetuating the system while you’re following the rabbit hole.

Does that work when the getting lost is online, where the rabbit hole is designed to be the way curiosity is monetized: the more levels of the rabbit hole you enter, the longer you stay lost in all of the information offered, the more attention you give to a site and its advertisers.

I started this ramble yesterday after realizing my third bunny poem might be about the muse. That realization was partly inspired by a recent rereading of an excerpt from Tommy Pico’s poem, “IRL.” Somehow I’ve made it back to that beginning. Here’s the last section of that excerpt:

All I need is my phone.
Subway, elevator, drifting off
in a convo—no one really seems
to notice, occupied by their own
gleaming pod of longing.
I am the captain of my shit,
possessed by the spirit
of Instagram I am omnipotent
on Twitter on Blurb on Vine
Soap boxes on the street corner
of my mind Clear, boosted, boundless
something come stop the shaking
A sun to fly towards iMean
something to do: mimicry
of purpose. The injury
of hunger is: death. The word
of the day is: Gloze.
To explain away.
Glowing gauze glozes the
etc. Weather.com says
Stay inside forever, or
drop dead. We’ve ads
for you to click. You n me?
It’s going to take soooo long
for us to know each other
ten years.

I don’t understand all that is happening in this excerpt, but the more I read it, the more doors it opens for me and my thinking about the internet, IRL, and the Muse.4

  1. “the birds aren’t going to save me” — I suppose my initial turn to the bunnies was with that expectation, where saving = giving me something else to think about other than ICE and Occupation Minneapolis and fascism and my high blood pressure and insomnia ↩︎
  2. My choice of plunge is deliberate; it’s a reference to Emily Dickinson’s “I felt a funeral in my Brain” — And then a Plank in Reason, broke,/And I dropped down, and down,/ And hit a World, with every plunge,/And Finished knowing – then – ↩︎
  3. Something else included: “rabbits will excrete, eat and re-digest their own droppings to obtain the maximum amount of nutrients.” I wonder if that’s part of what the rabbits in my yard are doing when they spend so much time stock-still in the snow. ↩︎
  4. One last thing about the Muse that I want to mention for a future discussion. What if the bunnies/rabbits are not a muse, or a catalyst for action (which was said of the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland), but a gate? As in, Marie Howe opening in “The Gate”: I had no idea that the gate I would step through / to finally enter this world / would be the space my brother’s body made ↩︎

feb 22/RUNGETOUTICE

3 miles
river road, north/lena smith hill x 3
15 degrees / feels like -2
wind: 24 mph gusts
100% clear path

A late afternoon run. It was cold but I had on (almost) all of the layers — 2 pairs of running tights, 2 base layer shirts, 1 hooded pull-over, a jacket, a buff, a cap with ear flaps, 2 pairs of gloves — so I was very warm. Only now, back inside at my desk, can I feel how the cold burned my face. I saw a few walkers, but I think I was the only runner. The river was open, the paths were clear, the sky was a grayish white.

overheard: 2 men walking a dog, heading north — when can we get out of this wind?!

Yes, the wind was rough. I don’t recall it stirring up anything, just howling, and feeling cold. 3 miles was enough for me today.

thank you past Sara!

Performing my morning ritual — my “On This Day” practice in which I read past entries from this day — I reread 22 feb 2024 and my lengthy discussion of pain. Such a gift today when I seem to be having an almost 2 month long argument with my body. I hesitate to call it pain, although I am in some discomfort. It started with a mild but persistent “cold” (never tested it, so I’m not sure what it was) that lasted more than 2 weeks. Then the discovery of high blood pressure at an annual check-up, which I’m monitoring for the next month (doctor’s orders), and that is sometimes normal, sometimes not, and is leaving me unsettled by its refusal to be one or the other. Combine that with the return of anxiety, a stretch of particularly bad restless legs and insomnia, and the acceleration of fascism in the US. Fascism aside, none of these are that big of a deal, and maybe that’s part of the problem. If they were actually a big deal, I would learn how to accept and accommodate them. Instead they linger as uncertainties, specters of worry, causing a rift between me (who is the me here?) and my body. (This litany of minor complaints is offered as gift to future Sara who most likely won’t read them as complaints, but as the documenting and archiving of what it felt like to be living in this strange and terrible and hopeful time.)

I’m not sure when I created the hashtag, body in pain, but I should do more with it — maybe create a page? And maybe I can do a little more with the 2024 entry and this — 18 august 2017.

Get Out Ice

Fight
Unlawful
Conduct
Keep
Individuals and
Communities
Empowered Act

Democratic lawmakers in New Jersey have sent a blunt message to Immigration and Customs Enforcement with the introduction of a new bill.

The “Fight Unlawful Conduct and Keep Individuals and Communities Empowered Act” – or F*** ICE Act – was introduced Thursday in the State Assembly. It aims to extend residents’ rights under state law to sue federal immigration officials for unconstitutional conduct. 

“There have to be real consequences if ICE breaks the law,” said Katie Brennan, an Assembly Democrat who is co-sponsoring the bill alongside former Hoboken mayor Ravi Bhalla, also a Democrat, according to The New York Times.

The Independent

Many of the articles about this FUCKICE Act described it as vulgar in the headline, which reminds me of a great quote from an article in MPR recently about mocking ICE and the Dildo Distribution Delegation:

“When people come out and say, ‘Well that was really vile or vulgar or distasteful,’ it sets up the question: isn’t it more distasteful and violent and vulgar to shoot people in the back of the head when they’re at a protest or to kill the citizens of Minneapolis?” Winchester said.

misheard

Read a poem last night, or was it early this morning?, by Kelli Russell Agodon that connects with my interest yesterday in sense misperceptions, and reminds me of something I wrote about on a log entry from 26 jan 2025: the 10 muses of poetry, including: Mishearing, Misunderstanding, Mistranslating, Mismanaging, Mislaying, and Misreading. The poem: “Coming Up Next: How Killer Blue Irises Spread —Misheard health report on NPR” And here’s something else from that 26 jan 2025 entry to put with all of this:

A second key might be “eavesdropping.” As it happens I have deficient eyesight and hearing, not enough to impair my regular function but enough that I can, as my colleague Karla Kelsey puts it, “squint,” either with the eye or the ear, without difficulty. Some of my best lines—especially the generative lines, the bits of poetic grist from which poems develop—come from phrases I’ve misheard in conversation or (at least initially) misread as text. I guess you could say I “own” such material—I make a lyric and creative claim to it—by mishearing or misreading it.

An Inheritance Reassembled

I bought a collection by Waldrep after discovering this intervew, and a few of his poems. Maybe it’s time to read it!

feb 21/RUNGETOUTICE

4.25 miles
minnehaha falls and back
18 degrees / feels like 6

After a week of warmth, winter is back and this time the paths are clear! Hooray! It is (almost) never the cold but the uneven trails that bother me in January and February (and March and often April). I felt good as I ran south and even better as I ran back north. As I ran, I thought about how I was wearing my dead mother-in-law’s purple jacket and my dead mother’s teal cap with the tassels. I liked feeling as if they were both there with me. I also thought about #2 (see below) and what it means to be good at something. I imagined it not as something you are, I am good at x or y or z, but as a moment you experience or as a means to a deeper end: to feel free or satisfied or joyful — because I can run well, I am able to float on the trail and devote more attention to this place or to travel farther on this trail or enter the flow state and feel closer to the earth, the air, the water.

10 Things

  1. a flash or a slash or a blur of bright red below me — with a second glance I saw that it was a person with a red coat walking on the winchell trail
  2. a BRIGHT dot and a thought whispered in my head — yellow — an instant later recognition, a crosswalk sign
  3. thump thump thump the deep bass of a song exploding out of a car
  4. another car, more music — a song that I could almost but not quite hear — I strained my ears to identify any lyrics or a melody, but couldn’t
  5. the faint echo of the train bells near the falls
  6. the falls were still gushing from behind the ice columns, the dark water of the creek was rushing
  7. a group of people standing at the wall, looking down at the falls — they were laughing and cheering as they threw something below — I think they were snowballs
  8. the river was completely open and was mostly a deep brownish blueish dark gray — it stretched wide and far and looked more like a wall than water
  9. my feet slid (but didn’t slip) on the grit on the trail
  10. the paths held a range of people — single walkers, walkers with dogs, running pairs, running trios, adults and kids walking single-file — but the benches held nothing — they were empty

some things to remember

1

For almost a year now, I’ve been jumping from project to project. In the spring, it was color, then in the summer it was water and inklings, in the fall my book manuscript on echolocation and the gorge, and this winter it has been love. So many projects! And I have more big ideas that have been simmering for years and waiting for the light of my attention. But, I also like wandering without a clear purpose or goal. I like devoting a month to a random topic, like shadows or windows or wind, making a playlist for it, exploring new things that I haven’t encountered before. It’s difficult to balance a desire to wander and experiment with the need to turn it into something.

And right now, the need to turn it into something is winning. Even as I write this, I’m thinking of another project which would be part of a larger manuscript on how I see. So far, I have written about how I am seeing color (inner and outer color), how I navigate, looking at the world as if through water (inklings), now it’s time for another section/chapbook of this — thoughts? Optical illusions or hallucinations or mistaken identities? I’m imagining this might include examples from my log of seeing something in a very WRONG way — like disembodied legs walking toward me on the trail.

My starting point could be to gather: examples from past entries; lines from poems that speak to/of the beauty and the danger of these illusions; some research on illusions by scientists and psychologists; excerpts from essays by G. Kleege and Naomi Cohn; examples in art — like Monet and Magritte. Along the way, I want to turn this work of gathering into a resource page for others.

2

In my post from 21 feb 2017, I posed the question, what does it mean to be good at running? What does it mean to be good at something? And now I’m wondering, what does it TAKE to be good at something? The word excellence echoes in my head as I think about my studying of Aristotle and the figure skating in the 2026 winter Olympics. Two different models: Ilia Malinin (the quad god) and Alysa Liu. And I’m also thinking about the idea of needing to suffer for your art and where joy fits into your practice. And, another question — is the goal always to be good, to excel, to master?

3

A book to buy, or to check out of the library: Against Breaking — the power of poetry / Ada Limón

4

A mural to find:

a storm drain mural for water quality, designed and painted by local artist Precious, shows a sunset over a cityscape in vibrant colors. You can see it at the Mississippi River Gorge scenic overlook along Mississippi River Boulevard in Highland Park.

FMR

5

a poem to read again and to place beside my restlessness, my desire for movement, and my desire to find new ways to understand stillness:

The Art of Silence / Christine Anderson

a Buddhist monk taught me to sit silently
be the moon floating over my back field
a buttercup cradled in a clump of spring grass
sit hushed
as the broad shoulders of granite mountains
in their shawl of clouds—
sit despite
an unquiet morning
that buzzes and twitters and zips
sit to be a dewdrop
in the garden
a perfect pearl of daybreak—
a Buddha
sitting.

Get Out Ice

Found a substack list of LOTS of anti-ICE stuff happening around the cities. This one seemed particularly fitting:

We want ICE OUT!!! Of our city, our state, our community, and for one night only, out of our margaritas.

Celebrate National Margarita Day this Sunday 2/22 at Hai Hai with NO ICE margaritas to support our restaurant community. ICE doesn’t belong here anymore and we are pulling frozen water out of our favorite cocktail to prove it. A portion of each No Ice Marg sold will be donated to @thesaltcurefund for restaurants in need. If and when ICE leaves, restaurants will have a long way to go to recover from the impact their occupation has had on our community, join us for a drink and some laughter and help us take one step forward towards recovery.

Hai Hai Instagram post

feb 17/RUNGETOUTICE

4.3 miles
minnehaha park and back
47 degrees
wind: 13 mph / 32 mph gusts

Warm, but windy, which made it feel colder, but only sometimes. The rest of the time it felt warm. Warm enough for bare arms. My left knee was a bit stiff and sore. Maybe I should take a break from running tomorrow.

overheard as I ran near Minnehaha Academy: a whistle blowing, then an adult voice — Okay fourth graders! I guess recess is over.

10 Things

  1. at least 2 runners were wearing shorts
  2. all of the walkers were bundled up in coats and hats and long pants
  3. open water!? I think the ice has fully cracked on the surface of the river, but it could just be much thinner in parts. Looking down at it, there were blobs of white, with larger stretches of pale grayish, blueish, greenish
  4. the falls were gushing behind thick ice columns
  5. voices below — an adult with several kids — were they hiking behind the falls?
  6. a police vehicle parked sideways in the parking lot at 44th
  7. the cobblestones near the falls overlook were all ice-free, but not puddle-free! squish squish squish
  8. more of the walking path is clear and open — a few clumps of snow, wet and shiny pavement, grit
  9. an old pick-up truck was parked under the ford bridge, up on the sidewalk across the road from the trail — was it hiding — if so, why and from whom?
  10. the walking half of the double bridge was covered in slushy snow, the bike half was mostly clear with a deep puddle in the middle

I decided that I would listen to music for the second half of my run. Because it was windy, I put on my “It’s Windy” playlist. The first song: Sailing / Christopher Cross The last song was the sound of birds chirping. Huh? Oh — checked the title of the track: “Breeze (forest)”

Get Out Ice

When FWA got home from his errand this morning, he told me that all of the Stop signs in the neighborhood have a stenciled “ICE” under the “STOP” in a matching font. Of course I had to check and take a picture!

STOP ICE

I’m not sure how long these signs have been this way. I hadn’t noticed, but I don’t drive, so I rarely see the stop signs. I wondered how long it took someone/someones to do this? I hope the city leaves them alone.

added, 18 feb 2026: Three notes from Scott. First, as we drove to the library, Scott and I noticed more stop signs with “ICE” and some without. Scott guessed that this stop ice action was probably not that systematic. Second, he also pointed out that it is not a stencil, but a sticker. Would I be able to notice that if I got close enough? I’ll have to take a walk today and check. And third, Scott informed me that these stickers have been on stop signs for several weeks.

Love

I finished my love poems. I decided to call it, We Love, We Love, We Love, We Love. I posted it on instagram, facebook, and as the home page of my author site: sarapuotinen.com

feb 16/RUNGETOUTICE

4.05 miles
river road, north/south
51 degrees
50% sloppy

51 degrees! Another run with bare arms. Lots of puddles, but also lots of dry path. I was able to run on the walking path for long stretches. The surface of the river has cracked — no open water yet, but patches of thinner ice in light gray were scattered all over. A bike passed by blasting music: “Losing my Religion” by REM. I heard some kids’ voices at a playground before I reached the river. Saw/heard an ambulance rumble by on the river road, its LOUD siren freaking out all the nearby dogs. Near the end, recited Alice Oswald’s “A Story of Falling” as I ran — in my head, not out loud. Also near the end, heard the bells of St. Thomas chime twice — it’s 2:00 already? Wow.

I stopped to walk several times, often because I had become trapped on a part of the path that was suddenly blocked by a short wall of snow or a deep puddle. One of the stops was at a bench nearing Franklin that I have delighted in noticing before. It is dedicated to “Margaret Carlson, Dog Lover.” Today I remembered to take a picture of it!

“She cherished her girls; Schnapps, Candy, Maggie, Mitzi and Suzi*”

*yes, it should be a colon, not a semi-colon, but who cares; I’d rather give my attention to the fact that one of her “girls” is named Schnapps, and another, Candy!

I’m not sure if I’ve written this yet, but I’d like to remember: when I go out running now, I carry a whistle and my passport ID card. And I don’t listen to any music, so I can be better aware of what’s happening around me.

Get Out Ice

I am almost finished with my collection of love poems. Here’s the final poem, which is an erasure of a Facebook statement by Carbone’s Pizzeria on Cedar near Lake Nokomis:

This New Normal / 15 February 2026

This New Normal

We are with you. We love you.
love Always.
We Love
We Love
We Love
We Love
this new normal together,
love

feb 15/RUNGETOUTICE

3.5 miles
locks and dam #1
45 degrees
100% sloppy

It felt warmer than 45, warm enough to take off my pull-over and run the second half in short sleeves. I know winter is coming back next week and that I will enjoy running in the snow some more, but today I liked spring. I ran south on the river road trail, which had more people and more puddles than 2 days ago. Everything was bright — the sky, the silvery reflection on the water’s surface. In fact, writing this 10 minutes later, I’m having trouble seeing the screen because my eyes are still adjusting from how bright it was outside.

I heard the torpedoed call of a cardinal, the dripping of melting snow down the eaves, the whoosh of car wheels on the road. I felt the grit on the path, the warm air on my face, the cold, damp sponge of my sock. Squish squish squish!

Turkeys! As I ran south, I noticed a group of women gathered at the edge of the path, near an entrance to the Winchell Trail. I looked below and saw — or did I hear them first?! — 3 wild turkeys grazing in the grass and making some noise. Excellent!

The water under the ford bridge was still a thick white. Sometimes geese gather down here, but not today. Above, voices drifted down. Was it a bridge brigade: neighbors gathering together with signs and horns to protest ICE?

Get Out Ice

Here’s the beginning section of something Robert Reich posted that’s spreading around Facebook:

This, from one cabinet secretary to another. I could not say this any better:

”The New York Times reports that Department of Homeland Security has sent Google (owner of YouTube), Meta (Facebook and Instagram), and other media corporations subpoenas for the names on accounts that criticize ICE enforcement. The Department wants to identify Americans who oppose what it’s doing.

I’ll save them time.

***

Hello? Kristi Noem?

I hear you’re trying to find the names of people who are making negative comments on social media about ICE enforcement.

Look no further. I’ve done it frequently. I’m still doing it. This note to you, which I’m posting on Substack, is another example… You will find what I’ve said, and you’ll find it’s very critical. I’ve done some videos that are very critical of you and ICE, too.

Let me not mince words: I really truly believe you’re doing a sh*tty job.

Robert Reich

feb 12/RUNGETOUTICE!?!

