Tag: poem

dec 14/SWIM!

1.5 loops
100 laps
outside: -5 degrees

I swam 3 times this week! Scott and I decided to go early, before the water aerobics class. For almost the entire swim, I had the lane to myself. In the last 5 minutes, a woman (I think) I shared a lane with earlier in the week joined me. I did my usual swim of continuous 200s, broken up by breathing, but I added a twist in the middle: for a 600, or maybe an 800?, I swam faster and kicked harder on the even 50s (when I was breathing every 4 and 6 strokes). It felt fun to go faster.

Today’s pool friends: shimmying shadows on the pool floor, making everything look strange and off-kilter; the older woman in the pale blue suit who is not particularly fast, but is a strong swimmer; a guy in black trunks who was also a strong swimmer; a guy in olive green shorts walking and stretching the length of the shallow end; my squeaky nose plug; a guy in black shorts with a belt on, aqua jogging in the deep end. No fuzz or unsettling floating things.

I tried to think about my echolocation hybrid piece, but I struggled to keep a thought in my head. Instead I counted strokes, and noticed other people, and turned off most of my conscious thought.

Earlier this morning, I quarried another Emily Dickinson poem: We Grow Accustomed to the Dark:

one syllable: We grow Dark when light put holds lamp Her step night then fit meet road those brain not moon sign star come out grope hit tree in but They learn see sight life straight

two syllable: away neighbor witness goodbye moment newness vision erect larger evenings disclose within bravest  little sometimes forehead either darkenss alters something adjusts itself midnight almost

three syllable: accustomed uncertain directly

my poem:

Brain alters —

gropes the Dark,
hits lamp light,

and meets night
directly.
Away moon!
Away stars!
Goodbye sight.
The moment
adjusts — they
learn larger
uncertainties,
witness newness
within, fit
vision into
the almost,
then meet the
evening erect,
but not straight.

The other day, I came across a powerful poem by Pat Parker on poems.com. Wow!

excerpt from One Thanksgiving Day/ Pat Parker

One Thanksgiving Day
Priscilla Ford
got into her
Lincoln Continental
drove to Virginia Street
in downtown Reno
and ran over thirty people.
Six of them died.

One Thanksgiving Day
Priscilla Fordgot into her
Lincoln Continental
drove to Virginia Street
in downtown Reno
and ran over thirty people.
Six of them died.

. . .

Priscilla Ford
got into her
Lincoln Continental
drove to Virginia Street
in downtown Reno
and ran over thirty people.
Six of them died
and now Priscilla Fordwill die.
The state of Nevada
has judged
that it is
not crazy
for Black folks
to kill white folks
with their cars.
Priscilla Ford
will be
the second woman
executed in Nevada’s history.
it’s her highest
finish in life.

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),

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 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 19/RUN

5.2 miles
bottom and franklin and back
39 degrees

Another great late morning for a run. Overcast, possibly some drizzle/freezing rain/flurries. Not too cold, not too windy. Everything gray with brown and dull yellow. Listened to music because I had the King George song from Hamilton in my head — Billie Eilish, then my time and moment playlists. Even with the headphones in, I could hear a loud rumble below. Some sort of big machine doing something — was it at the white sands beach? I noticed a walker notice the sound too. He was startled, then confused, then curious as he peered down, trying to figure out what was causing the ruckus.

Witnessed a big, dark brown squirrel dart fast across my path. So fast that I didn’t have to stutter-step. Stopped at the bottom of the hill for a port-a-potty stop and to admire the river: blueish gray with little ripples. All open, no ice chunks yet. Stopped again at the sliding bench and in the tunnel of trees just above the floodplain forest. Took out my headphones and listened to the gorge. It sounded like it might be softly raining. Heard loud rustling, saw a flash of movement down below. Felt calm, relaxed.

At the sliding bench, I took a picture of the progress: open! no leaves to block out my view of the white sands beach, only thin branches that I can see through!

sliding bench / 19 nov 2025

One more thing about the run that I almost forgot. During the second half, after I climbed out of the flats, I felt fast and free. I had a huge smile on my face and was almost feeling a runner’s high. I haven’t experienced one of those in a while.

more of echo location

echolocation: using sonar flashes to “see” / interpreting echoes (as sound, as reverberations from the past) / navigation / location / locating and being located / finding being found / placing being placed / listen for echoes / gain substance and become an echo / repeat, not same but similar / the location of echoes / an indication of a big and open space / using words and sounds and syllables to place my self, to become more than ghost, girl

“Echolocation is the act of emitting a sound that bounces off an object or surface and comes back to you as an echo. This echo can help determine distance, location, motion, size, shape or surface material” (source).