5.4 miles
bottom for franklin and back
41 degrees
40% puddles

Puddles everywhere. After about a mile, I could hear the squish sound of my wet sock with every foot strike. Who cares? Not me. I’m happy for warmer weather and clearer paths. I wasn’t sure how far I’d run, but I just kept going and made it to the bottom of the franklin hill. First I was going to stop at the trestle, then I wanted to make it a little closer to Franklin. When I reached Franklin, I looked down at the uneven, cracking ice on the river’s surface and decided I needed to run to the flats to get a closer inspection. Very cool — cold (temp) and aesthetic (strange and interesting and other-worldly).

I heard birds, felt warm sun on my face, smelled sewer gas (below, near the rowing club), saw a woman biking in a tank top.

Get Out Ice!?!

The official word, announced this morning by Homan, is that ICE is leaving Minnesota and Operation Metro Surge is over. But, is it over, or just taking more hidden forms? And was this move made primarily to get the budget passed and/or ease the pressure being applied in D.C.? Whatever the case, it does seem to be a failure for the Trump administration and it also seems to be bullshit. They are staying and will continue doing bad (as in unconstitutional, terrible) things here and all around the country.

love

While all that I wrote in the last paragraph seems to be true — and scary and difficult to imagine and endure — something else is true: people are speaking out, resisting, caring for each other, paying attention, reclaiming democracy, organizing together, refusing to be intimidated or overwhelmed by the administration’s tactics. Will this stop ICE or Trump? Maybe not, but whatever happens, the love that has been expressed/practiced in Minneapolis for the past 2 months isn’t going away and too many of us have witnessed what it has cracked open that can’t be fully fixed by the administration. There is another world possible.

feb 9/RUNGETOUTICE

4.5 miles
minnehaha falls and back
39 degrees
40% sloppy (snow/ice/puddles)

Ran in the afternoon, which is when I run most days this winter. It felt much better than yesterday. I think the effects of the second shingles shot are lessening. And I was less worried about blood pressure and heart rate too; both have gone down — not quite to normal numbers, but much closer than a few days ago.

It was sloppy out there! The snow and ice weren’t slippery — thanks Minneapolis Parks Department for sprinkling dirt on the trail! — but they were wet, and there were deep puddles in several spots. I managed to avoid completely soaking my shoes or socks.

Today it is gray and a dingy white — writing that, I’m thinking of a line from a Diane Seuss poem; I’ll find it after I finish this recounting of my run*. Gloomy, humid, wet. I didn’t mind. It felt more like early spring than deep into winter. Right after going outside, I even smelled thawing earth! There were some runners and walkers and bikers on the trail, but no cross country skiers or eliptigos or hoverboards. (Earlier today, when Scott and I were heading back from a meeting, we saw someone speed by on a hoverboard!)

The falls and the creek were frozen and everything was still. No one else around, which was a little unsettling. A few minutes later, heading out of the park, I heard some kids at the playground. Earlier, as I passed the parking lot, I heard the train bells and horn blaring. Was it a normal alert that the train was crossing an intersection, or a different warning?

I don’t recall hearing any birds or seeing any squirrels. No wild turkeys or yipping dogs. No bad music blasting out of a car window. Passing a trash can at 42nd, my nose crinkled as it got a faint smell of poop. My first thought: a diaper, but more likely dog poop. Yuck!

Near the end of my run, I decided to recite — again, out loud! — Alice Oswald’s “The Story of Falling.” It helped distract me, or focus me, or moved my mind somewhere other than how much more I had to run. I think it’s time to return to reciting poems on the trail! Maybe I’ll start with my Emily Dickinson experiment: pick a different ED poem to recite for each mile run.

*Here’s the Diane Seuss poem. It’s so good, and not too long, so I’ll post the whole thing again. I first posted it on 1 june 2024, when I was reading Seuss’ Pultizer Prize winning, Frank.

Legacy/ Diane Seuss

I think of the old pipes, 
how everything white 
in my house is rust-stained, 
and the gray-snouted
raccoon who insists on using
my attic as his pee pad, 
and certain
sadnesses losing their edges, 
their sheen, their fur
chalk-colored, look
at that mound of laundry, 
that pile of pelts peeled away
from the animal, and poems, 
skinned free of poets, 
like the favorite shoes of that dead 
girl now wandering the streets
with someone else’s feet in them.

white as rust-stained, certain sadnesses as dull, soft, and chalk-colored

Get Out Ice

This morning, I watched Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance. Wow! So much love. Such a powerfully layered f–k you to hate! So many beautiful stories of a culture!

Here’s what was written about it on Facebook:

I watched Bad Bunny deliver the most American halftime show I have ever seen. Then I came home and watched it again. And I am not okay. In the best possible way.

He sang every single word in Spanish. Every. Single. Word. He danced through sugarcane fields built on a football field in California while the President of the United States sat somewhere calling it “disgusting.” Lady Gaga came out and did the salsa. Ricky Martin lit up the night. A couple got married on the field. He handed his Grammy, the one he won eight days ago for Album of the Year, to a little boy who looked up at him the way every child looks up when they dare to believe the world has a place for them.

And then this man, this son of a truck driver and a schoolteacher from Vega Baja, Puerto Rico, stood on the biggest stage on the planet and said “God bless America.”And then he started naming them.

Chile. Argentina. Uruguay. Paraguay. Bolivia. Peru. Ecuador. Brazil. Colombia. Venezuela. Panama. Costa Rica. Nicaragua. Honduras. El Salvador. Guatemala. Mexico. Cuba. Dominican Republic. Jamaica. The United States. Canada. And then, his voice breaking with everything he carries, “Mi patria, Puerto Rico. Seguimos aquí.” My homeland, Puerto Rico. We are still here.

The flags came. Every single one of them. Carried across that field by dancers and musicians while the jumbotron lit up with the only words that mattered: “THE ONLY THING MORE POWERFUL THAN HATE IS LOVE.”

I teared up. I’m not ashamed to say it. I sat on my couch and I wept because THAT is the America I believe in. That is the American story, not the sanitized, gated, English-only version that small and frightened people try to sell us. The REAL one. The messy, beautiful, multilingual, multicolored, courageous one. The one that has always been built by hands that speak every language and pray in every tongue and come from every corner of this hemisphere.

That is the America I want Jack and Charlotte to know. That when the moment came, when the whole world was watching, a Puerto Rican kid who grew up to become the most-streamed artist on Earth stood in front of 100 million people, sang in his mother’s language, blessed every nation in the Americas, and spiked a football that read “Together, we are America” into the ground. Not with anger. With joy. With love so big it made hate look exactly as small as it is.

And what did the President do? He called it “absolutely terrible.” He said “nobody understands a word this guy is saying.” He called it “a slap in the face to our Country.” The leader of the free world watched a celebration of love, culture, and everything this hemisphere has given to the world, and all he could see was something foreign. Something threatening. Something disgusting.

Let that sink into your bones.

The man who is supposed to represent all of us looked at the flags of our neighbors, heard the language of 500 million Americans across this hemisphere, and felt attacked. That’s not strength. That’s not patriotism. That is poverty of the soul.

. . .

Bad Bunny didn’t say “ICE out” tonight. He didn’t need to. He just showed the whole world what America looks like when we are not afraid of each other. When culture is shared, not policed. When language is music, not a threat. When a flag from every nation in this hemisphere can walk across a football field together and the only words you need are the ones he gave us:

The only thing more powerful than hate is love.

Michael Garrett — NC Senate

feb 8/RUNGETOUTICE

2.6 miles
river road, south/north
28 degrees
25% ice-covered

A beautiful morning for a run! Sunny, warmer, clearer trails. There was some ice, but most of it had been sprinkled with dirt so it wasn’t slick and dangerous — there’s a metaphor there, right? I was glad to be out on the trail, albeit with some anxiety. Two days ago, at my annual check-up, my blood pressure was in the high zone. High enough to need to monitor it daily for a month to see if I need to go on medication. Some other test results were “abnormal,” too: high cholesterol, high thyroid, low ferritin. Bad test results make me anxious, or is my potentially out-of-whack thyroid? Or maybe it’s just living in a city occupied by ICE for more than 2 months and living under a federal administration that is careening towards full totalitarianism vile evil unhinged extremely dangerous falling apart and is desperate to hold onto power. I’m struggling to find the words to effectively describe this administration. So, yes, I was worried as I ran, wondering if my heart rate should sky-rocket the more I ran. Thankfully it didn’t. The run wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t the big escape I had hoped for, but it did bring me some delight and some beautiful moments to look to when I’m feeling overwhelmed. Can I find 10?

11 Moments of Beauty

  1. the sizzling sound of wind moving through the brittle leaves still remaining on a tree
  2. quiet, then the softest knocking cutting through — a woodpecker somewhere close by?
  3. yes! looking up at a tree, I could actually see the white underwing of a downy woodpecker, it’s tiny head hammering a branch
  4. wide stretches of clear, dry trail
  5. stopping at the Rachel Dow Memorial Bench, looking out at the frozen river, wondering what Rachel would do in this moment, then believing she would be part of this amazing love spreading across the city, the state, the country
  6. a good morning from a passing walker
  7. a feeling of movement below me, then spotting a walker on the Winchell Trail, the remembering running down there, nearer to the river on a warm day
  8. the rhythmic clicking of a passing runner’s snow spikes on the bare pavement — click click click
  9. running over the slick ice and not slipping or sliding because Minneapolis Parks had sprinkled dirt — and not salt — on it recently
  10. speaking — out loud, but softly — the words to Alice Oswald’s “The Story of Falling” that I re-memorized earlier this morning — It is the story of the falling rain/to turn into a leaf and fall again/It is the secret of a summer’s shower/to steal the light and hide it in a flower
  11. (added 9 feb) a woman below, on the winchell trail, calling out, her name is Freya!, and a man responding, you’re a good girl! — just yesterday, Scott, Delia, and I had encountered this friendly woman and her dog near 7 Oaks. She was so friendly and kind that we agreed encountering her had made walking out in the cold, on the icy paths, worth it

Just writing this list, and the words preceding it, have made me feel better, more relaxed!

Get Out Ice

Even if I’ve written this before, I’ll write it again: I am finding that focusing on the fierce love and care that Minneapolis is practicing and de-centering/quieting the endless examples of ICE awfulness is helping me to endure this time. Well, more than endure. The love I am witnessing, and attempting to practice in my own way, is inspiring and making me hopeful about possible futures. It is also restoring my belief in democracy.

Here are 2 examples I shared on Facebook today:

1 — Rebecca Solnit post

One of the nuts things about organizing in the Twin Cities right now is that even the most long term organizers who’ve been here for decades can’t keep keep track of all the resistance that is going on. There are so many self-organizing crews just doing work that in any conversation with someone from another neighborhood you might stumble over a whole collective of people resisting in ways you didn’t think of. There’s a crew of carpenters just going around fixing kicked-in doors. There are tow truck drivers taking cars of detained people away for free. People delivering food to families in hiding. So many local rapid response groups that the number is uncertain but somewhere between 80 and the low hundreds . . . .

Rebecca Solnit on Facebook

2 — @terileigh via Liz May

every restaurant, church, karate dojo, dance studio, school, barber shop, and other small business has created their own underground grassroots supportive network to protect their neighbors, get people to and from work, and raise funds to pay everyday bills.

@terileigh

feb 5/RUNGETOUTICE

4.45 miles
minnehaha falls
33 degrees
60% sloppy and wet

A run outside! Above freezing! Less layers! And I made it all the way to the falls! It was sloppy, but I’ve run through worse. No lakes covering the entire path, only small ponds. I felt stronger running up all the small hills; it must be the hill workouts I’ve started doing. Maybe I should run to the falls and do some loops around the park — I could do the hills there multiple times? It’s strange, but I like running up hills now.

10 Things

  1. birds singing and sounding more like spring
  2. the dull, quiet whine of a power tool off in the distance — a drill on a construction site?
  3. the falls are completely frozen, so is the creek
  4. voices rising up from somewhere down below at the base of the falls
  5. faint traces of brown dirt discoloring the snow, making it less winter wonderland, but also less slick
  6. kids yelling and laughing on a playground — a teacher’s whistle blowing (not a warning about ICE)
  7. empty benches everywhere
  8. a few cars in the park parking lot
  9. another runner behind me, beside me, then in front of me. I delighted in hearing the sibilant sounds of their feet striking the slushy snow
  10. a few seconds of honking above on the ford bridge — someone honking at ICE or another car’s driving or in solidarity with a bridge brigade?

Get Out Ice

Today’s Get Out Ice moment is in honor of my mom, who was a fiber artist until she died in 2009, and my daughter, who is a fiber artist now.

AS OF FEBRUARY 5TH.
WE HAVE REACHED A TOTAL OF
$650,000 IN DONATIONS
Funds last week were donated to STEP St. Louis Park emergency assistance for rent and other aid and the Immigrant Rapid Response Fund.
We are working on donations to other local organizations
– stayed tuned for more info.
We are speechless. We are overwhelmed with the generosity of the fiber community and beyond. This outpouring of love and support is felt around the state.
Because of you, we can help so many people who need it.
Thank you thank you thank you.
Keep knitting. Keep resisting. Keep showing up for your neighbors.
Melt. The. Ice.

Needle & Skein Instagram post

The $650,000 came from people purchasing a $5 pattern for the Melt the Ice Hat:

In the nine years that Gilah Mashaal has owned Needle & Skein, a yarn store in the suburbs of Minneapolis, she has tried to maintain a rule that “nobody talks politics” in the shop. But amid the weeks-long occupation of the Twin Cities by federal immigration paramilitaries, Mashaal and one of her employees decided to turn one of their weekly knit-alongs into a “protest stitch-along”.

They didn’t want to return to the “pussy hats” that symbolized women’s resistance to Donald Trump in 2016, so Paul, their employee, did some research and came back with a proposal: a red knit hat inspired by the topplue or nisselue (woolen caps), worn by Norwegians during the second world war to signify their resistance to the Nazi occupation.

‘Rage Knitting’ against the machine

Love #13, version 2

This morning, I was trying out all different ways to create a poem out of text from a few local businesses. Nothing was quite working; partly because I am fixated on erasures and blackouts and can’t see (literally and figuratively) how to execute this effectively. One way out: Mary Oliver. My whole poem centers on a phrase from a MO poem, “Lead”:

I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never
close again
to the rest of the world.

Here’s my version of those lines, using words from Social media posts:

Here, now, 
on this day,
my heart
breaks, 
and tomorrow
it will stay open
to everything.

Or this variation:

My heart breaks
here, now,
and tomorrow,
it will stay open
to everything.

feb 3/RUNGETOUTICE

4.1 miles
river road, south / lena smith, north / hills
13 degrees

13 degrees sounds cold (I guess), but with the sun and all of my layers, I was too warm. Lots of sweat dripping down my forehead. On the way to the river, the sidewalks were bare, but on the trail, they were covered in slick ice and uneven snow. Bummer. Decided to turn off the trail at 42nd and run north on the Lena Smith Boulevard, and then do some hill repeats. It was wet with wide strips of icy snow. If it hadn’t snowed 2 days ago, the path would have been dry and it would have been a wonderful day for a run to the falls or the flats or the lake.

After a fun day yesterday, getting lost in baking m-n-m cookies for Scott and crafting erasure poems out of local business statements, today felt draining and a bit overwhelming. I’m not anxious, just tired and uncreative, which is not surprising. It’s an exhausting, unrelenting time here in Minneapolis.

One bright spot: I discovered this morning that there’s a new Mary Oliver book out: Little Alleluias! It’s 3 books in one: The Leaf and the Cloud, which I own and have taken notes all over the margins, so a fresh copy will be nice; Long Life, which I have checked out of the library enough to wish I owned it; and What Do We Know, which I haven’t read; plus, a foreword by Natalie Diaz. I bought it online from Moon Palace, and will pick it up in a few hours!

Alice Oswald

Still making my way through the Alice Oswald interview for the Paris Review. Here are today’s lines to remember:

Interviewer: Is swimming important to you?

Alice Oswald: It was probably when I took up gardening that I discovered that being was better than thinking–that actually you don’t have to think things through, you can garden all day and your mind will have been moved by the gardening. And it’s the same when you’re in water. You’re thought through by the water rather than having to think.

 an interview with Alice Oswald

I like the distinction between thinking and being, and the idea that doing something physical, like gardening or swimming, will move your mind. What does it mean to be thought through by the water? I’d like to pose this question before/during/after a swim at the Y — which I hope to do this week — and a swim at the lake — which I won’t get to do for 4 months.

Get Out Ice

1 — caregiving as resistance

Here’s a great article that I want to read more carefully when I have a chance: ‘We have to keep showing up for each other’: In Minnesota, caregiving is a form of resistance Wow, I would have loved to write about this on my TROUBLE blog!

2 — protectors not protesters

But behind the violence in Minneapolis—captured in so many chilling photographs in recent weeks—is a different reality: a meticulous urban choreography of civic protest. You could see traces of it in the identical whistles the protesters used, in their chants, in their tactics, in the way they followed ICE agents but never actually blocked them from detaining people. Thousands of Minnesotans have been trained over the past year as legal observers and have taken part in lengthy role-playing exercises where they rehearse scenes exactly like the one I witnessed. They patrol neighborhoods day and night on foot and stay connected on encrypted apps such as Signal, in networks that were first formed after the 2020 killing of George Floyd.

Welcome to the American Winter

3

Minneapolis Parks invite kids to write love letters to the city. I love Minneapolis Parks!

At parks around Minneapolis, heart-shaped love letters from kids are providing some wholesome relief during an especially grueling winter.

(source)

jan 31/RUNGETOUTICE

4.7 miles
river road, north/south
17 degrees
20% snow-covered

More sun, warmer temperatures. Heard lots of honking and chanting on the lake street bridge — people protesting the occupation, I’m guessing. The river looked like a patchwork quilt with squares of white and gray and brown. Heard more birds, wondered if they were singing or calling out a frantic warning. Saw another “Make Good Trouble” snowman by the trestle. Encountered at least a dozen different walkers or runners or bikers. Tried to wave to everyone.

It is such a strange time — so sad and scary and beautiful. The government is actively trying to destroy democracy and the president is more ghoulish and vile than the villain in an sci-fi movie, and yet, all around Minneapolis people are creating the world they want to live in. Practicing love, believing in dignity and rights and the law, caring for their neighbors.

Get Out Ice

The pubic statements against what is happening here continue to grow. Here’s one from Jessie Diggins, the Olympic gold medalist in cross-country skiing from Afton, Minnesota. She posted it on Facebook this morning:

I want to make sure you know who I’m racing for when I get to the start line at the Olympics. I’m racing for an American people who stand for love, for acceptance, for compassion, honesty and respect for others. I do not stand for hate or violence or discrimination.

I get to decide who I’m racing for every single day, and how I want to live up to my values. For everyone out there caring for others, protecting their neighbors and meeting people with love – every single step is for you. YOU are the ones who make me proud.

29 jan/RUNGETOUTICE

3.5 miles
trestle turn around
7 degrees
40% snow-covered

Another run outside! Yesterday, I ran south, today I ran north. RJP had told me that someone had made a snowman then put a sign on that read, “Make Good Trouble” next to the trestle. Of course I needed to go see and document it!

Make Good Trouble
Shadows and Snowman / Make Good Trouble

I love the shadows of the tree and the snowman and the message of making good trouble. 15 years ago, I would have posted this in my TROUBLE blog. Now, I’ll post it here. Could Sara from 2011 have even imagined we’d be living through the occupation of a fascist government?

It was a nice run. Slow and relaxed. At first, I was alone out there, but soon I encountered some other walkers, 2 runners. The river surface was cracked white, the sky was blue. I started by running through the neighborhood. Running by a house that was being worked on: empty outside. Had they stopped because of the cold, or was it ICE? Then I heard a drill from inside.

A favorite moment: as I neared the trestle, I heard a loud whooshing sound. Difficult for me to see, but I think it was a train traveling across the trestle! That doesn’t happen very often.

Get Out Ice

Lithub is featuring several Minnesota writers in the series, “Letter from Minnesota”. Here are some bits in a letter from the Minneapolis poet Michael Kleber-Diggs:

1

I am aware of a neighbor who will come to your house, take your trash and recycling to the curb, then, after they’re emptied, return and bring them right up to your door or put them back in your garage.

In times like these I write so I won’t forget. So I’ll keep hold of details that might otherwise slip away. I want to keep hold of exactly what it was like back in 2026.

Normalcy is Impossible Here. Normalcy is Violence

I was not aware of this until I read this letter, but I’m not surprised. On my local Signal group, some neighbors reported an ICE vehicle in our alley one day. When I bring out the trash, I make sure my ID/passport is in my pocket. I tell the kids that even though they hate wearing their coats, they must whenever they go out right now because it is possible that they could encounter ICE and be forced out in the cold for a long time. I read about the internal memo giving ICE permission to violate the 4th amendment and break down doors without a warrant; I see the picture of Hmong elder wrongly dragged out of his home in the 20 degree weather in his underwear. I’ve stopped wearing my pajamas in the morning while I drink my coffee; I put on warm clothes right away.

2

History is rhyming, not repeating; 2026 isn’t exactly like 2020. The violence is more specifically designed to advance authoritarianism. It’s conspicuously race-based. It’s more xenophobic; our Somali siblings are really going through it. The government’s violence and hate is intentional. It’s a feature not a bug, and all of it is out in the open.

Within the broader terror campaign, the administration is focused on the most vulnerable. They’re harming the elderly; they’re going after children. They grab up kids in front of other kids at the end of the school day on purpose: theft plus trauma, violence amplified.

Normalcy is Impossible Here. Normalcy is Violence

Talking with neighbors during the candlelight vigil, one of them mentioned how someone was taken at their church. He explained: ICE waits for people to come for food donations, then they grab them before they can make it inside.

Love #10 / 29 january 2026

Our message to all:
Violence & Intimidation
have no place here. 
100% of this space
is reserved for love.

Words taken from the social media statements by the following local businesses: Parkway Pizza / Norseman Distillery / Olio Vintage / Red Balloon Bookstore / Reverie Cafe + Bar

jan 28/RUN

3.5 miles
under ford bridge and back
7 degrees
50% snow-covered

A run outside! Cold, but not even close to some of my coldest runs in past years (I’ve run in a feels like temp of -20). I haven’t run outside much this month, so I forgot how to dress for it. Today, too many layer. Hand warmers and foot warmers and 3 shirts under my jacket.

Hardly anyone else on the river road path. A few walkers, a few bikers, any other runners? I can’t remember, but I don’t think so. Heard some cars honking in the distance. ICE must be nearby.

The river was white and looked cold. The parts of the path that weren’t covered in snow were stained white from salt — was it salt or something else? I know Minneapolis Parks is committed to not putting down salt because it ends up in the river. Most of the walking trail was buried in snow. Only one stretch, just north of 38th had some bare asphalt. I walked on it, then got stuck when it was covered in snow again. The snow looked brittle and made a sharp crack as I stepped on it. Mostly it wasn’t deep, but when it was, it was uneven and awkward to walk through. Empty benches, sharp shadows, blue sky. A strange feeling all around: unsettled.

Alice Oswald Interview, part 3

[on the idea of a Homeric formula] That seemed entirely wrong to me, this habit of draining the meaning out of the poems, of seeing orality as a machinelike way of composing. I was enraged by being given statistics about how many times a certain word or simile is used. To me, it felt clear that it was a more entranced way of composing, thta the poets would get into a kind of intoxicated state where they could incredibly, almost magically, find exactly the right adjective, the right meaning for the right place in the right melody.

 an interview with Alice Oswald

Get Out Ice

1

a fragment from Facebook: Not deescalate but:

abolish
withdraw

prosecute
witness

2

Love #9: After

We are still here.
We are still loving our neighbors, 
still supporting our community, 
still caring about the constitution.

We are staying warm, 
staying strong, 
staying impossible to ignore. 

Read this poem this morning and remembered when my mom died, how a colleague took me out for coffee and told me that grief is a continued connection to the person you lost. I’ve often thought about her words, and I use them to embrace my grief.

Sisyphus / Sharon Lessley

As if weightlessness were aspirational―
what nonsense―

                                  your death,

        a stone 

I can only hope to shoulder forever. Imagine
it gets better―

                                  what nothing

        am I left with

then? Even despair carries a particular
charge: that fantastic

                                  last whiff of lavender

      detergent

imprinted on the collar of a holiday sweater―

                                    mama,

the mourners are assembling. March me 
up that hill …

Your death a stone I can only hope to shoulder forever.

jan 21/RUNGETOUTICE

4.5 miles
minnehaha falls and back
22 degrees / light snow
100% snow-covered

Today I ran outside. I decided that even though it is true I can’t always effectively assess the situation because of my vision, it is also true that it is unlikely I will encounter any incidents beside the river. And it was true, and I was fine. That doesn’t mean ICE isn’t around. Just before I went out running, a black SUV drove down the cross street with 7 or 8 cars following and HONKING their horns.

I also went out because I’m finally, after a week of a low-grade cold, starting to feel better. Hooray! The river was so beautiful — open and covered in snow — and it felt so good to be moving outside. It’s much easier to be running outside by the river, than downstairs in a dark basement.

There were a few people on the trail, mostly walkers, a biker, at least one other runner.

10 Things Heard

  1. kids playing on the Dowling Elementary and Minnehaha Academy playgrounds — screaming, laughing, having fun
  2. the falls barely falling over the ledge because the creek was frozen
  3. sirens
  4. the train bells as the light rail train passed through the station
  5. hammering and pounding coming from the construction site at a house on Lena Smith Boulevard
  6. honking geese
  7. from my favorite viewing spot at the falls: voices below or across the gap
  8. more voices below, somewhere on the winchell trail — some adults and kids
  9. the soft sizzle of snow flakes hitting my jacket
  10. an electric singing as it slowly travelled past on the road

Not too long after I got back from my run, Scott and I went to Costco to stock up on stuff before Friday’s strike of no work / no shop / no school. It was surprisingly normal in the store. Later, on the freeway, driving home, we passed by the Whipple Building and thought about all the people suffering in there right now. From the outside, just a tall building with lots of windows, a place that I have never noticed before, only seeing it as another generic office building. And inside, it’s filled with terror and hate and injustice and a bunch of under-trained goons.

Get Out Ice

This morning, hours before my run, I gathered together statements from local businesses, announcing their intent to be closed on Friday in solidarity with the no work / no shop / no class strike. I pulled out some words and phrases which are starting to take shape. Then I went running and talked with RJP and had to go shopping. so I haven’t returned to them yet.

While I continue to work on this poem, here’s a bit from one of the restaurants, Nicos Tacos:

On this day we are choosing to stand with our community, to stand for dignity and for humanity. No one should live in fear for simply seeking a better life. Strong communities are built when immigrants feel safe, seen, and supported. Let Nico’s be a home to all, and a reminder that we all belong here.

Nicos Taco Bar

And, here’s a running list of the businesses participating. As of 5:00 pm today, there are 382 businesses on it!

jan 12/RUNICEGETOUT

4.25 miles
lena smith boulevard
34 degrees
path: 100% ice / road: 5% ice*

*there are so many reasons why ICE is terrible and needs to get out and should be abolished. Here’s a small one: I like thinking and writing about winter ice — how it covers the trails, what it sounds feels looks like, the different forms it takes. But now that word overwhelming means: Immigration and Customs Enforcement and hate and evil. I want my ice back! Well, maybe not the thick, jagged ice that is currently cover the entire river road and made it impossible to run on today.

Today begins the 10th year of this log. I’m so grateful that I was able to run outside to celebrate it. It has been a whole week since I’ve been able to run outside above the gorge: too slippery on the trails and sidewalks. Today the roads were mostly clear, but the paths were not. So, I ran north on Lena Smith Boulevard until it ends at Minnehaha Academy on 32nd, then turned around and ran south until I hit 38th, then back north to 32nd, then south up the hill. Halfway up, I decided to do the hill again — hill repeats! So when I got to the top (it’s a small hill, so it only took 1 minute to climb it), I turned around and ran back down it. At the bottom, I took a 45 second break then ran up it again. I did that 5 times. It felt good!

During one of my breaks, I noticed a woman across the road, on the trail, holding up a big white sign. I couldn’t read what she had written on it, but I imagine it was Abolish ICE or something about Minnesotans standing up for each other because all the cars were honking. It was wonderful, hearing all the honks, and her loud, Thank You! after they did it. I started imagining different ways I could do something like her during my daily running practice. I decided a sign or banner would be too awkward. Next I thought about pinning a sign to my jacket. Then, the idea: work with RJP to design a shirt or something I could wear that offered some sort of resistance to ICE and/or expressed my love for my city. Should it just say LOVE? Whatever it is, I want it be big and brightly colored and easy to see/read. RJP stopped by and I talked to her about it. She’s excited!

Ice Get Out, Know Your Rights

Know Your Rights

Another more accessible version:

KNOW YOUR RIGHTS:
WHAT TO DO IF YOU’RE STOPPED BY POLICE, THE FBI OR IMMIGRATION
Police are supposed to keep us safe and treat us all fairly, regardless of race, ethnicity, national origin or religion. This card provides tips for interacting with police and understanding your rights. Note: Some state laws may vary. Separate rules apply at checkpoints and when entering the U.S. (including at airports).

IF YOU ARE STOPPED FOR QUESTIONING
Upon request, show police your driver’s license, registration and proof of insurance. If an officer or immigration agent asks to look inside your car, you can refuse to consent to the search. But if police believe your car contains evidence of a crime, your car can be searched without your consent. Both drivers and passengers have the right to remain silent. If you are a passenger, you can ask if you are free to leave. If the officer says yes, sit silently or calmly leave. Even if the officer says no, you have the right to remain silent.
YOUR RIGHTS
▪ You have the right to remain silent. If you wish to exercise that right, say so out loud.
▪ You have the right to refuse to consent to a search of yourself, your car or your home.
▪ Regardless of your citizenship status, you have constitutional rights.
▪ You have the right to a lawyer if you are arrested. Ask for one immediately.
▪ You have the right to record police actions as long as you do not interfere with their activities and are not breaking any other law. Stay calm. Don’t run. Don’t argue, resist or obstruct the police, even when you are innocent or police are violating your rights. Keep your hands where police can see them. Ask if you are free to leave. If the officer says yes, calmly and silently walk away. If you are under arrest, you have a right to know why.
You have the right to remain silent and cannot be punished for refusing to answer questions. If you wish to remain silent, tell the officer out loud. In some states, you must give your name if asked to identify yourself. You do not have to consent to a search of yourself or your
belongings, but police may “pat down” your clothing if they suspect a weapon. You should not physically resist, but you have the right to refuse consent for any search. If you do consent, it can affect you later in court.

ACLU Minnesota

jan 3/RUN

4.5 miles
minnehaha falls
20 degrees
100% snow-covered

Not a single bare spot on the trail or the road. Hard on the ankles, calves, and the eyes — so bright and white and endlessly nothing. Difficult to see where the snow was loose and where it wasn’t. It didn’t bother me; I’m just happy to be outside moving, connected to this place. Tried to greet everyone I saw — runners, walkers, at least one biker — with a wave or a hello.

10 Things

  1. the smell of chimney smoke lingering near a neighbor’s house
  2. soft ridges of sand-colored* snow covering the street — tricky to run over and through
  3. empty benches
  4. (almost) empty parking lots
  5. a hybrid/electric car singing as it slowly rounded a curve near locks and dam no. 1
  6. the sound of the falls falling over the ledge: almost gushing
  7. scattered voices echoing around the park — at least one of them was from an excited kid
  8. stopping to tighten my laces, a woman in a long coat nearby, standing and admiring the falls
  9. splashes of yellow on the snow
  10. bird song then a burst of birds briefly filling the sky

*sand-colored: using these words, I immediately thought of a favorite poem that I’ve memorized, I Remember/ Anne Sexton: the grass was as tough as hemp and was no color — no more than sand was a color

I listened to the quiet — barely any wind — for the first half of the run, then put in my “Sight Songs” playlist on the way back. Memorable songs: Sheena Easton’s nasally high notes in “For Your Eyes Only,” and the lyrics in the refrain —

The passions that collide in me
The wild abandoned side of me
Only for you, for your eyes only

Yikes. Also, these lines from The Who’s “Behind Blue Eyes”:

And if I swallow anything evil
Put your finger down my throat

And if I shiver please give me a blanket
Keep me warm, let me wear your coat

And these, from Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” which I don’t recall ever hearing:

Every now and then I know you’ll never be the boy you always wanted to be. . .

. . .Every now and then I know there’s no one in the universe as magical and wondrous as you

(Almost) 9 Years!

Typically each year, I mark the anniversary of this log as the first of January, with a new year beginning on that day. But, that’s not the real anniversary of this log. It’s January 12th, 2017. Why the 12th and not the 1st? I’m not quite sure; I’ll have to look through my journal from that year. It seems fitting, with my affinity (see D. Seuss below) for the approximate, the almost, to not start on the first day of the year!

On This Day: January 3, 2022

Reading this past entry today, I re-discovered this beautiful poem by a favorite poet, Diane Seuss, Love Letter. Rereading it, so many words, phrases, ideas tapped me on the shoulder, invited me it! Here’s the second half of the poem:

I’m much too sturdy now to invest
in the ephemeral. No, I do not own lace
curtains. It’s clear we die a hundred times
before we die. The selves
that were gauzy, soft, sweet, capable
of throwing themselves away
on love, died young. They sacrificed
themselves to the long haul.
Picture girls in white nighties jumping
off a cliff into the sea. I want to say
don’t mistake this for cynicism
but of course, it is cynicism.
Cynicism is a go-to I no longer have
the energy to resist. It’s like living
with a vampire. Finally, just get it
over with, bite me. I find it almost
offensive to use the word love
in relation to people I actually love.
The word has jumped off
so many cliffs into so many seas.
What can it now signify?
Shall I use the word affinity
like J.D. Salinger, not a good
man, put into the mouths
of his child genius characters? I have
an affinity for my parents. An affinity
for you. I will make sure you are fed
and clothed. I will listen to you
endlessly. I will protect your privacy
even if it means removing myself
from the equation. Do those sound
like wedding vows? Are they indiscriminate?
Well then, I am indiscriminate.
I am married to the world.
I have worked it all out in front of you.
Isn’t that a kind of nakedness?
You have called for a love letter.
This is a love letter.

sturdy! I love this word — the sound and the feeling of it: I like being sturdy. My Girl (in my Girl Ghost Gorge poem, the preferred version of me — Sara, age 8).

the “gauzy, soft, sweet selves” — these gothic girls, jumping off cliffs into the sea — a very different version/vision of a girl than mine

Linking these lines to others from Seuss, I imagine one version of her girl to be the one that died when her father did — she writes about him in Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl. That girl’s father became sick when she was 2 and died when she was 7.

Of course, this is only one version of her girl. How many different versions of girls do I have? Do I write about?

Affinity?! Yes, I need to put that beside my list of “love?” words, accustomed, familiar, acquainted, known. Affinity = kinship, attraction, liking/affection, causal relationship, attractive force, “a relation between biological groups involving resemblance in structural plan and indicating a common origin”

Right now, I’m reading “You” as the poem and poetry.

Indiscriminate = not marked by careful distinction — ambiguous, sloppy? a (too) rough approximation?

love letter world . . . suddenly, I’m thinking of Emily Dickinson: This is my letter to the world that never wrote to me

That was fun, giving some time to these words! I am drawn — do I have an affinity? — to Diane Seuss’s words. Is it because my introduction to her was her fabulous poem about vision that begins with the line, the world, italicized? Or her ekphrastic poems, in Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl?

a return to the ekphrastic! I am reminded of my past reading and writing about still life, especially with Diane Seuss. I’m imagining my “how to see” series of ekphrastic poems with a section on still life paintings and one on pastoral poems! Also, a section on artists with vision conditions or that particularly resonate for my vision: Magritte, Monet, Vincent Van Gogh. Ideally, a series of poems. But first, taking the time to gather all of the resources together, then to stay open to what could happen! I’m also imagining a section on cut-outs/silhouettes, which I studied during my shadow month.