Passive echolocation is sound that occur incidentally in the environment. As a car travels through a tunnel, the sound changes as the car enters the tunnel, travels through it and exits the tunnel. The sound your cane makes on the ground as you tap or roll will be different when you are next to a building compared to in an open area without obstruction.

Active echolocation, on the other hand, is sound you consciously produce like clapping your hands or clicking your tongue. Eventually, the sound you create bounces off other objects and comes back to you. Since your brain is familiar with the sounds you make, the echoes are easier for you to distinguish. By consistently emitting a sound and waiting for the sound to change, you can use active echolocation to help you navigate through an environment.

source

 How does the
sound of your
footsteps change
as you move
from tile floor
to carpet?
Listen to
the sound your
voice makes when
you are in
a small room
compared to
a large room.

Sit in a
moving car
passing by
parked cars. Roll
your window
down. Listen
to how sound
shifts between
each parked car
as you pass them.

you learn to
hear doorways
and walls and
wide open
spaces

Echolocation is an interesting metaphor within poetry and an important practical approach to navigating an unseen (or not seen) world.

Location for me is about recognition — being seen, offered a place in the family of things, and recognizing others (being held by/holding). And it is also about literally locating and navigating a world. As my vision fails, what other ways can I safely move through space?

And, here are a few lines from U A Fanthorpe that link echoes with ghosts and remind me of echolocation — especially those humpback whales:

Ghosts of past, present, future.
But the ones the living would like to meet are the echoes
Of moments of small dead joys still quick in the streets

These are the ghosts the living would prefer,
Ghosts who’d improve our ratings. Ghosts
Of the great innocent songs of freedom
That shoulder their way round the world like humpback whales

nov 9/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 neight 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 ahve we become dismissive of what takes no texhnology 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 5/RUN

4.25 miles
marshall loop (to Summit)
47 degrees

What a run! Late fall/November is the best — half leaved, half unleaved. Cooler, more energy in the air. Two things I want to remember more than anything else:

1

Running down the summit hill, nearing the lake street/marshall bridge, a woman ahead of me, walking with another person, wearing the most amazing BRIGHT pinkish orangish jacket. She glowed. As I ran by I called out, I love your bright jacket. She slapped her thigh in delight and called back, It’s my don’t hit me jacket. Then we both laughed.

2

Just cresting the final hill and almost to the ancient boulder, I passed by two women walking and talking and marveling at how beautiful this place is. They both agreed, they hoped they never had to leave it. Then the younger woman, presumably the daughter, said to the older woman (mother): I only want to live here or where you are. That broke me open in the best way possible. I want to make that the title of a poem.

Reflecting on these moments, I imagined turning them into 2 (very brief) acts of a play. Act 1: the bright colored jacket, Act 2: mother and daughter share a moment.

I had a great run. I did the Marshall hill loop. I ran up the whole thing and didn’t stop to walk until I reached the Monument. Then I climbed down a few steps to listen to the shadows fall. After a few minutes, I ran back home — down the summit hill, past the woman in the bright jacket, over the bridge, up the ancient boulder and past the mother and daughter.

added 5 hours later: I just remembered the river and standing on the lake street bridge, peering over the edge and staring into the glitter path. Such bright, sparkling water! I’m not sure I could have stared at it as long and as directly as I did if I didn’t have so many dead cone cells. Bright lights don’t bother me much anymore.

bells

I’m working on the final (I think) poem in my collection. It’s a reworking of my ending poem for the OG haunts. And it’s inspired by some words from Annie Dillard (in “Seeing” from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek) that I’ve fit into my running/breathing form:

My whole life
I’d been 
a bell but
never
knew until
I was
lifted and
struck. Now
I am still
ringing.
—Annie Dillard

Here’s what I wrote in a pages document I’m using to gather some thoughts:

something about becoming a bell, or remembering that I was a bell — vibrating, carrying and passing on the songs — ancient rhythms of grief joy love anger restlessness buried deep within her, knocked loose by this place, by her ghosts, by her never ending movement — everything buzzing, ringing, chiming, pulsing, thrumming, strumming — even the oldest rocks shimmy and shake and shift and settle — her body, an echo, her feet adding to the ruts and the grooves, leaving a trace in foot strikes and words and shadows and, a scattering of Saras all around

For some of my run I thought about bells and Annie Dillard’s quotation about being a bell and Ammons and energy and movement and cells bouncing and shaking and disintegrating and being replaced and movement and — I wish I could remember the rest of what I was thinking, but I can’t.