Colette Love Hilliard and the erasure poem

Last night I bought CLH’s  a wonderful catastrophe. Wow! I love it. This one reminded me of my blind spot/mood ring visual poetry:

from A Wonderful Catastrophe / Colette Love Hilliard

jan 1/RUN

4.6 miles
minnehaha falls and back
11 degrees
100% snow-covered

A wonderful way to start the new year: a run outside, in the snow, above the gorge! There were moments when it felt easy, but mostly it was hard because of the uneven, loose slow. I think my calves are going to be sore all day from the effort! Not injured, just tired from being used to push through and keep balance in the snow. Ever since we got the 5.8 inches of snow last weekend, it has been snowing a inch of two every night. It’s beautiful, but not fun to drive in — I’ve heard; I haven’t driven in at least 5 years because of my vision. It’s not always fun to run in (and on), either. But I’m not complaining, I loved being out there today.

I encountered runners, walkers, at least one fat tire. No cross country skiers or regulars. I heard some people sledding at the park, and the light rail leaving the station — oh, and a woman saying to someone she was walking with, I just need to get the shoes and I’ll be fine. What shoes? Fine for what?

10 Things

  1. a bright while, almost blinding — I’m glad I had some dark tree trunks to look at
  2. snow on the side of a tree making a pleasing pattern on the textured trunk
  3. the falls were falling and making noise — more trickle than gush
  4. the dark gray water of the creek was moving through shelves of ice and snow
  5. the sounds of my yak trax in the snow: crunching and clopping and clicking
  6. the smell of a chimney smoke hovering in the air
  7. a small dome of snow on top of a wooden fence post
  8. empty benches
  9. a crunching noise behind me: crusty ice in my braid hitting the collar of my jacket
  10. overheard: an adult to a kid playing in the backyard, are you having fun?

Running up and out of the park, I had a moment of freedom and happiness — ah, to be outside moving in this fresh air and all of this snow! I thought about my wonderful, low-key New Year’s Eve with Scott and our kids, both of whom are doing so much better at the end of the year than they were at the beginning, both excited and hopeful about the next year.

Today I’m submitting my book manuscript to another press, Yes Yes Books. Before I went out for my run, I drafted a pithy description of my collection, Echolocate | | Echolocated:

“Echolocate, echolocated: to locate using echoes instead of sight, to be located by the echoes you offer. In this collection, a girl and her ghosts visit a gorge daily to locate and be located by the rocks, a river, and the open air and all who are held by it.”

Here’s a beautiful poem I discovered the other day about (not) naming.

Against Specificity / Virginia Kane

Hanif says never put a bird in a poem
without saying what kind of bird.

I want to agree. I like my blues
cerulean, my clouds cumulonimbus.

I prefer my mountains baptized
and my rivers carved with names.

Your reader will find you 
in the details, everyone says,

but when I write about memory
I am just writing about loss.

Here, I forget to tell
the flowers you brought me

they are irises. I decide
the dogwoods we laid under

are just those trees. The months
I knew you, crisp and labeled,

all become that year.
When you leave,

I christen nothing.
I call it what it wasn’t.

dec 30/RUN

2.5 miles
river road, south/north
20 degrees
100% snow-covered

We got another dusting of snow last night, so the path was covered in an inch or two of soft, uneven snow. Harder to run through, but not slippery with my yak trax. A few times, I could feel the spikes digging into slick spots. It was beautiful and I would have loved to run longer if the surface had not been so uneven. Halfway through, I stopped to hike down to an overlook on the winchell trail. Quiet, white, too bright. I encountered a few other runners, 2 trios of walkers. A fat tire. Walking back, I saw a small kin on disc sled sliding down a hill in his yard.

10 Things

  1. the rumble of a blue snow plow
  2. a line of cars driving very slowly along the river
  3. the dark curve of a retaining wall
  4. heavy, white sky
  5. the strong smell of weed coming from a car parked in the 44th street parking lot
  6. a sheet of dirty snow on the road, stirred up and flung by the wheels of a mini-van
  7. a kid sledding down a very small hill
  8. no ice or puddles, only powdery white snow on the path and light gray ridges of snow on the road
  9. empty benches everywhere
  10. the vine with orange leaves on a neighbor’s fence, some of it had snow — little white spots of ice? snow? making patterns on other parts of the fence
vine with ice, snow, orange leaves, on brown fence
vine with ice, snow, orange leaves, on fence / 30 dec 2025

This image is most vivid when I look at it on iPhotos. Is it because the quality is higher? When I noticed the white spots on the fence — directly, not through a phone or computer screen — these spots were only small white dots. In the photo, they look bigger and I can see small vince steps. Very cool and strange. I might make this photo my wallpaper!

With these 2.5 miles, I reached my goal of 950 miles for the year. I took some time off in May (because of my back) and I swam a lot more this summer, so I’m happy with 950. Next year, at least 1000 and the marathon again!

2025 cento: lines I love + lines I can relate to

It’s time for another cento created out of poems I gathered this year. First, I read through all of the poems and tried to pick out (at least) one line from each. Then I pasted these lines into a document, then printed it out. I cut out the lines, which took forever (and is very taxing on my eyes!).

favorite lines in a pile

Then I arranged the lines on a table, in no particular order:

2025 poetry lines

Now, it’s time to have fun! The first experiment: quickly divide the lines into 2 categories: 1. I love and 2. Does this happen to you?

an explanation: Each cut-out included the lines and the poem’s title and author in parentheses at the bottom. I tried carefully to make sure that the lines were always grouped with the title/author. But, on 2 occasions, I noticed lines that had no citation: I love and Does this happen to you? I decided to make those the titles of 2 different sections of the poem.

dec 27/RUN

5.25 miles
bottom of franklin and back
38 degrees
humidity: 90%

Even more wet today than yesterday. I was prepared for these conditions because I asked FWA, when he got back from walking Delia and before I went out for my run, what it was like outside and he said, like yesterday but wetter. Yep. Today I ran north instead of south. Puddles everywhere. Like yesterday, I tried to avoid them, and like yesterday, I was successful until I wasn’t and then I squished squished squished for the remainder of the run. Even though they were wet, my feet weren’t cold. In fact, I was warm — dripping sweat. Saw and greeted Daddy Long Legs twice. Hello!

For the first 4 miles, listened to the gorge. For the last mile, Sight Songs (originally titled “Eye Tunes” but that name was too confusing for Siri), on shuffle. The song I remember the most was “Breakfast in America” and the twisted return of the opening lyrics:

Take a look at my girlfriend

and

Don’t you look at my girlfriend

10 Things

  1. the surface of the river, closer up, under the I-94 bridge — glossy, looking like the surface of the ice skating rink at Longfellow on a warmer day
  2. the not-quite-frantic, unsettled? call of a bird under the franklin bridge — one note, repeated
  3. a wall of snow on a curb, white speckled with grayish-brown, subdued cinnamon sugar
  4. a biker speeding down the franklin hill
  5. another biker powering up it
  6. a small patch of bright pink graffiti on the underside of the franklin bridge
  7. misty, foggy, thick gray air
  8. an empty sky with an occasional bird flying through it
  9. voices all around — talking, laughing
  10. a vine on a neighbor’s fence with orange leaves
vine, orange leaves on fence / 27 dec 2025

on walking

Discovered and read a beautiful essay about walking this morning: On Walking / Ira Sukrungruang.

1 — connected to place

Walking barefoot as a monk was a constant reminder of how we humans are always connected to the earth, bound by gravity, ever aware of the heft we carry—some of us more than others. It made me feel the mechanics of movement: muscles and tendons stretching and contracting, propelling the leg forward. It made me aware of the ground we walked on, the dirt and tar and tufts of grass in cracks, the unevenness of the pavement, the changes in terrain. This was spiritual walking, a bringing of awareness to our breath and our steps.

I am reminded of a line from my poem, “Girl Ghost Gorge,” it begins here, from the ground up: feet first, following

2 — an awareness of a changing climate

The environmental destruction we humans have enacted on this earth is obvious, but I didn’t take it in, I didn’t feel it, until I started walking.

Yes! Since starting to run above and beside and around and with the gorge (almost 9 full years and more than 8,500 miles), I have become more aware of the outside world and its shifts from season to season: when the leaves change and the acorns fall and the snow arrives (or doesn’t) and the floodplains are flooded and the sidewalks are cracked and the sun is covered in wildfire smoke and the bluff and a bench on its edge slowly slide into the gorge.

3 — eyes forward, ears open

After two weeks I came to look forward to taking the same path, seeing the same people. I was coming to understand devotion and repetition and humility. When a monk walks, his eyes should not look too far ahead, but neither should they be at his feet. They should be ten yards in front of him. And a monk’s ears should listen to the land waking up—the creaks and groans of the earth. The land is alive. It communicates. This earth, this world, is more than shape and matter.

Listening to the land speaking, open to how it communicates. Not staring, studying, dissecting it with our gaze.

4 — looking up and waving at a gargoyle

One afternoon in Exeter, walking to pick up Bodhi from school, I noticed how hunched I had become. It had been four months since our move, which meant I’d made that walk more than three hundred times by then, but only on this day did I notice a gargoyle staring down at me from above.

I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk to look up at it. Such an odd sensation to straighten and tilt my head back. It was a rare sunny day in Exeter. I shielded my eyes with my hand and felt like a flower willing itself through the ground. Then I waved at the gargoyle. I don’t know why. Cars whizzed by. People walked on both sides of the street—parents like me, getting their kids from school. The steeple of St. Leonard’s Church was in the distance, a beautiful marker of how far it was to Bodhi’s school. I headed toward it, my head high, learning a new way of being.

This ending paragraph and the looking up and waving at the gargoyle, reminds me of a favorite poem I read early on in this log (in a july 4th, 2019 entry I mention that I’ve been trying to write about this poem for years, but I can’t find an earlier entry with a mention of it, so I’m not sure when I first discovered it):

excerpt from Woman Waving to Trees / Dorothea Tanning

of these old trees. Raise your
heads, pals, look high,
you may see more than
you ever thought possible,
up where something might
be waving back, to tell her
she has seen the marvelous.

I love her use of pals — I’ve tried to (unsuccessfully) use it in my own poem. I often think of these lines whenever I stop to look up at a tree. Have I ever waved at one? I can’t remember, but probably not.

a year in poetry

Searching this my log for mentions of pals, I encountered a cento I wrote back in 2019, out of lines from all of the poems I gathered in 2019. I like it, and I want to do this again for 2025! I love centos and putting others’ words into conversation with each other!

Here’s the “finished” draft of the 2019 cento: I’m not Asking for Much — I’m hoping that I identified where the lines came from in some document because I’m not sure I could do it now! And here’s an earlier draft: Listen

Here’s where I begin: Poems Gathered in 2025

a word quarry game

While reading through my poems gathered in January of 2025, I came across an essay — We Could Just Gaga Our Grammar — and an idea for playing with words:

Find two or three random paragraphs from two sources and copy and paste the paragraphs into a word scrambler. From this jumble of found text, draft a poem. This activity is inspired by Dodie Bellamy’s Cunt Ups.

I’m thinking of a variation on this; instead of using a word scrambler, putting the paragraphs into my word quarry — grouping all the 1, 2, and 3 syllable words and then turning them into a new poem or chant or sentence based on rock (2-syllable/1-syllable words) river (3 1-syllable words) and air (1 3-syllable word) formations.

also: Looked up Cunt Ups and was reminded of William S. Burrough’s cut-ups. Found a book about it, and requested it. Now I’m thinking about cut ups and Lisa Olstein and then Henri Matisse and cut up forms and the cutting prow.

So many ideas! It is fun to let my mind wander again, after 6+ months of structured writing, first about open swim, then about haunting/being haunted at the gorge.

Back to Burroughs and cut ups. I watched this video, which I found in this essay: William S. Burroughs Cut Up Method

Cut-Ups William S. Burroughs

So good — when you cut into the present, the future leaks out. Also — the idea of the tape cut-ups and taking a phrase and scrambling the order until it means something else: I want to try that with my rock river air chants. And, the idea of taking different entries of this log — maybe entries from one day, different years — and cutting it up, or finding the same words, or picking a phrase from each entry . . .

dec 26/RUN

4.45 miles
minnehaha falls and back
36 degrees
humidity: 90%

Moist, thick, big puddles everywhere. I tried to avoid them, but I couldn’t avoid all of them and by my last mile I could hear my one shoe squish squish squishing. Since it was warm, it didn’t bother me. Oh — just remembered — my shoe/sock got wet at the falls — the cobblestones near the falls were full of puddles. There were a few slick spots, but mostly it was just wet.

For 3 miles, I listened to the wet wheels, whooshing, crows cawing, and people calling out to each other as I ran. For the last mile: TSwift’s Life of a Showgirl

10 Things

  1. the small patches of snow on the trail or the road, seeping murky gray-green-dirty white liquid
  2. the rusty orange leaves, dead, still clinging to the trees
  3. calmly letting a walker know I was approaching from behind — right behind you/thank you! I meant to say, you’re welcome, but didn’t, then lamented my failure to exchange the you until I realized I had with my right behind YOU –if I had said, the you would have been traveled 3 times: from the-walker-as-you when I said, right behind you, to me-as-you when she said, thank you, to the walker-as-you again with, you’re welcome
  4. overheard: a man leaving a group of people at the falls, calling out, I’m going back to pay the meter!
  5. clusters of people — 6-8 at the overlook just above the falls, and at the overlook close to “The Song of Hiawatha”
  6. a clump of something not moving ahead of me on the trail — dead leaves? A darting squirrel. I studied it closely to make sure it didn’t run in front of me
  7. a distant thumping, heard when stopped to put it my headphones — nearing, another running plodding along
  8. seen with peripheral vision: some frozen crystals on my cheek
  9. the trail on the bike side of the double bridge was mostly wet ice with 2 narrow strips of bare pavement that narrowed even more until not even my toe could fit in their groove
  10. crows! just before starting my run, they were gather in the trees above me. when I stopped to start my workout on my watch, they cawed furiously, as if to say, keep moving!

Just before the run, I got an email about one of the chapbook contests I entered — back in July. I didn’t win, but I got, along with 4 other poets, an honorable mention. I’ll happily take that! The chapbook I submitted included earlier versions of several of the poems that I revised for my manuscript. I think the poems are even better now.

In the last mile of my run, a sudden thought: I should submit something for tiny wren lit’s tiny zine series. It says they’ll open again in early 2026: submit a tiny zine

safari reading list, review:

1 — contentment

Found a poem about contentment while reviewing my Safari Reading List. I’m partial to the words satisfied or enough or still, but contentment works too.

from A Beautiful House with a Hot Tub and Pool/ Jason Schneiderman

Yes, I can be content anywhere,
but alas sadly: No. It’s not true. I can’t be content here
in my uncomfortable present, in my uncomfortable chair,
on the uncomfortable subway, at this uncomfortable desk,
in this uncomfortable classroom. But oddly, I am content 
to visit the past, to say Hello everything I’ve lost, 
to say I wish you could come here to the present, 
my lost companion trees. I wish you could meet 
everything I’ve found.

about this poem: “Making peace with the past has been a common theme in my work, so I decided to try to write about making peace with the present.”

2 — a no-one rose

from Psalm/ Paul Celan (trans. John Felstiner )

Blessèd art thou, No One.
In thy sight would
we bloom.
In thy
spite.

A Nothing
we were, are now, and ever
shall be, blooming:
the Nothing-, the
No-One’s-Rose.

I love this bit of Celan’s poem and the No-one’s-Rose! No One — a someone who is No One: what type of sight do they have? We were, are, shall be nothing, blooming. I want to use this — maybe as a breathing with poem — in a collection* about the gorge/gap/bling spot.

*maybe not a collection, but a series of attempts, orbiting around the idea or feeling or experience of the Nothing in the gorge and in my vision.

Speaking of orbiting: Last night, I was trying to name/remember something, but I couldn’t, quite. I kept almost getting the right name, but I was off, approximate. As I talked, I moved my hands around in a circle, as if to indicate I was circling around the name. I called out, I’m orbiting it! I do this a lot. I wish I could remember the exact example, to make this story more understandable, but I can’t.

3 — CAConrad’s Queer Bubbles

There are some great bits in this article about Conrad and their rituals in The Paris Review:

“I love being inside the ritual,” he says. “It’s like speaking in tongues. It’s not just automatic writing … Every nuance, every adjustment to the ritual, alters the language that comes out of me.”

Exercises like these are nothing new in poetry—Conrad cites Bernadette Mayer and Charles Olson as two practitioners of similar methods—but he insists that his rituals are chiefly inspired by his childhood, specifically the Pennsylvania Dutch Country where his grandmother taught him to meditate and where he took an interest in the occult, from local water diviners to the hex signs painted on barns. But as much as his work owes a debt to Boyertown, it is a deliberate rebuke to the bigotry, violence, and oppression he found there.

Queer Bubbles

I’m familiar with B Mayer’s work — a class on her list is what led me to poetry! — but I don’t know that much about Charles Olson. I should look into him more, like his archeology of morning (on a site that offers footprints not blueprints, which reminds me of my old academic slogan for my ethical/pedagogical approach: an invitation to engage, not a how-to manual) and the polis / Polis is This:

Polis is This

In his two books of (Soma)tic rituals and poems, A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon and ECODEVIANCE—a third collection, While Standing in Line for Death, will be published this September—the rituals and resulting poems appear opposite one another. Because the rituals are written in the second person, at times the books read like the world’s most bizarre and inventive self-help guides, manuals for what you might call acute mindfulness. One ritual starts like this: “Eat a little dark chocolate before getting on the subway. Sit in the middle of the car … Then close your eyes, and as the car rolls on its tracks make a low hum from deep inside you … As soon as the car stops write 9 words as fast as you can before the train moves again … Repeat this humming and writing for 9 stops.” He credits his rituals with lifting him out of depression and grief.

Queer Bubbles

The use of You — a bizarre self-help manual or how-to on mindfulness!

the blind ring project returns to haunt this log

Doing some reading about lit journals that accept visual poetry, I was introduced to the amazing erasures of Colette LH. So beautiful and wonderful. Here’s the first one I experienced:

(un)certainty

Then I saw this one, Brain, and I started thinking about what I could do with my blind spot black-out ideas, and now I’m wondering about doing something with my peripheral. These white trails above, in (un)certainty are making me think about movement and direction and motion as it relates to my peripheral vision. Hmmm….

I want to buy their 2018 chapbook: a wonderful catastrophe and this, Celestial Timpani from Yavanika Press

dec 24/RUN

4.25 miles
minnehaha falls
33 degrees
10% slick ice

Great weather for a run. Only needed one pair of gloves and no jacket. For the first mile, I didn’t encounter anyone, but as I neared the falls, more walkers and runners. I tried to greet everyone I encountered with a wave or a good morning. There was some ice, but I only slipped once or twice. The creek was flowing and I could hear the falls falling behind the thick ice columns. Running up the hill and on my way out of the park I heard voices below in the part of the park that is both the bottom of a massive sledding hill in the winter and a wading pool in the summer.

On my way home, I stopped at the bench above the edge of the world and admired the open view to the river below and the other side. Beautiful. Heard more people down below, on the winchell trail.

late night blind spot revelations

Last night, another thought: I’d like to take a break from structured writing that is shaped by a larger project. Time to experiment more instead. Also: time to add to my “How to Be” project, do my year-end summary, and edit my writing experiments list. Oh — and read some more of the poetry books I bought this year.

Discovered this poem the other day and wanted to remember it, especially for how it incorporates research about lichens into the poem:

The Lichens/ Talvikki Ansel

Crinkly-thin, the perfect marriage of algae and fungi, 
furbelowed and curled.


                                               venerable ancestors: strange as vellum, 
                                               an onion poultice, leather jerkin

                                                
Johann Dillen’s portraits of 1741: 
the ‘Strange Charactered Lichen, Black Dotted Wrinkled Lichen,
Leprous Black Nobb’d Lichen,
Crawfish Eye-like Lichen.’

                                                the youngest occupy a wicker couch, 
                                                eavesdrop on the aunties’ tales, wonder 
                                                why so aged-looking, their skin?

‘Wanderflechten’—those who traveled
on deer’s hooves, birds’ feet, hot air balloon baskets over arid land.


                                                travel’s allure, the turquoise ring, scarab bracelet

                                                
Those who embraced the seductions of moths’ wings, 
gave their bodies to the hungers  
of the ‘Brussels Lace Moths, Beautiful Hook-Tips, the Dingy Footman.’

                                                when can we stay out past dawn?

                                                
Lichens who gave sustenance, grew thin,
flailed against famine, 
lichen packed in the bodies of mummies.

                                                these have an aura, a blue-mauve cloud
                                                we can’t imagine the ribs’ furrows

                                                
Erik Acharius, 1808, the “father of lichenology,”  
fastens samples onto herbarium sheets,
lichens’ filaments and flakes suspended.

                                               nice—but not our father, who is spores and fragments

A thin cord anchors lichens to rock,
small bits chip off, wear of paw pad and fur,
take hold elsewhere.

                                               we hear the wind caressing bark

                                                
Lichens swept up by grazing reindeer,
hot breath devouring, rub of meaty tongues,
meat toxic to herders— 
radioactive fallout the lichens never meant to harbor.

                                               ghostly stalks of trees, an ashy forest 
                                               we can barely look

A single spruce hosts a rare green and red-lobed lichen.

                                                the odd one out, the one no one ever set eyes on


Lichens in the armpits of marble statues
differentiated from lichens on the thighs, 
eaten by snails on moonless nights.

                                               moonglow, 
                                               something we don’t know here, no one’s talking

                                                
A hummingbird’s nest, its outer layer  
shingled gray-green with lichen flakes, a point of pride, see—

                                               how beautiful they were, and useful.

dec 22/RUN

4.25 miles
minnehaha falls and back
38 degrees
10% ice and 30% puddle-covered

Waited until the late afternoon to go out for a run; too icy this morning. This afternoon (at 3), there were lots of puddles and sun and not much ice. A good run. Even though I think I caught FWA’s cold, I had plenty of energy while I was running and felt great.

10 Things

  1. bright sun reflecting off the windows of a house
  2. the very strong smell of week near the 44th street parking lot
  3. the creek was moving, but the falls was not
  4. lots of walkers, a few runners, at least one fat tire
  5. a walker moving over to let me pass on the cleared bike path in the park — thank you! / you betcha!
  6. near the oak savanna, a little kid’s voice floating up from below
  7. at least one bright yellow jacket
  8. the river: covered with ice and snow
  9. a line of cars waiting at the stop sign on the road coming out of wabun park and the veterans home — did a shift just end?
  10. the clip clip clip of another runner’s ice cleats

blind spot

Yesterday I wrote about re-finding my blind spot and doing a series of erasure poems with it. Last night, I woke up with a vague idea about writing a hybrid piece (possibly to submit to a journal’s call for submission — Waxwing) that involves using and applying and reflecting on my blind spot. This morning, I’ve been spending more time thinking about it, wandering and wondering how and what to do with these ideas. Just now, a thought: even as I use a cut-out or an image of my blind spot and apply it to text, as if to demonstrate how I see, the resulting poem/prose piece/fragment can’t properly convey how it is that I do or don’t see. The difficulty with my failing/failed vision is that I can’t really see it. Well, sometimes I can see it, like when I’m talking to someone and their head is only a fuzzy, empty blur, but often I can’t. It’s more of a feeling, or sometimes it’s not anything; I don’t realize I’m seeing wrong or that I’m not seeing until it is pointed out to me. How do you convey that?

But, even if the dark outline of a blind spot doesn’t effectively represent my vision, it does do something. So I’d like to use it.

As I write this, I’m looking out my window, into the bright white and blue of the sun and snow and sky. The image is shaking or shuddering or unsettling constantly. I see pixels shifting. The entire image is not unstable — I see solid forms that aren’t moving — like a red car parked across the street, or the straight hulk of a tree trunk — but the feeling of all of it is movement and being unfinished, unsettled, or buzzing? Visual buzz?

Earlier today I was working on a movie musicals puzzle. I’m constantly amazed that I can still work on it, that I can see enough to fit pieces together, but I can. In fact, with the small bit of central vision I have left, right in the middle of the middle of my eye, I often see small details — a tiny face or eyes, a finger pointing — and can recognize where they go. Sometimes I can’t fit it in exactly, so I give it to Scott and he finds the exact spot. Vision is so strange.

several hours later: Right now, I’m starting to look through the entries I tagged, vision. I have 20 pages of them. Already with the first one, I have an idea. On jan 30, 2020 I posted the poem, Natural Forces/ Vicente Huidobro. Since then, I’ve spent a lot of time with this poem — analyzed it, memorized it, recited it while I was running. To me, it’s a great example of the myth of the power of sight. Could I fit it in an amsler grid-sized box, and apply my blind spot to it?

I tried. Made a text box the size of grid. Fit the poem in the box as many times as would fit. Printed it out. Traced my blind spot on an Amsler grid, then cut it out and placed it over the poem. Not sure I like it, but it’s a start.

blind spot experiment #1

I wonder what it would look like if I only wrote the poem once, and made it a horizontal band across the box? Maybe make the font size smaller too? What if offered a few different versions, some with larger fonts, some with smaller so a reader could see what I can/and can’t read. I’ll have to try that next time.

dec 18/RUNBIKERUN

run: 1.7 miles
neighborhood / river road trail
29 degrees
50% very slick ice

Not ideal weather for a run. Were there any other runners out there? I can’t remember; I do recall seeing one walker. A lot of the sidewalk, road, trail was fine — not slick at all — until it wasn’t. Every so often, a slippery spot, some I could see, some I couldn’t. I skittered several times, having to take little half-steps. No sense that I was almost about to fall. I think I was lucky today that I didn’t twist or strain or break anything.

My body didn’t tense up in anticipation of sliding or falling, but I also wasn’t relaxed. Constantly trying to see or feel the ice. Did I notice anything else?

10 Things

  1. flitting birds, emerging from trees
  2. rusted orange in the floodplain forest
  3. the loud scraaaape from a neighbor’s shovel
  4. na ice-covered river
  5. a strong wind — not heard or seen but felt, burning my ears and my face
  6. car wheels losing traction on snow/ice, turning around in the middle of the street
  7. puddles on the path
  8. the edges of the road, dry then super slick then wet
  9. puddles on the sidewalk, not in the usual spots — the house on the next block, the house past 46th — but just around the corner
  10. noisy trucks near a school, doing some sort of repair work involving banging and backing up and scraping and pounding — heard, not seen

bats!

Reviewing old entries, as part of my On This Day morning ritual, I encountered a poem with the great line,

Fix your gaze upward and
give bats their due,
holy with quickness and echolocation
(Abecedarian for Dangerous Animals/ Catherine Pierce

Give bats their due. Yes! This line led me to other bat poems — last year or the year before I created a bats tag — and to these wonderful lines which I’ve written about before:

Think of it—to navigate by adjustment, by the beauty
of adjustment. All those shifts and echoes.
(Threshold Gods/ Jenny George)

To navigate by adjustment, shifts, echoes. Can I do something with these lines, add them to my echolocated poem at the end, Ringing Still, or another poem in the final echolocated section? Hmmm….echolocated is about being located/found by others. The (current) title of this collection is echolocate || echolocated. There’s a gap/tension between locating and being located, the one doing the locating and the one being located. In past years, I’ve imagined these two subjects (the locater, the located) as one Sara (the Speaker) trying to located another Sara (the reader), a You and simultaneously an I. No. Too much explanation. There’s is a swirl of something in my implied speaker addressing a You which is not me, and also me, and my consistent reference to the person going to the gorge and running and noticing (which is what I am doing) as the girl or she — which, if I haven’t already mentioned it is an actual girl — me, age 8:

Sara, age 8, in my soccer team uniform.

Instead of spelling this out, I’d like this to haunt this collection. Does it?

bike: 30 minutes
run: 1.3 miles
basement

Scott and I were planning to go to the y, but it started sleeting and snowing, and the wind was blowing, so we didn’t. Instead I went to the basement and biked. I started watching a documentary that I’ve been wanting to watch for more than a month: Come See Me in the Good Light. It’s about the poet, Andrea Gibson. Beautiful.

Then I got on the treadmill and ran while listening to my new “Eye Tunes” playlist on shuffle:

  1. Breakfast in America/ Supertramp
  2. Double Vision/ Foreigner
  3. See You Again/ Miley Cyris
  4. Tell Me What You See/ The Beatles
  5. Eyesight to the Blind / The Who
  6. Eye of the Tiger / Survivor

Open up your eyes now, tell me what you see
It is no surprise now, what you see is me
(Tell Me What You See/ The Beatles)

tell me what you see, I can’t wait to see you again, take a look at my girlfriend, not seeing straight, she’ll give eyesight to the blind, he’s watching us all with the eye of the tiger.

look at/stare/gaze/encounter/watch/stalk

dec 17/RUN

3.5 miles
under ford bridge and back
36 degrees
20% slick ice

An afternoon run. Mostly the paths/road/trail were clear but, because of yesterday’s thaw, there were random super slick patches. I didn’t slip, but I was more focused on the path than I’d like to be. Still, there were a few moments of freedom and forgetfulness, almost floating on the path, looking blankly ahead and just moving and breathing and being. Gray and overcast and heavy: thick air. It wasn’t that late, only around 3, but it was darkening fast and the road was crowded with cars. The river was light grayish white and empty and expansive. Encountered several runners, many walkers — any bikers? Yes, 1 or 2, at least one of them seemed to be commuting home from work. I remember watching their back light glowing red.

My favorite view: looking down at the graceful retaining wall then a ravine, then the river and the other shore.

morning ritual routine habit

My morning ritual has altered over the years since I’ve been writing in this log, but a few things have stayed the same: up earlier than anyone else with Delia-the-dog; coffee; quiet; sitting and reading. The reading has changed: it used to be articles about the academic industrial complex, then news headlines and poetry people on twitter. Now only poets.org, poetryfoundation.com, and poems.com. Oh, and my “On This Day” posts from that day between 2017 and 2024. Sometimes only 2 or 3 entries to revisit, sometimes the complete set. Today: 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 — what happened to ’23 and ’24? Today was an especially excellent day for poetry. Wow!

1 — The Sign as You Exit the Artist’s Colony Says “The Real World” / Aliki Barnstone (poets.org)

Just check out this amazing first stanza:

Quiet is not silence. Silence is absolute like never and forever. Quiet invites attention to cicadas, the warbling vireo on the wire, the cardinal’s whistle as it wings its brightness over the horizon of the Blue Ridge Mountains, then disappears amid the crape myrtles’ baroque blossoms.

I love this contrast between quiet and silence, and that would have been enough for me to want to spend more time with this poem, but then she continued with lines from Emily Dickinson, and I knew I needed to archive this poem. In her “About this Poem” in the sidebar, she writes:

All the quotations in italics are Emily Dickinson lines. I talk with her across time. 

Yes! I’ve been wanting to write with Emily Dickinson, to find different ways to engage with her words. I’ll have to try this one out. Writing this last bit, I just had an idea for a poem or a lyric essay or a hybrid form and a monthly challenge: My Emily Dickinson. It’s the title of a Susan Howe book, which I’ve read bits of and own. The lecture/chapter in Mary Ruefle’s Madness, Rack, and Honey, “My Emily Dickinson,” which I also own and love. And, “My My Emily Dickinson,” an essay in Kenyon Review by Meg Shevenock. I have the title already: My Eye Emily Dickinson, or My Eye and Emily Dickinson, or Eye: Emily Dickinson or My Eyes and Emily Dickinson, or M(e)y(e) Emily Dickinson? In addition to rereading the other “My Emily Dickinson” books/lectures/essays, I would revisit her lines that are about sight and vision and experiment with ways to describe their importance for me as I navigate losing vision. The experiments could include poems and essays and practices and whatever else I can think of. Oh, I hope this idea sticks; I love it!

2 — Last Century, Last Week: Holy Will (Ekphrastic)/ Ajanaé Dawkins (poems.com)

That first line!

What is it ’bout the river that makes even spirits sing? 

I love how this poem is about a river and that’s in a form that I want to practice more in early 2026 and that it embraces alliteration and the letter g. I will order her book: Blood-Flex!

3 — Wendell Berry’s Window poems (17 dec 2022)

4 — Liesel Mueller’s magical light in “Sometimes, when the light“ and her body in things in “Things” (17 dec 2021)

5 — How it Happens/ W.S. Merwin (17 dec 2020)

The middle of this short poem — a single line that continues a sentence of the lines before and after, but also answers the sky’s implied question (The sky said I am watching/to see what you/can make out of nothing):

I thought you

dec 16/RUN

5.25 miles
bottom of franklin hill
37 degrees
60% snow-covered

Above freezing today! Good, and bad. Good, because the snow on the path is melting. Bad, because it will freeze again tonight. I’ll take it, and the sun! and the warmth on my face! and the sound of wet, whooshing wheels. I ran to the bottom of franklin today to check out the surface of the river: completely covered with ice, a light grayish white. Almost all of the time, I felt strong. It was only after taking a break to check out the river, then starting again and running up the hill, that my legs felt strange. It took a minute to get back into a rhythm.

10 Things

  1. Looking up: powder blue sky, with streaks of clouds and sun
  2. something half-buried in a snow bank, 1: a lime scooter
  3. something half-buried in a snow bank, 2: a bike — not a rental — where is the owner of this bike, and why was it wedged in the snow and not put somewhere else?
  4. another runner, much faster than me, in a bright yellow jacket
  5. deep foot prints in the snow leading up to the sliding bench — someone must have sat here recently
  6. the view from the sliding bench: open, clear through to the snow-covered river and the white sands beach, which is just snow now
  7. someone at the bottom of the franklin hill, staring at the water
  8. a few honking geese down below
  9. cheeseburger cheeseburger — a calling bird — a chickadee, I think
  10. flowers for June in the makeshift vase of an uncapped railing under the trestle

Earlier today, while drinking coffee, I heard (not for the first time) Lawrence’s song, “Don’t Lose Sight” and I started to think about vision/sight/eye songs. Time for a playlist! I borrowed a title from someone’s spotify playlist that came up in a google search: Eye Tunes (groan). Came up with a long list of songs, then put a fraction of them in the list. I’ll keep fine-tuning it. I listed to the list during the second half of my run.

Eye Tunes

  1. I Saw the Light / Todd Rundgren
  2. Blinded by the Light / Mannford Mann’s Earth Band
  3. Eye in the Sky / The Alan Parson’s Project
  4. Eyes Without a Face / Billy Idol
  5. I Can See Clearly Now / Jimmy Cliff
  6. Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You / Ms. Lauryn Hill
  7. These Eyes / The Guess Who
  8. Eye of the Tiger / Survivor
  9. The Look of Love, Pt. 1 / ABC
  10. The Look of Love / Dusty Springfield
  11. For Your Eyes Only / Sheena Easton
  12. Eyesight to the Blind (The Hawker) / The Who
  13. Breakfast in America / Supertramp
  14. Don’t Lose Sight (Accoustic-ish) / Lawrence
  15. Total Eclipse of the Heart / Bonnie Tyler
  16. Double Vision / Foreighner
  17. In Your Eyes / Peter Gabriel
  18. Behind Blue Eyes / The Who
  19. Evil Eyes / Dio
  20. Stranger Eyes / The Cars
  21. Tell Me What You See / The Beatles
  22. My Eyes Have Seen You / The Doors

I listened up until Dusty Springfield’s “The Look of Love.” A few thoughts: I always think, anus curly whirly? when listening to “Blinded By the Light.” There is a LOT of vibraslap in “Eyes Without a Face” and, what does Billy Idol mean here? ABC’s “The Look of Love” is wonderful, and has some hilarious moments, especially the call and response section: Whose got the look? / If I knew the answer to that question I would tell you.