I do remember one other bell-related thing I thought about. The book closes with Annie Dillard’s bell struck quotation. It begins with some lines from Emily Dickinson and “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” that I fit into my breathing/running form:

As all the
Heavens
were a Bell,
Being
but an Ear

I am both bell and ear. Some substance of the Heavens/the Bell/the Eternal resides within me. And, to be = to notice, to listen

before the run

Yes, to this poem-of-the-day on poets.org and the discovery of a new word (or the remembering of a word long forgotten): vermiculation!

Some Melodious Plot/ Anthony Borruso

The United States government murdered over 12 billion birds over the course of 1959 
threw [sic] 2001. As they killed off the real birds they replaced thim [sic] with surveillance 
drone replicas. Indistinguishable from a biological bird. There are now no real 
birds left. 

—Official Birds Aren’t Real Informational Van Bumper Sticker

i. The Philosophical Ornithologist

It is, as all things are, a problem 
of perspective. What you think

you are watching, watches 
you. Your binoculars convince

themselves they’re quotation marks. 
The spy in the song, the feathered

thoughts, the cold hard data 
you spun into silky fact

that the comment section couldn’t 
wait to run its fingers over.

Of course, the pigeons adapted 
to an urban space—they’re party birds

with smokey plumage, and they grow 
peckish unless they’re bobbing

beaks to Milli Vanilli or waving 
glow sticks around the Sabrett stand.

Ancient Egyptians and Williamsburg 
hipsters have nothing in common

except how their feelings take sharp 
angles in broad daylight when the sun

nests in their beards. What I mean 
is that the bygone is hellbent

on a comeback, i.e., the early bird 
pecks a blog post about the importance

of visually manifesting the worm— 
actually encompassing its wriggle

in your quaint skull before 
taking it to beak. You know though

that we are post-extinction and fully 
flapped out—just look at us,

ogling Mother Nature’s augmentation 
with craned necks, covering every

millimeter of the visible world 
with the vermiculations of a stock

ticker. Something’s wrong. Like, 
real wrong: I knock on mountains

and hear a vast metallic thud. I sleep 
on eiderdown, but can’t seem to

squawk loud enough to stir the other 
Denny’s denizens from their Grand

Slam breakfasts. In Altoona, Pennsylvania 
and Waco, Texas, I can feel my face

being scanned every time I munch 
a Big Mac. On this highway, a pit stop

is a pit stop is a pit stop and overhead 
migration is a chance to grease gears

and re-feather the avian bait-and-switch.

vermiculation: Merriam-Webster entry

1: TORTUOUS, INVOLUTE

2: full of worms : WORM-EATEN

3

a: VERMIFORM (resembling a worm in shape)

b: marked with irregular fine lines or with wavy impressed lines
(line in the feathers of a bird)

cells and spindles

Yesterday I mentioned that a line from Hix’s cell phone reminded me of A.R. Ammons’ garbage. Today, I’m revisiting garbage to find and think about the lines.

Reading through it again, I found this:

we, give rise to to us: we are not, though, though
natural, divorced from higher, finer configurations:

tissues and holograms of energy circulate in
us and seek and find representations of themselves

outside us, so that we can participate in
celebrations high and know reaches of feeling

and sight and thought that penetrate (really
penetrate) far, far beyond these our wet cells,

right on up past our stories, the planets, moons,
and other bodies locally to the other end of

the pole where matter’s forms diffuse and
energy loses all means to express itself except

as spirit, there, oh, yes, in the abiding where
mind but nothing else abides, the eternal,

until it turns itself into another pear or sunfish

These lines stayed with me as I ran today.


nov 4/RUN

4 miles
river road, north/south
49 degrees

We were planning to go to the Y, but when we stepped outside and felt how beautiful it was, we changed our plans. Instead of swimming, I would go running. I’m glad I did; it was beautiful out there! Saw on the forecast that rain turning into snow is possible on Saturday. It’s coming: winter! Felt strong again and bouncy, able to pop off the asphalt with my powerful leg swings and foot strikes. Nice!

I’m writing this 3 hours late because we had a mini kid crisis with parking tickets and passes. Had to help figure that out. Can I remember 10 things?

10 Things

  1. Good morning Dave! / Good morning Sara
  2. running in shorts with bare legs, warmed by the sun
  3. a tall oak, 2 of its branches stretched, looking almost like shrugging shoulders
  4. a lime bike below me in the bushes
  5. stopping before the trestle, walking through dead leaves, standing on the edge of the bluff, looking down to the below the trestle and at the blue river
  6. the warning tape and cones around the big crack north of the trestle have been removed — has the crack cracked more? Possibly
  7. standing by an empty bench nearing franklin, walking past it to another bluff edge and another open view of the river and the other side
  8. sliding bench: empty
  9. my shadow: sturdy, strong, moving fast
  10. after the run, walking back through the grass, kicking up dead leaves and delighting in their crunchiness

Listened to the last part of the Invisibilia episode that I mentioned yesterday. According to the neuroscientists, there is no thing in our body that doesn’t change over the course of our lifetime, even our brain cells are transformed. I need to listen to it again; I was distracted.

3 hours later:

“Neurons don’t die and get replaced, but the atoms that make them up are constantly turning over.”

memory: “each time we think about a memory, we corrupt it”

“we have this illusion of continuity”

Looked up “cell” on poems.com and found this great poem:

Always and Only from Material/ H.L Hix

A drop of water changes shape if it falls through an electric field
(the thunderstorm, say, that gave God material form
in Job, then in Lear trued troposphere to terror).
The drop takes the shape of a spindle (the same that turns,
in the myth of Er, on the knees of Necessity)
and sends out from tl1e positively-charged spindle-point
a slender filament of electrical force.
Or take your red blood cells, which in the blood itself
retain the shape of a dimpled disc, a spongy
rubber ball squeezed lightly between finger and thumb.
A little water, though, to thin that blood, and the cell
turns spherical; a little salt, and the entire
cell shrinks and puckers, grape into raisin.
Mysteries attend even membrane formation.
No pure liquid ever froths or foams. Something
must be dissolved or suspended, to sustain
the additional surface area, the passage
from smooth and taut to bubbled and subdivided.
I feel subdivided, denatured, quasi-solid.
I often fall through electrical fields. I can speak
only as I do: in fragments, of a continuum.

This last bit: I feel subdivided, denatured, quasi-solid./ I often fall through electrical fields. I can speak/ only as I do: in fragments, of a continuum.

Hix’s mention of the spindle reminds me of A.R. Ammons and garbage. I remember that he writes about the spindle early on — in relation to presocratic philosophers, I think? I’ll have to find the reference.

I always forget what denatured means: take away or alter the natural qualities of.

Do I feel subdivided, denatured? No, I don’t feel fragmented or altered, just unstable and never quite finished.,

This poem comes from a book that I might like to find: BORED IN ARCANE CURSIVE UNDER LODGEPOLE BARK

“H. L. Hix demonstrates a Thoreauvian burrowing of the mind—a burrowing of fifty poems—into fifty “seed sentences” from fifty “soil texts” from natural history. The poems burrow, too, into common yet rarified encounters with “the carcass of an elk,” or the sun which “contains all direction,” or the “breathing of Breathing” of a “fresh-brushed red-brown ribcage-rounded coat” of a horse. We readers are invited to burrow along with Hix, not unlike “generations of a beetle species” who can “migrate /deeper into a cave than any individual / could travel to get out.” The exploration yields glimpses of the mystic part and the elusive, mythic whole as well as a profound and sobering reflection of the human experience upon planet Earth.”         

nov 3/RUN

4.5 miles
minnehaha falls, new variation
45 degrees

Late fall fabulousness! More of a view, sparkling water, crisper air, brightly colored leaves. Had fun trying out a variation on the minnehaha falls loop: the regular version until I reached the steps near the falls. I took them down, then ran beside the creek until I reached the last bridge before the path is closed. Crossed over the creek, turned back up towards the river road. Climbed up a hill that led me to the bottom of wabun park. Ran up some easy steps — a stretch of slanted sidewalk, a set of 5 or 6 steps, sidewalk, steps, sidewalk, steps. Ran past the splash pad that I used to take the kids to 12 or so years ago, then down the steep hill to the locks and dam.

I’m feeling stronger, physically and mentally. Scott and I are thinking about doing the marathon again in fall of 2026.

10 Things

  1. the tree that is usually red 2 doors down is yellow-orange this year
  2. the view to the other side is opening up — less leaves on the trees
  3. river surface — bright white and burning
  4. a thinner falls
  5. a subdued creek down below — not rushing or gushing but also not still
  6. honking geese near the splash pad in Wabun
  7. the gate down to the falls is still open
  8. empty benches above the edge of the world and at Rachel Dow Memorial bench — I decided to stop at the edge bench, which is not right on the edge but several dozen feet in — walked over to the edge and admired the water and sun and openness of it all
  9. bright pink graffiti under the ford bridge
  10. good morning/morning! greeting a woman in a puffer jacket that I think I saw in the same spot yesterday

after the run

I am officially ready for winter running. Scott and I went to Costco and they had some great winter stuff set up in the front. New gloves, 2 new pairs of running tights and base layer shirts, and all the hand and foot warmers that I could possibly need! Guess that means I’ll have to run outside in the arctic cold so I can use them!

cells cells cells cells cells

Today I’m returning to EAP and “The Bells,” which I my using as a template for my own “The Cells” poem. Three versions of cells that I’ve been working with so far: dying/dead photoreceptor cone cells; the uncontrolled growth of cancer cells and late capitalism; and the narrowing of a world out of anxiety and necessity —

writing this, now I’m wondering about cells as individual building blocks of living things and the phrase, on the cellular level. What exactly does that mean? basic functional and structural unit of an organism.