Back to Billy. Looked up the lyrics to “Eyes Without a Face,” and I think they mean that the person lacks humanity, is inhuman. Their look lacks compassion, grace.

Eyes without a face
Got no human grace
You’re eyes without a face
Such a human waste
You’re eyes without a face

And, I’ll end with ABC’s opening lines:

When your world is full of strange arrangements
And gravity won’t pull you through

That sounds like someone with vision problems (me)!

dec 8/RUN

5.25 miles
the flats and back
20 degrees / feels like 5 / snow
100% snow-covered

2 days ago, I mentioned that my next run should be to the flats so I could study the river surface. So that’s where I went this late morning and into the early afternoon: the flats. Unfortunately, there was no surface to study, only white. I had a late start to the run because I was trying to put my yaktrax back on. I might need a bigger size. How long did it take me to finally get them on? 10 maybe 15 or 20 minutes. That’s a long time to be sitting inside wrapped up in all my winter running layers!

Almost everything outside was white. White sky, white ground, white rock, white river. There were a few strips of worn down snow on the path, but a lot of it was lumpy and soft. I twisted my foot/ankle at least once on the uneven ground, but not hard enough to cause a problem. The conditions made it harder, but I didn’t mind too much. It was so quiet and calm and beautiful beside the gorge.

10 Things

  1. another running in a bright orange jacket — encountered them twice
  2. the bright headlights from an approaching bike
  3. under the I-94 bridge, 1: a few streaks of open water
  4. under the I-94 bridge, 2: honk honk honk — some gathered geese, gabbing
  5. heading north, no notice of the wind
  6. heading south, wind in my face
  7. approaching a woman — I was heading north, her south, I could see the snow flying up around her feet from the wind
  8. the bells of St. Thomas chiming and chiming and chiming at noon
  9. brightly colored (I can’t quite remember the colors — maybe pink and orange and blue?) graffiti under the bridges
  10. as I approached the franklin bridge from below, the wind picked up and I felt the arctic air, under the arch, a shopping cart

mental victory of the run: Even though I wanted to stop to rest my legs, sore from the uneven terrain, I kept going until I reached the bottom of the hill.

I had some success writing drafts for my m//other and g||host poems this morning before my run. During and just after the run, on my walk home, I had some thoughts about the third poem, t here involving the dotted line on the map that runs through the middle of the Mississippi River on the map indicating the dividing line between Minneapolis and St. Paul. Here’s a draft that I spoke into my phone. It needs some work!

if you look
on the map
between the
here of this
side and the
there of that
side, a dotted
line was drawn to
represent
that moment
mid-river
when one city
becomes the
other. Do
you think, if
you were to
swim across,
you could feel
this shift, could
find this place
where a there
becomes a
here and a
here becomes
a there? I’m
willing to
believe it
exists, this
space where both
here and there
dwell, a place
where both are
possible.

dec 6/RUN

4.1 miles
minnehaha falls and back
20 degrees
85% snow-covered

Yes! More amazing winter running! Not only wonderful physically, but creatively and mentally too. Near the end of the run, I had some great ideas for my manuscript (see below)! And I had some mental victories: I kept running without stopping to walk until I reached the halfway point; I not only kept running past the yellow crosswalk sign at 38th — a spot that always seems to loom too far in the distance — but I kept going past it until I reached the parking lot at 35th.

I’m glad I wore my yaktrax today. The path conditions were not the greatest — soft, uneven snow, some ice, not too many bare spots. I could tell my legs were having to work harder, which I think is a good thing for building strength.

I’m pretty sure I heard the falls falling, but I was distracted by people. I reached my favorite observation spot alone, but within 15 seconds, a group of 20 somethings were hovering around it, so I left without studying the falls.

The river was white with a few dark streaks. I never got close enough to it to see anything more about it than that. I need to run to the flats so I can study its surface.

overheard: one woman to another as they walked: but what does it mean?

Sometimes the sky was gray, sometimes white, and a few times the palest blue.

After I finished my run, walking past a favorite house (where Matt the Cat lives and whose owner gave me beautiful flowers from her boulevard garden this past summer), something delightful happened: As I walked under a pine tree, the wind picked up and a dust of snow fell on my head. Immediately I thought of Robert Frost’s poem, “A Dust of Snow,” which I memorized a few years ago. Unlike Frost, I was already in a good mood when I felt the snow, so I didn’t need to have it changed, but it was delightful nonetheless. Later at home I realized something else delightful. In Frost’s poem, it is a hemlock tree. I think the tree that gifted me snow is a hemlock, too!

manuscript ideas

  1. change title of poem, “Better here, in the familiar, to fade” to “Vision Lost” — turn better here into a “breathing with: may swenson” poem
  2. turn my, “a gash, a gap, a space of possibility” into 3 poems: m//other (gash) into the story of my mom — her death from cancer her severing of ties from this childhood home / g||host into a poem about my estrangement from my body and the mind/body split — or, my vision loss? / turn t here (possibility) into a poem about the in-between and Nothing space
  3. add in a section in which I offer up, in a list, all of 1, 2, and 3 syllable words in the collection, where 1 syllable = rock, 2 syllable = river, and 3 syllable = air
  4. (before the run I was revising Rush (ed. 2 jan 2026: I think I meant rust) and erosion and JJJJJerome Ellis’ stutter as clearing — see 3 oct 2025 entry for more) do a poem that invokes ED’s elemental rust and plays with ideas of decay as erosion and bells with rusted tongues — am I remembering that right?

I hope I didn’t forget anything

dec 5/RUN

3.35 miles
trestle turn around
25 degrees / snow showers
100% snow-covered

Another wonderful run! Wore my yaktrax and hardly slipped at all. It was warmer with less wind. And it was quiet. Greeted Dave, the Daily Walker by calling out, I love this! I love winter running! He called back, Michigan, right? A year or two ago we had discussed winter running and I had mentioned that I was from the UP in Michigan. Nice memory, Dave!

Everything was white and gray and soft. At least an inch of soft snow on the trail. Encountered at least one fat tire, several walkers, including Dave, and a pair of runners. I remember looking out over the open space of the gorge, but I don’t remember what the river looked like. Was it completely covered?

I stopped at the trestle to breathe in the quiet. It was quiet, and it wasn’t. A woodpecker pecking on a tree, or was it a squirrel trying to crack a nut? The voices of the 2 runners passing by. Someone blasting music out of a car radio. A guy walking a dog and talking on a bluetooth.

I noticed something I’ve never noticed before. Just south of the trestle, there are 2 tall wooden posts sticking out of the ground, about 6 feet apart. Above them are thatched wooden slats. What is/was this?

2 wooden posts near the railroad trestle, a woodpecker, a goose, snow / 5 dec 2025

I read a few more of Jana Prikryl’s poems from MIDWOOD. Here’s one that uses a favorite word of mine, still, and uses time to describe one’s location in space:

TEN O’CLOCK/ Jana Prikryl

Holding perfectly still at this party
a clutch of talkers, he’s at my four o’clock
you are at ten and you’ve cupped the fingers
of my left hand with the fingers of your left hand
as though no one will notice the little link
my whole occupation is holding still
so this may continue
all my feeling refuses
to toss the pebble in the current

dec 4/RUN

4.3 miles
minnehaha falls and back
9 degrees / feels like 0
50% snow-covered

The coldest run of the season, so far. All the layers, including the hand warmers, which I wouldn’t have used if I didn’t already have an open pair from FWA. No yaktrax today, and I (think I) regret it. I thought the path would be clear enough today without them, but I was wrong. My feet felt very strange when I first started running without the spikes (and without the more cushiony Saucony Rides that I’ve worn all week — today I wore Brooks Ghosts). It was hard, my legs felt heavy. I only wanted to to run a mile. But I kept going and by the time I got to under the Ford bridge I decided that I could keep going to the falls.

The creek is half frozen, and the water still flowing seemed thick and sluggish. Water was still rushing over the ledge, but there was less of it. About half of the falls is frozen with huge columns of ice.

10 Things

  1. the strong smell of weed in the 44th street parking lot
  2. the voices of kids playing on the school playground
  3. the river surface is more ice than water, and white
  4. very few people out walking or running
  5. the rumble of a park worker’s mini-truck at the falls
  6. empty parking lots at the falls
  7. empty benches, too
  8. the smell of a fire on Lena Smith bvld — coming from someone’s chimney
  9. the wind rushed through dead leaves on a tree — they sounded like rushing water
  10. the green gate at the falls’ steps is now closed and locked

I just checked out Jana Prikryl’s Midwood. It’s all about the middle of things, and midlife.

MIDWOOD 1/ Jana Prikryl

Out of the garment of the land
out of the
of

There in the ravine the place
that’s deepest,
bent

I found an interview with her, and found this last bit interesting:

So there is little punctuation, and I avoided titles at first because they’re so performative. Ultimately I realized that without titles the poems ran together too much, but I stuck to two-word titles to keep them all quiet. Many of the titles repeat words from the poem because often the extracted word pair, as a title, pulls new meaning or significance from the phrase. That kind of underlining, and the other kinds of repetition in the book, seem like ways of tightening the screws, bringing the writer and reader into a smaller and smaller room to study these documents together. Hopefully a transaction takes place that is confidential—somehow secret, transgressive, inexpressible in any other form.

Short Conversation with Poets: Jana Prikryl

I’m using repetition in my collection, but I think (or, I’m hoping, at least) that it creates more space, instead of less.

Random things that happened today:

first, an hour or so before heading out for my run, I got another rejection email about 3 of my poems. Slowly I’m getting better at not letting it upset me. Intellectually, I know how hard it is to get something published (5% acceptance rate, roughly), and how much it’s based on fit or reader/editor preference, or some other thing out of my control. Still, it can sting, especially when I really believe in something I’ve written. Today, I’m okay.

second, RJP had to go to a textile event for her textiles class, so I went with her to the Textile Center. Wow! So inspiring and exciting to see RJP in her element and tender as I thought about my mom, a fiber artist, who would have loved coming here.

Third, I’ve known about this song ever since I saw Camp in the theater, back in 1999 (or 2000?), but I don’t think I remembered that it was a Christmas song. I guess because it has turkey in the title, I thought it was a Thanksgiving song. A video of it being performed on The Ed Sullivan Show came up this morning, and I have decided it’s the Christmas song of 2025:

dec 3/RUNSWIM

3.65 miles
trestle turn around
17 degrees / feels like 2
100% snow and ice covered

It snowed again last night. A dusting. I think we might get a lot of snow this winter. Hooray! I’m ready for winter running! Today, I didn’t like running straight into the wind at the beginning, but it wasn’t too bad and it was at my back on the way home. I liked running with the yaktrax. At first, my feet were sore, but that didn’t last long. There were a few runners, some walkers. No skiers or bikers.

Geese! A small vee in the sky, a cacophony of honks under the trestle. When I looked up to watch the geese, I admired the BLUE! sky, with only a few clouds.

Running back, I heard the tornado siren. No worries — it’s the first Wednesday of the month and that’s when they test it. One problem: it’s supposed to be tested at 1, and it was noon. Mentioned it to Scott and his suggestion: someone forgot to adjust the timer for daylight savings time.

Anything else? Near the end of my run, I enjoyed listening to the quick, sharp sound of my spiked feet piercing the snow. The sliding bench was empty. Oh — the streets looked bright silver — caused by the sun hitting the ice and snow on the road. The river was streaked with white, and not completely covered. I noticed traces of dirt on the trail where the park workers had come through to make the path less slippery — they don’t use salt because it would do damage to the river. A small thing, but evidence: of someone else here before me, the daily labor of maintaining safe (and fun) winter trails, and care for others.

Richard Siken!

I think I posted a Richard Siken! heading a few months ago, but his new book is so amazing, it’s worthy of another heading with an exclamation point. Last night, during Scott’s jazz rehearsal, I read more of I Know Some Things, including Sidewalk:

excerpt from Sidewalk/ Richard Siken

It was clear that something had happened that wasn’t going to unhappen. In the emergency room, the woman at the desk kept asking me questions. All my answers were stroke, dizzy, numb. I kept saying the words in different ways so she would understand. She didn’t. She didn’t believe me. They put me in the waiting room, which I knew was wrong, and I realized that I had messed it up because I didn’t call for an ambulance. I kept falling asleep in the waiting room. I looked much worse, slack and crooked, the two sides of my face moving at different speeds. I went back to the desk and said help. They put me in a room. No one believes that I know what I know because sometimes I miss a part or tell it sideways.

Tell it sideways. I love this idea of telling something sideways — and, as someone who does/tells things sideways a lot, I get how it can alienate you from others.

What does it mean to tell something sideways? Of course I’m thinking immediately of Emily Dickinson and tell all the truth but tell it slant, but I’m also thinking about a book I used to teach when I taught queer theory — The Queer Child, or Growing Up Sideways by Kathryn Bond Stockton. And I’m thinking about my peripheral vision and how see/think/imagine in its edges and not in the center.

swim: 1.25 miles
88 laps
ywca pool

It is always a wonderful day when I can swim! I felt strong and relaxed. The pool was not crowded. Everyone got their own lane — all 4 of us. There was a lifeguard on duty, which is rare. I overheard her saying to someone in the hot tub: I love going in the hot tub after a long day of giving swimming lessons! My pool friends today were the shadows. The shadow of the lane line. I liked watching what happened as the pool got deeper: at first it was straight and parallel, but soon it angled. Lots of angled shadows on the pool wall. The floor was shimmying from shadows. The blue-tiled t on the wall at the end of the lane letting you know there’s a wall, looked distorted to me. Almost like the lines at the center of an Amsler grid when I look at it.

locker room encounter

Two older women talking near my locker. Or, one woman talking at the other, speculating on the state of things, talking about bifurcated society and the haves hoarding it over the have-nots and then believing that if it compresses enough, people will fight back. The other woman, not buying it. As she left, the first woman called out, I’ll see you up there. We can sweat it out! After she left, the second woman mumbled, YOU can sweat. When I laughed she explained that she didn’t sweat easily and it was hard for her and she feels uncomfortable when she can’t and she wishes she could just sweat.

My reaction: At first — come on ladies, this is the locker room. We come here to escape and have fun and to not think about the state of things. Then, when I heard that they hadn’t worked out yet, I got it. Oh, you just haven’t worked out yet! Also: I wondered if the second woman (the woman who couldn’t sweat) enjoyed working out with the first woman (who used bifurcated and talked at her and told her they would sweat),

dec 2/RUN

4.5 miles
minnehaha falls and back
16 degrees
75% snow-covered

Running in the snow! I love it, especially with my new Yaktrax. Bought 2 pairs at Costco yesterday. The technology of them has improved since I bought my last pair a few years ago. My old pair has coils, almost like the spiral in a spiral notebook — and unfortunately like the spiral in a spiral notebook, they can get twisted and uncoil and poke you with their sharp ends. The new version has plastic knobs with metal, so no un-spiraling. Future Sara can discover the limits of this technology after we’ve run a hundred or so miles in them.

The river was completely covered with snow and ice. Closer to the falls, it was all white, closer to home, it was more gray. The falls and the creek were still flowing.

I wore more winter layers than I probably needed. I had on my below 0 layers: 2 pairs of black running tights, 2 long-sleeved shirts — one black, one green, a purple jacket, a gray buff, a black fleece-lined cap with ear flaps, 2 pairs of gloves — black, pink and white striped, hand warmers — they’re called “Little Hotties”. I probably wouldn’t have worn the hand warmers if FWA hadn’t opened a pair for his Delia walk, but it was nice to have them.

The view of the river, the gorge, the bare trees, the other side was beautiful. The air was a satisfying and sharp cold. Even better than that though were the birds. My favorite part of the run. Tiny birds, black blurs springing up from below as I stood above the waterfall and the creek below. Movement everywhere, flitting up and down and over and out. One time, a leaf imitating a bird. Running on the path, something landed just in front of me. I thought it was a bird, but it was a dead leaf that had been lifted then dropped by the wind. Another time, a tiny bird trying to outrun me on the ground, then leap-flying, then giving up and flying away.

Standing behind the Rachel Dow Memorial Bench, I witnessed another bird land on a tree branch. I only saw it by its movement, and then when it stopped, I believed it was still there. I think I could still see it there for a moment, but I’m not sure.

echolocation, again

One more manuscript to submit — the big one — by the end of this month. Trying to add a little bit more that’s explicitly about echolocation to reinforce it as the thread that stitches it all together. Decided to look up echolocation in the OED (online through my local library, which is awesome):

1944– The location of objects by means of the echo reflected from them by a sound-signal

Coined in an article from 1944 for Science, “Echolocation by Blind Men, Bats, and Radar” by Donald R. Griffin. Was able to get a pdf of it, thanks to RJP’s access to it through school. Maybe I’ll take a phrase from it, or I’ll make an erasure out of it, or? A few minutes later: I read it; it’s short, so I’m not sure about using it. I’ll read it again while I wait for Scott to be done with jazz band rehearsal tonight.

I’m also thinking of offering definitions at the beginning of echolocation, or maybe offering them at the end. Echolocation: locating objects by their echoes / echo location: locations where echoes dwell / echolocate: the act of using echoes / echolocated: the object/subject/something that has been located by echoes

nov 29/RUN

3.3 miles
trestle turn around
26 degrees / snow
100% snow-covered

Wasn’t planning to run outside today, while it snowed, but something changed my mind — was it seeing people walking out my front window? Was it remembering that I have yaktrax? Was it not wanting to run on the treadmill? I’m not quite sure, but suddenly I found myself getting ready to go out, then leaving the house, then running through a winter wonderland. It wasn’t too cold, or too windy, and with the yaktrax, it wasn’t too slippery. There were times when I was cold or when my feet were a little sore from running with the yaktrax, but mostly I enjoyed being out there in the snow. Snow! Covering every inch of the ground, on the bluff, in the sky. The river was pewter and still open, but for how long? Some dog was losing it down below — maybe they were at the white sands beach, or on the part of the Winchell Trail that descends south from the trestle. So much barking. I’d like to imagine there barks were from the joy and the delight or frolicking through the snow.

Anything else? Some other walkers, at least 2 or 3 other runners, 3 fat tire bikers. Climbing up from under the lake street bridge, I listened to dead leaves on a tree shaking in the wind, sounding like gushing water. I heard more trees later closer to the old stone steps. I stopped at the sliding bench and noticed someone walking on the trail that winds beside the white sands beach.

earlier in the day

It is snowing again this morning. Barely more than flurries, but adding to the thin layer already started a few days ago. Encountered this poem on Instagram this morning, and wanted to remember it. It’s from one of my favorite poets/writers, Wendell Berry:

LIKE SNOW/ Wendell Berry

Suppose we did our work
like the snow, quietly, quietly, 
leaving nothing out.

Something else I encountered this morning that I’d like to remember:

Originally found here: Exploring Dakota Lands and Waters

later, after the run

It may have started as flurries this morning, but it’s bigger flakes now, and they’re piling up. 2 or 3 inches. I shoveled right after I finished running and now, 30 minutes later, the deck is covered again. I wonder how much will we get when it stops snowing?

update, Monday (1 dec 2025): It snowed all night. Apparently we got almost 4 inches, although it seems like more to me.

nov 28/HIKERUN

hike: 40 minutes
Minnehaha Dog Park
21 degrees

Since July or August, FWA and I have been taking Delia-the-dog to the dog park every Friday morning. We’ve only missed one Friday, when we were in Chicago. We took her a few days later, instead. I wasn’t sure if we’d go this morning because it was much colder, but we did. Wow! What a great walk! The dog park is like a winter wonderland. The trail was hard dirt, but no snow, and there was barely any wind. Lots of sun, calm, quiet air, and a river, still and sparkling. I was bundled up in long underwear and my new winter hat and gloves. Had a great talk with FWA about a new project he’s working on.

There was a moment — hard dirt path, bright sun, snow, tree trunks all around of various thicknesses, birds or Bird chirping above, crisp cold air, listening to FWA talk about something he was passionate about, being outside and moving through beautiful land. I told FWA that this moment was making my top ten images of Winter.

run: 4.25 miles
locks and dam / wabun / ford bridge and back
22 degrees
10% snow and ice-covered

With the warm sun, low wind, crisp refreshing air, and the clear path, I knew I needed to go out for a run. I was planning to run to the bottom of the locks and dam no. 1 to admire the river, then walk up the hill and run back, but I got to the bottom and someone was doing a video — they had their camera on a tripod and were standing with their back to the bridge, talking to the camera in Russian — I think it was Russian. I didn’t really stop, just turned around. I decided to run up the Wabun hill and over the ford bridge on the south side, then back on the north side.

Beautiful and wonderful and moments that were effortless, others that were difficult. A small mental victory: I wanted to stop and walk again, but I saw the bright yellow crosswalk sign at 38th street far in the distance. I told myself that I could keep running until I got to it if I just put one foot in front of the other and did it. I did!

10 Things

  1. the river surface was scaled and gun metal gray except for where it was burning silver
  2. a man with a dog, walking fast — I ran to the far side of the path to avoid them. even so, the dog lunged as I ran past and almost reached me
  3. cars driving fast! over the bridge — zoom zoom
  4. stopping at the bench above the edge of the world to admire the view — the bluff wall on the other shore was speckled white
  5. the grass near the bench was covered with crunchy snow — I listened to the 2 distinct sounds, crunch creak, as I slowly walked over it
  6. running on a bare sidewalk under the ford bridge on the st. paul side, hearing a slight echo from my footsteps and the rumble or whoosh? of car passing me
  7. the cold air rushing through my teal hat and making tassels hanging from the ear flaps bob
  8. the wabun hill was covered in leaves and a little slippery
  9. on parts of the path covered with snow, faint traces of reddish-brown dirt that someone from minneapolis parks had spread earlier
  10. the quick, graceful lift — up down up down up down — of a taller, faster runner behind then ahead of me then gone

nov 27/RUN

4.5 miles
john stevens’ house and back
27 degrees
wind: 18 mph
25% ice covered path

Too cold and icy for Scott, so no Thanksgiving run together. It’s too bad we couldn’t do it, but he made the right choice. Too much wind, too much ice, too many other people running and walking. He would have been miserable. I didn’t love all the run — it was hard to run into that wind! — but I loved a lot of it. It wasn’t too cold or windy or icy for me. Winter running is back!

10 Things

  1. clip clop clip clop a runner approaching from behind, wearing ice spikes and running on bare pavement
  2. 2 runners descending on the part of the path below the road south of the double bridge, one of them in a bright orange jacket
  3. minnehaha falls was rushing and (almost) roaring — I stopped at my favorite spot to watch it fall fast, and in sheets, over the ledge
  4. sometimes a little cloudy, sometimes bright sun
  5. the train bells at 50th street station were chiming frantically
  6. a group of people paying for parking at the falls — I wish I could remember what woman said . . .
  7. kids voices over at longfellow house — were they sledding down the hill like RJP did, when she was a kid?
  8. the view above the edge of the world was open and wintery and calming — I kept my distance from the bench because there was a big branch that looked like it might fall in the strong wind
  9. a human, in dark clothing, and a dog, standing at the Rachel Dow Memorial Bench
  10. the 38th street steps are blocked off for the season — today they were thick with ice

update, the next day: I forgot about the silver surface of the river! Runnng south, it burned in the distance as bright sun hit rough water. Wow!

Happy to have a relaxed, drama-free Thanksgiving. The kids are doing much better, and are getting along. RJP made the stuffing this year; FWA, mac-n-cheese. I made 2 pies: apple and maple cream. And, for the first time, I made my own pie crust! I’m proud of myself for saying I was going to do it, then actually doing it. Now we just have to see how it tastes.

Friday morning (the next day): The pies were excellent! Both of them, thanks to Smitten Kitchen: Maple Cream Pie and Even More Perfect Apple Pie. Scott said the maple cream one reminded him of pumpkin pie but better. I was delighted by how the 1/4 teaspoon of ground ginger brightened the apple pie. When I took my first bite I said, it’s so bright! that ginger really brightens it up!, which FWA found hilarious.

Found this poem today. What does the Mississippi River Gorge smell like?

Yaquina River/ Lana Hechtman


The river smells like the absence of sea,
like sky that has lost its confidence,

current wafting down the centuries from 
natives who lived and died on these shores,

the breaths of children’s laughter, their songs
ripple the slow water that goes

only at the pace it is determined to go.
The river smells like bufflehead feet and goose

feathers, salmon scales and brown silt,
fallen cedar boughs, dropped fir cones,

like women brave enough to swim
and gritty motor boat bottoms.

Slick as oil, clear as rain.
The river smells like green and bronze,

the blue of berries and purple of night, 
smells of floods and grief, of relief 

in times of drought, of every dreamer
who ever skipped stones upon it.

The river smells of sun’s sloped shoulders
and moon’s languid kisses, 

and the riverbank smells like a place
to plant myself for all my remaining years

rich delta, aroma I have come to love
despite missing the sea.

nov 23/RUN

3.1 miles
bottom of locks and dam hill
49 degrees

Oh, the sun! Warm enough for me to take my sweatshirt off halfway through the run. Beautiful by the gorge with the bare branches and open view. A few of the trees looked silvery. Was it because the sun was hitting the smallest branches, or a few tiny leaves? There were a lot of lone roller skiers out on the trail. One of them looked awkward, as if they were testing out their skis for the first time in years, or ever. Some bikers, walkers, other runners. An adult and 2 kids howling under the ford bridge. Why?

My favorite part of the run: the surface of the river at the bottom of the hill. A clear reflection of the bridge arches in the water, but the water wasn’t smooth. It looked like an impressionist painting or brush strokes or something else related to a painting. I wondered why, then I realized: the clouds! A sky filled with feathery clouds reflected on the water!

Heading back up the hill I heard the 2 kids and the adult again. This time they were quietly talking up in the bridge arches. I ran for another mile, stopping when I reached a 5k. I walked the rest of the way, admiring the shadows and the tiny buds (is that what they are?)

nov 22/RUN

6 miles
hidden falls overlook
40 degrees

Sun! Warmer (but not too warm) air! An open view! And 6 miles! A good run. I’m tired now and my legs are sore, but I felt strong and light and full of energy at the end.

10 Things

  1. click scrape scrape click — a roller skier’s poles approaching from behind
  2. one roller skier bundled up, another in shorts
  3. running beside 2 roller skiers, one of them listening to the other express concern/frustration about some part of his ski not locking in right
  4. a mini peloton on the road — 10 bikes?
  5. small scales on the surface of the gray water
  6. a serpentine of big cracks and asphalt erupting on the st. paul path
  7. the small building above the hydroelectric plant on the st. paul side is spray-painted bright pink
  8. the gentle trickle of water over the rocks at hidden falls
  9. a bad heavy metal hair band anthem blasting out of the window of a white car
  10. not a wide open view — too many thin branches — but the feeling of openness and air on the st. paul side

Thought about my rock, river, and air chants as I ran. Recited (in my head) as much of the rock one as I could remember. Liked the groove I fell into as I chanted

poet’s clock
poet’s clock
poet’s clock
this big rock

Finishing up the run, I felt strong and fast and proud as I thought about all the work I’ve put in over more than a decade of coming to the gorge at least 3 or 4 times a week, sometimes more, and running and noticing and writing.

nov 18/RUNSWIM

4.3 miles
marshall loop
35 degrees

The forecast was for 2+ inches of sloppy snow early this morning. Maybe rain too. Completely dry. Everything happened just south of us. Hooray! Great conditions for a run. Not too cold or too windy or too crowded. Today’s mental victory: I ran all the way up the marshall hill, over to the river, and down the summit hill without stopping. Stopped at the overlook on the bridge for a minute to check out the sandbar and the reflections and the smooth surface of the river. Beautiful.

10 Things

  1. egg/breakfast sausage smells coming from Black Waffle Bar — no sweet waffle smell
  2. no more leaves on the trees, all on the sidewalk
  3. cars backed up on lake street
  4. the light at the top of the hill: red
  5. smell: savory, eggs and bacon
  6. a car parked in a driveway blocking the path
  7. the bent and crooked slats from blinds in a garage window
  8. two people standing and looking at a stone wall above the ravine near shadow falls
  9. a roller skier on the path, then on the road
  10. several stones stacked on the ancient boulder

echo / / location

I can’t quite remember how it happened, but I was thinking about my Girl Ghost Gorge poems and echoes and chanting — oh, yes, it had something to do with sound and a call for submissions for soundscapes in poetry. As I thought about my rock river air chants, ECHOLOCATION, suddenly popped into my head!

Echolocation is a great title for this collection. Or, echo location. Or, echo | | location. Or, as Scott suggested, echo / / location. I looked it up and someone has a poetry collection with the title echolocation. Is that a problem? To have the same name? I’m not sure. I like the sound of girl ghost gorge, and a girl (me), her ghosts, and the gorge are the theme that inspired all of the poems. But, being located in time and space — both placing myself and being placed by others — seems even more like the theme. At the very least, I’d like to title the final poem of the collection, echolocation.

Here’s something to read about humans and echolocation: How Does Human Echolocation Work? It’s with Daniel Kish, Batman from an Invisibilia episode.

The rest of today is about studying echolocation!

I mentioned echolocation in these past entries:

update, several hours later: I received an email today from a journal that published one of my poems: I’ve been nominated for a Pushcart Prize! This is my second nomination, which is really exciting! It’s for “The Cut-off Wall” (“The Cut-Off Wall” — Rogue Agent, March 2025).

Also, another cool thought about my collection and the chants in it. I’ve been playing around with making the shape of the river out of words in my river chant:

flow flow flow
slow slow slow

In early drafts, I had the words form the river, but now I’m thinking of making a page of these words and removing some to form the shape of the river/gorge. It’s echolocation with the syllables flow and slow bouncing off the object I cannot see! I’m imagining a sound accompaniment to this, inspired by Diana Khoi Nguyen’s reading of her “Triptych” for Ours Poetica:

inspiration starts 2 minutes in

Nguyen doesn’t remove words, but creates space in-between them where the shapes of her brother would be if he had not cut himself out of the photograph. I need to think about how I want to do it — like in this poem, or by removing some of the chanted words altogether. Maybe I wouldn’t call them chants but echolocations?

I think I’d like to do them for all three of the key “objects/subjects”: rock, river, and air! Very cool. I think this would be a great submission for the poetry soundscapes feature that I mentioned earlier in this post.

This section explores poetry in all its sonic dimensions. Across the premodern world, at a time when books were scarce and costly, poetry was often chanted or sung aloud, and the boundary between song and verse was fluid. Many poems resonate with the sounds of nature, while others pulse with onomatopoeia and sonic texture. Later, poets since the early 20th century have pushed the medium to its limits, exploring how the sonic interacts with grammar, rhetoric and rhythm on the page. 

For a special section of Mantis 24 (2026), Soundscapes of Poetry, we invite submissions  that engage with sound in any and all ways—whether through music, noise, onomatopoeia or rhythm, or even the sound of silence itself.

submission call for Mantis

The only bummer: your submission doesn’t include sound files; it’s only the written word. I’d like to find a journal that also wants the sounds.

swim: 1.5 loops
ywca pool

Another swim! Swam at the y before community band rehearsal. It felt good and it wasn’t crowded. I had my own lane. I felt strong and relaxed and swimming a mile and a half wasn’t hard at all. I tried to think about echolocation while I swam, but I just counted my strokes instead.

nov 17/RUN

4.5 miles
veterans home (reverse)
36 degrees

After 4 days in Chicago visiting my sister, a great run. A wonderful trip and a wonderful return. I felt relaxed and strong and steady. Ran for 45 minutes without stopping. A big mental victory. And I didn’t feel wiped out at the end — a big physical victory. I kept my splits steady instead of speeding up too much in the second and third mile. I think that helped. I should be mindful of the second and third mile in future runs.

I ran south and then, instead of continuing on to the falls, I ran up the wabun hill and by the veterans’ home first. Then over the bridge, through the park, past the falls and up and out of the park. I almost always stop at my favorite viewing spot, but didn’t today. Hooray for mental strength!

10 Things

  1. click clack — roller skiers behind me as I neared the locks and dam no 1
  2. overheard — one roller skier to the other: hey — do you want to go to the falls and then turn around? another skier: sure!
  3. open view: above the oak savanna, near the spot where the hills split and you can see the river
  4. empty benches
  5. the rumble of a jack hammer
  6. a cacophony of chirping birds in the trees between the veterans’ bridge and the falls — such a convention!
  7. the creek was brown and subdued
  8. the falls were flowing, but thinner
  9. on the cobblestones beside the falls: a small stretch of ice
  10. waved to a regular: Santa Claus!

before and after the run

Before the run, I was thinking about chants and remembered the performance of a poem I had seen in the movie, Poetry in Motion. I looked it up: The Cutting Prow: For Henri Matisse/ Ed Sanders. What I had remembered, and wanted to hear again as inspiration was the chanting,

Scissor scepter cutting prow
Scissor scepter cutting prow
Scissor scepter cutting prow
Scissor scepter cutting prow

I’ve been thinking that my rock, river, and air chants should do something like this: repeating the essence/the form of something through the chanting of a few significant words. As I ran, I might have briefly thought about this chant/these ideas/this poem, but not in ways that I can recall now.

After the run, I watched Sanders’ full performance of the poem again and found it online:

THE CUTTING PROW: FOR HENRI MATISSE/ Ed Sanders

“The genius was 81
Fearful of blindness
Caught in a wheelchair
Staring at death

But the Angel of mercy
Gave him a year
To scissor some shapes
To soothe the scythe

And shriek! shriek!
Became
swawk! swawk!
The peace of
Scissors.

There was something besides
The inexpressible

Thrill

Of cutting a beautiful shape—-
For

Each thing had a ‘sign’
Each thing had a ‘symbol’
Each thing had a cutting form

-swawk swawkk___
to scissor seize.

‘One must study an object a long time,’
the genius said,
‘to know what its sign is.’

The scissors were his scepter
The cutting
Was as the prow of a barque
To sail him away.
There’s a photograph
which shows him sitting in his wheelchair
bare foot touching the floor
drawing the crisscross steel
a shape in the gouache

His helper sits near him
Till he hands her the form
To pin to the wall

He points with a stick
How he wants it adjusted
This way and that,
Minutitudinous

The last blue iris blooms at
The top of its stalk
Scissors/scepter
Cutting prow

(sung)

Ah, keep those scissors flashing in the
World of Forms, Henri Matisse

The cutting of the scissors
Was the prow of a boat
To take him away
The last blue iris
Blooms at the top
On a warm spring day

Ah, keep those scissors flashing
In the World of Forms, Henri Matisse

Sitting in a wheelchair
Bare feet touching the floor
Angel of Mercy
Pushed him over Next to Plato’s door

Scissor scepter cutting prow
Scissor scepter cutting prow
Scissor scepter cutting prow
Scissor scepter cutting prow

ahh
swawk swawk

ahh swawk swawk

ahh swawk swawk.”

When I first heard/saw this a few years ago, I was drawn to the sound of the scissors and the words he repeated, but now I’m also thinking about Matisse and the cutting forms. Very cool. I might have to return to shadows, silhouettes, and forms and look into Matisse some more!

an hour, or so, later: Watching Poetry in Motion from the beginning, I encountered this great bit during the opening credits:

You don’t want to lead anyone in any subjective sense, to push anything onto them, you know. I mean, you could say teach in a certain way but it’s like putting light in people’s eyes, you know. Just opening the door but not showing them around and telling them, this is the chair, this is table, but saying, here’s the room and turning on the light.

Poetry in Motion

nov 12/RUN

4 miles
river road, north/south
50 degrees
wind: 14 mph / gusts: 29 mph

Ooo. Felt that wind, running north. A few times, I had to square my shoulders and sink down to face it, like I was a linebacker getting ready to tackle the air. Bright sun, lots of shadows — of tree branches, and fence posts, and flying birds, and swirling leaves. I don’t remember looking at the river as much as I remember admiring the air above it. Such openness! I felt strong until I didn’t. Stopped to walk a few times. Took some wooden steps down on a very steep part of the winchell trail. No wall or fence to stop you from falling far enough down to break something. Stopped at the sliding bench to see how much green was left and to admire the birds flitting from branch to branch.