And now, I’m looking up cellular level and “cell small room” and reading about “understanding health at the cellular level” and having a wonderful thought: why not devote a month to the cell and some of its different meanings? Fun! In the past 2 months, I haven’t posted monthly challenges; I’ve been too busy working on a draft of Girl Ghost Gorge. As I finish that (because I want to be finished for a while and submit it for a first book contest), I’d like to return to the delightfully wandering work of picking a topic and finding as many different ways to imagine and understand it as I can.

a lingering thought: I am enjoying using EA Poe’s “The Bells” as a starting point for a poem, but I’m not sure I’m a good enough poet (yet? ever?) to wrangle rhyme and meter the way he does in his poem. So tricky and easy to overdo it.

and now a random thought bursting in my brain: what is poetry, at the cellular level? the basic unit, the building block of poetry? Rhyme, meter, sound, pulse, something else?

from definitions of cell on Merriam Webster: a single room, usually for one person

cellular, celluloid, cell phones cell towers, the creepy movie The Cell

Looked up cell on poets.org. Found this Sara poem!

Sara in Her Father’s Arms/ George Oppen

Cell by cell the baby made herself, the cells

Made cells. That is to say

The baby is made largely of milk. Lying in her father’s arms, the little seed eyes

Moving, trying to see, smiling for us

To see, she will make a household

To her need of these rooms—Sara, little seed,

Little violent, diligent seed. Come let us look at the world

Glittering: this seed will speak,

Max, words! There will be no other words in the world

But those our children speak. What will she make of a world

Do you suppose, Max, of which she is made.

Sara, little seed! Love it. And, Come let us look at the world/glittering and What will she make/of a world of which she is made

WHAT? Whoa!

So, reading this poem and the opening lines, Cell by cell, the baby made herself, the cells/made cells, prompted me to ask and then investigate: How often are our cells replaced? And do all of them get replaced every 7 years? I found information about the time span of different types of cells, an explanation of why the 7 years thing is a myth, and then this from NPR: Does Your Body Really Refresh Itself Every 7 Years?

I watcher their video and got to the part, which is almost at the end, when they say this:

And there’s one more part of you that lasts your whole life

2:14Months before you were born,

2:16a little cluster of cells stretched and filled themselves with transparent protein

2:21As you grew, even after birth, more and more fibers were added, but that center endured

2:28This is your lens the window through which you are watching this video right now2:34and its core has remained the same since the moment you first opened your eyes

generated transcript on YouTube

Sara’s little seed eyes?! I had no idea that the lens lasts!

Video (can’t embed it)
A tumblr post with more info

And found out this about the lens:

What is the eye lens made of?

The lens of your eye is made up of structural proteins called crystallins. This is why it’s sometimes called the “crystalline lens.” It has the highest concentration of proteins of almost any tissue in your body. These specialized proteins give the lens its transparency and focusing power. Mature crystallins have no nucleus or organelles — they lose them as they mature. This adds to their clarity and transparency.

But having no nucleus or organelles also prevents the cells from reproducing. This means they don’t “turn over,” as most of your body’s cells do. The cells arrange themselves in concentric layers, like tree rings. Throughout your life, new cells continue to grow at the outer edges of the circle, while the older cells compress toward the center. Eventually, the older cells at the center begin to show wear and tear.

source

Like little tree rings?! You better believe that that is making it into a poem at some point!

future explorations and ideas to play with: If (most) of our cells are being replaced, what makes us us? And, are they really “our” cells? Or, do we all just live together (Oppen’s household)? Is a body one thing?

Listen to Lulu Miller on an Invisibilia episode, especially the last story:

Finally Lulu talks to a scientist to come up with a complete catalogue of all the things about us that actually do stay stable over the course of our lives. They look at everything from cells to memories until ultimately they come up with a list — but it’s a really short list.

a final note: Questions about cells and bodies and what makes us us are ones I’ve been asking for a long time, but I was especially preoccupied with them after my mention of M. Hemingway and her retreat for reclaiming the “sovereign self” in yesterday’s post.