Also stopped after mile 1, to record myself fitting some of Lorine Niedecker’s words into my running/breathing rhythm:

In every
part of
every thing
stuff that
once was rock.

Except, I forgot the stuff part, so I ended up with this:

In every
part of
every thing
there once was
living rock.

Does this second one make sense? Not sure.

before the run

Riprap. Thinking about riprap and rock and creating some sort of ceremony related to the gorge and running on and above the absence of rock. Reading Mary Oliver’s section in The Leaf and the Cloud, titled Riprap, fitting it into my breathing/running pattern —

tell me dear
Rock — will
secrets fly
out when
I break open?

Raking leaves and hearing the man next door scream at his grown daughter again through walls that aren’t thin, listening as she screams back, wondering what the daycare kids will remember from this moment.

Watching the late poet, Andrea Gibson, perform their beautiful poem, MAGA HAT in the Chemo Room:

before we are all wiped off of this planet that desperately wants us to live of natural causes, like kindness, like caring

Remembering something else I read earlier about a troubled woman who encountered a stranger that offered her kindness instead of judgment:

“The only question she asked me was, ‘Where do you want to go?'” Stacia said. “No judgment, no expectations. Just acceptance.”

Stacia immediately felt relieved.

She didn’t want to talk about her troubles; she just wanted to go home. She got in the car and they talked about things that gave her a sense of calm: nature, music and art.

After about 40 minutes, the woman dropped Stacia off at her house. Stacia didn’t learn the stranger’s name and she never saw her again. But she has never forgotten the woman’s question or how it made her feel.

“What I experienced that day — a single generous act of compassion — has stayed with me ever since and it shaped the life I went on to live.”

NPR Unsung Heroes

a few minutes later: Watching the daycare kids playing in the leaves in the front yard, screaming in delight. Remembering how one of them greeted my daughter last week as she parked in front of our house, distraught and overwhelmed, with: you’re beautiful, and how that kindness offered made such a difference.

Reading Gary Snyder’s poem, “Riprap,” fitting his words into my breathing pattern:

Lay down these
words be-
fore your mind
like rocks
placed solid
by hands
in choice of
place, set
before the
body
of the mind
in time
and in space.

Riprap: being broken up, made tender, feelings/fears exposed and scattered, gathering them into words and building a new foundation.


nov 11/RUNYARDWORK

6 miles
hidden falls and back
41 degrees

Beautiful morning! I was over-dressed in 2 long-sleeved shirts, running tights, winter vest, stocking cap, gloves, and a buff. Wow — what was I thinking? Had my hair in a braid, which really wicks the water, so when I arrived home RJP and FWA let me know that sweat was dripping (pouring) down my back. They thought it was hilarious and disgusting. It was.

My average pace wasn’t the fastest (11 minutes), and I stopped several times to walk in the second half, but I’m proud of my mental victories. I had planned to run this route before I started, but in the first mile I already felt it would be too hard. Just make it to the downhill at the locks and dam no 1, I thought. By the time I reached that I thought, just make it to the top of the wabun hill. Then it was, keep going over the bridge and make it to parking lot before you stop. Then, keep going until you hit 3 miles. I made it to 2.8, at the spot when the path and parking lot were closed for construction. I walked, then ran, then walked, then ran again for 1.5 miles.

10 Things

  1. what a view between the ford overlook and hidden falls — wide open and steep
  2. a lot of sirens — police, ambulance, fire? — across the river — on highway 5?
  3. feeling strong and fast on the ford bridge
  4. voices below on the winchell trail — happy, chatting
  5. a tall fence around a construction site (for a BIG house) at Highland Bridge
  6. later, that fence rattling, when a worker was entering the site
  7. the “straight” (that is, straight to me) bluff line across the river, visible and framed with fuzzy tree limbs
  8. someone sitting on the ledge at the ford overlook, gazing out at the gorge
  9. the steady flow of water above hidden falls, part of the new water management plan for Highland bridge — making a soft, pleasing sound
  10. empty benches, until I stopped at the one above the edge of the world to retie my shoes

Arrived home just in time to rake the leaves for almost 2 hours. Now I’m tired!

a few more things: Inspired by a call for hybrid/text-images/sound pieces for a journal, I thought about doing more with my rock, river, and air chants from GGG. Not sure I can do it in time for this call (11/16), but something fun to include with GGG as a collection.

Talked with RJP and she showed me her sketches from yesterday’s hike in the gorge. I love them! I could imagine us doing some fun collaborations!

Came across this great resource while searching for something else rock-related. It seems fitting to add it in this entry, since I ran to Hidden Falls! The Cascades of Minneapolis/St. Paul

nov 10/SWIM!HIKE!RUN!

2600 yards / 1.5 loops
104 laps
ywca pool

Another swim. Hooray! It took some time to get my nose plug and goggles sorted — they were leaking — and my cap wasn’t ever quite on right, but it was a great swim. A solid 45+ minutes of moving through the water. I shared a lane with a woman who did some interesting sets. Lots of dolphin kick on her back. Some of the time she swam on her back, feet first — normally to move forward you swim head first. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen that before. She was doing a strange spread-finger paddle. She was already swimming when I started, and kept going after I finished. I wonder how long she swims for. I wasn’t trying to be competitive with her, but I probably was, in spite of my best attempts to be chill. Mostly, we were at opposite ends of the pool, but a few times I would catch up to her. Difficult to pass — was she trying to race me? Once our hands hit as we passed each other.

To focus my attention on something else, I looked down at the dancing shadows on the pool floor. Soft, not very distinct, like the floor was moving. It wasn’t that bright outside, so there were no big circles of light. Didn’t notice any pool friends — no fuzz.

hike: 30 minutes
with RJP
around the gorge
35 degrees

Hiked with RJP to some favorite spots that I’ve written about so she could take some pictures. She’s doing a series of colored pencil drawings inspired by GGG poems for her final project in her drawing class! Very cool!

We took the old stone steps to the river, then back up and over to the winchell trail and the oak savanna. RJP took a picture of the tree growing through the fence — I hope she’s able to draw it. She took lots of pictures of steps and rocks and trees. Oh — and the surface of the river.

run: 4 miles
wabun bluff / locks and dam no. 1 / river road
35 degrees

An afternoon run. Only 4:00 and it’s already getting dark. Chilly, but not too cold. The lack of wind helped. Lots of leaves on the trail, but not too many runners. A steady stream of cars, kids playing soccer over at the school — kick it higher! higher! Parents waiting to pick up kids at Dowling Elementary. Some voices down in the gorge. Could it be rowers? I couldn’t tell. The gate into the Locks and Dam no. 1 was closed. Is it closed for the season?

No turkeys or geese or fat tires or roller skiers. No music blasting from radios or droning leaf blowers. Plenty of squirrels, but none of them darted in front of me. Too busy rooting around in the dry leaves, making a racket.

cells remember

Found a great blog post on Poetry Foundation about cells:

symbiogenesis: we came about not only through competition but through acts of cooperation. We carry evidence of species merger in our cells, and of species relation in almost every structure we daily rely upon. Is there one piece of us that doesn’t also, in some form, belong to someone else? Your fingers ghosting chimp as they slender in the air. Lobe-finned fishes did protolungs, acorn worms might have done something like a heart. The more complex organs, like eyes, had to be developed many times, but jellyfish saw first, and not for us. Biology is remembering. Our cells remember ancient chemical interactions, pre-life, and our limbs remember salamanders. A poem remembers our past in language and posits a future in the simplest sense, like a to-do note, hoping that it will be read at some point hence, reminding us of something worth knowing. It can cast back between the “its” and the “octopus” in the second paragraph of this blog and remember the relation. In addition, it’s an ecosystem that, ideally, like any functioning ecosystem, deals with its own waste.

Like the octopus’s smart shadow, a poem’s shadow also always knows more than we do.

Mitosis, Meiosis, Poiesis

Biology remembers. Cells remember. Cells remember? Here’s some future reading: How a cell remembers

nov 8/RUN

5.5 miles
falls / veterans home / ford bridge
34 degrees

Wonderful November weather — at least, I think so. Sure, the sky was gray and it was just above freezing but the color left on the trees was intense and the views were open, and the river — the river! — steel blue with scales, curving and stretching. Running over the ford bridge, admiring the red and yellow and orange tree line on the west bank, looking out at the open water, I smiled and reflected on how lucky I am to live here and how glad I am that I’ve dedicated myself to the place for almost a decade.

I experimented with the route today. I ran to the falls then past them to the tall bridge then over to the veterans home and across the ford bridge. Under the bridge and over to the other side then across and north to the winchell trail. A falls, a creek, a river, some seeps. 2 bridges. Above, over, beside, and through the locks and dam no. 1. 3 parks.

10 Things

  1. 2 roller skiers
  2. 2 fat tire bikes
  3. a tree the color of golden chrysanthemums
  4. deep grayish blue river with soft scales
  5. the road over the bridge to the veterans home was blocked off with cones and tape, but the walking wasn’t
  6. the strong smell of week as I passed by a walker on the ford bridge
  7. running above on the ford bridge, looking down at the painted lines of parking spaces at locks and dam no 1
  8. running near the edge of the bluff, the yellowed leaves were thick on the path
  9. a young kid near the edge, a mom calmly saying, it makes me nervous to have you that close to the edge. if you tripped you could fall straight down
  10. running over the tall bridge, admiring the sandy trail far below me

Looked up “cellular” on poetry foundation and found this wonderful poem:

A Body’s Universe of Big Bangs/ Leslie Contreras Schwartz

A body must remind itself
to keep living, continually,
throughout the day.

Even at night while sleeping,
proteins, either messenger, builder,
or destroyer, keeps busy

transforming itself or other substances.
Scientists call these reactions
—to change their innate structure,
dictated by DNA—cellular frustration,

a cotton-cloud nomenclature for crusade,
combat, warfare, aid, unification,
scaffold, or sustain.

Even while the body sleeps, a jaw slackened
into an open dream, inside is the drama
of the body’s own substances meeting

one another, stealing elements,
being changed elementally,
altered by a new story

called chemical reaction.
A building and demolishment,
creating or undoing,

the body can find movement,
functioning organs, resists illness—
or doesn’t. Look inside every living being

and find this narrative of resistance,
the live feed of being resisted.
The infant clasping her fist

or the 98-year-old releasing
hers. This is how it should be,
we think, a long story carried out

to a soft conclusion. In reality,
little deaths hover and nibble,
little births opening mouths
and bodies the site of stories

the tales given to us, and retold, retold,
never altered, and the ones forgotten,
changed, unremembered

until this place is made of only
ourselves. Our own small dictators,
peacemakers, architects, artists.

A derelict cottage,
a monumental church
struck in gold, an artist’s studio

layered with paints and cut paper,
knives and large canvas—

the site the only place
containing our best holy song:

I will live. I will live. I will keep living.

I love so much about this poem and the poetic way Schwartz describes what a cell does in (and to) the body. These lines were particularly striking:

and bodies the site of stories

the tales given to us, and retold, retold,
never altered, and the ones forgotten,
changed, unremembered

until this place is made of only
ourselves. Our own small dictators,
peacemakers, architects, artists.

Cells as dictators, architects, artists? Nice. As I think about more expansive understandings of what it means to be an artist, I especially like this idea of a cell as an artist.

Googled more about the history of the discovery of the cell and was reminded that central to the discovery, and the very idea of a cell, is the microscope and the ability to see a cell. This made me think of Robin Wall Kimmerer and something she said in an interview about western science. Can I find it?

Maybe this, from “Ways of Knowing”:

Both Western science and traditional ecological knowledge are methods of reading the land. That’s where they come together. But they’re reading the land in different ways. Scientists use the intellect and the senses, usually enhanced by technology. They set spirit and emotion off to the side and bar them from participating. Often science dismisses indigenous knowledge as folklore — not objective or empirical, and thus not valid. But indigenous knowledge, too, is based on observation, on experiment. The difference is that it includes spiritual relationships and spiritual explanations. Traditional knowledge brings together the seen and the unseen, whereas Western science says that if we can’t measure something, it doesn’t exist.

Two Ways Of Knowing: Robin Wall Kimmerer On Scientific And Native American Views Of The Natural World

Or maybe it was this, from “How to See” in Gathering Moss?

We poor myopic humans, with neither the raptor’s gift of long-distance acuity, nor the talents of a housefly for panoramic vision. However, with our big brains, we are at least aware of the limits of our vision. With a degree of humility rare in our species, we acknowledge there is much that we can’t see, and so contrive remarkable ways to observe the world…Electronic microscopes let us wander the remote universe of our own cells. But at the middle scale, that of the unaided eye, our senses seem to be strangely dulled. With sophisticated technology we strive to see what is beyond us, but are often blind to the myriad sparkling facets that lie so close at hand. We think we’re seeing when we’ve only scratched the surface….Has the power of our devices led us to distrust our unaided eyes? Or have we become dismissive of what takes no technology but only time and patience to perceive?

“How to See” in Gathering Moss/ Robin Wall Kimmerer

For further reading, see this article on the history of the cell.

And this video is fun: The Wacky History of Cell Theory

nov 6/RUN

3.35 miles
2 trails+
49 degrees / feels like 37
wind: 15 mph / gusts: 32 mph

Windy today. Had to make sure my hat was secure. Ran south to the start of the Winchell Trail. Stopped to admire the river — a clearer view, with far fewer leaves. Stopped again, a few minutes later, to study a felled tree. Yesterday, we (me, Scott, FWA) had seen park workers with chainsaws and a truck with a ladder around here as we drove by. This must be one of the trees they cut down. I felt a little safer running through this section in the strong winds, knowing that the tree workers had just been here yesterday removing sprawling branches and leaning trees.

added a few hours later: this came up on my instagram feed. I love these stories and learning more about what park workers do!

The trail was covered in leaves, so I couldn’t see if there were any potholes or big cracks. Of course, I often can’t see them even if the path is clear. So I run lightly and carefully. The worst part of the trail was the graveled bit in the ravine. Ouch! A few times my feet landed on the sharp end of a stone.

10 Things

  1. above the floodplain forest, looking out, no leaves, small branches all around created a veil of mesh, making everything look fuzzy
  2. the wind rushing through the leaves on the bluff, or was it water seeping out of the limestone?
  3. the voices of laughing kids at the playground
  4. swirling leaves
  5. leaves, floating gently
  6. voices above me
  7. a biker with their headlight, their wheel crossing over and onto the walking path
  8. a short, all-white animal on the trail — a dog? no a little kid in a white snowsuit
  9. the limestone ledge in the ravine looking dark and cavernous
  10. something clanging down below near the old stone steps — a dog collar?

cells

1 — juliana spahr

the opening lines of poemwrittenafterseptember11/2001 / juliana spahr

There are these things:

cells, the movement of cells and the division of cells

and then the general beating of circulation

and hands, and body, and feet

and skin that surrounds hands, body, feet.

This is a shape,

a shape of blood beating and cells dividing. 

But outside of this shape is space.

—

cells
the movement of cells
the division of cells

2 — how much of us is not us?

57%. 43% of a human body is made up of human cells, the rest is: “bacteria, viruses, fungi and archaea (organisms originally misclassified as bacteria)” (More than half of your body is not human).

the importance of microbiomes

3 — L Niedecker and dwelling with place

our bodies as place or space (see J Spahr up above)

      It all comes down
to the family

‘We have a lovely
finite parentage–
mineral

vegetable
animal’ 3

Instead of fretting over how such a finite parentage might threaten our “humaniqueness,” Niedecker welcomes our bond with nonhuman life and seeks instead to endow us, as she writes in “Paean to Place,” with a deeper appreciation for the “sea water running / in [our] veins.”

She also insists upon the necessity of our learning to dwell with other biotic elements who share our land-community, including what she calls in one poem “our relative the air” and “our rich friend / silt.”

—

Niedecker’s portrayal of living with beings and things in our environment is not merely a poetic metaphor; it also finds support in the field of biology. We now understand that even our bodies, the things we think of as most us, are in fact shared organisms, with trillions of microbacteria colonizing our guts in such numbers that they may potentially outnumber our own cells. 

Dwelling with Place: Lorine Niedecker’s Ecopoetics

some rambling: And now I’m thinking about all of this and wondering if it fits with Girl Ghost Gorge or is part of a new (series of) poems? It does, I think, in terms of the relationship between the girl and the ghost and the gorge and how the speaker/writer/Sara imagines herself as all three yet also wants to assert a Sara-self (Girl). I like the idea of composing this poem, and assertion of self, with lines from others — a cento! Poets and scientists and geologists and historians.

Questions of what makes us us? and what part of us remains throughout our lifetime? and what is the essence of Sara or, who is Sara, on the cellular level? I do think that these are questions that haunt these poems, as the other side of a deep desire for connection. In light of so many connections and how much of me is made up of stuff outside of or before me, what is sturdy and solid and singular about Girl/Sara/me?

I came up with a draft of a poem responding to these questions that I quite like. I’m calling out “43% Girl”

Happy 4th Anniversary

During today’s On This Day practice, I discovered this, from 2021:

Yesterday, I started working on a poem (or a series of poems?) based on my October focus on ghosts and haunting. I’ve decided to use my rhythmic breathing pattern as the form: couplets with 1 three syllable line and 1 two syllable line (3/2)

from log entry dated 6 nov 2021

4 years. That seems like a long time to be working on one collection of poems, and also not that long at all. It started as Haunts, then became Girl Ghost Gorge. Poems all about haunting a place and being haunted by it. Up until recently, the haunting involved a lot of feeling disconnected and isolated. Perhaps because of all of the attention I’ve given the gorge and those feelings, I feel more connected and more girl, less ghost. I should finish this collection and be done with it before I start editing it too much and lose some of its original story.