Tag: poem

june 10/RUNSWIM

4.5 miles
veterans home
59 degrees
poor air quality

The smoke from Canadian wild fires didn’t bother me much, although the inside of my nose was coated with something which made breathing a little more difficult. Other than that, it was a nice morning for a run. More shade than sun, low wind. Another 9/1 success. I’m continuing to build up the mental strength — a belief that I can keep going. Chanting in triple berries helped: strawberry raspberry blueberry.

Yesterday I mentioned possibly focusing on benches as a monthly theme — or a 1 or 2 week theme? As I ran south, I made note of a few of the benches.

9 Benches

  1. near the worn wooden steps leading to the winchell trail — wooden slats — empty
  2. at the top of a mulched trail descending into the oak savanna — a worn boulder that looks and acts as a bench — someone was standing there today, writing something on a piece of paper
  3. above the 38th street steps — wooden slats — empty
  4. beside a boulder in a part of the walking path that splits from the bike path — wooden slats — empty
  5. in a patch of grass above the “edge of the world” — wooden slats — empty
  6. on the edge of the 44th street parking lot — wooden slats — occupied by a bike/biker
  7. near John Stevens house and a cluster of picnic tables — wooden slats — empty
  8. at the bus stop across from the veterans home — green metal back/wooden slat seat — empty
  9. above the locks and dam no. 1 — green metal back/wooden slat seat — empty

Other things noticed: 4 or 5 turkeys in the grassy boulevard, a group of 8-10 roller skiers, the roar of the falls through the trees, a human with 2 dogs trotting to the creek bank, the light rail horn blasting a warning, the sweet/sour smell of earth on the hill descending below the ford bridge, headlights from a bobcat below me in the woods — I think they’re building a new walking path that goes deeper into the gorge!

For the first 3 miles, I listened to voices and wheels and the echo of a dog’s bark. For the last 1.5 miles, my color playlist.

still life

In the middle of the night, during one of several bouts of restlessness, I started reading a book I got from the library: Still Life/ Jay Hopler. Why did I request this book? It must have been because of the title and my interest in the word, still, and still life paintings. Reading more about it, I discovered this:

When Jay Hopler was diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer and told he only had two years left to live, he chose to spend his time writing this book: a rare gift to our world in all its ways. The book seems to be both a representation of all the moving parts of the dying, as well as an antithesis to how we usually converse about death, namely a dying person.

Still Life review

still life w/ wet gems/ Jay Hopler

lightnings bang their jaggeds on the cloud-glower
the cloud-glower is a broken necklace spilling its wet gems
its wet gems w/ facets cut uncountable
uncountable the reflections of the world in those gems
uncountable the version of the world into its dry self crashing
the shards of those worlds like shrapnel blasting skyward
slicing skyward or sidewise through the dune grass
the dune grass flattened by that splatter even as i write
the words

To My Wife on Our Anniversary/ Jay Hopler

In Castiglione del Lago, the pines are iron-spined. When the wind
blows, they stand still & the earth sways. If only God had forged me thus!
Forced into a stooped form & told to straighten up, that’s as far as His
blessings ever extended in my direction. You know what keeps me from
falling apart? Luck & duct tape. Even so, those trees have nothing on me.
Blessed as they are, all they get to hold today is a sick man’s attention &,
maybe, a few birds.

After reading still life w/ wet gems last night, I thought about my “how I see” project and the idea of writing around landscape and still life paintings — maybe portraits, too?

swim: 2 loops
lake nokomis open swim
81 degrees
water temp: 68 degrees

Open swim! Open swim! Open swim! There aren’t enough exclamation points to convey my joy over another summer of swimming across the lake. I swam 2 loops without stopping at the beach in-between. It felt good and then it didn’t and then it did again. Sore arms, the strange feeling of muscles not worked for a year waking up again. Now, a warm buzz. With no access to a pool, I haven’t swum since last august, so I’m impressed that I did as much as I did. I didn’t worry about not seeing the buoys, even when I couldn’t. Just kept swimming and reached them. Hooray for swimming without seeing (much)! Hooray for Minneapolis Parks for keeping open swim the same! Hooray for my muscles and tendons and lungs enabling me to do this thing I love!

The water was a deep green-blue. I could see the milfoil reaching up from the bottom, looking ghostly. Also saw pale legs kicking in front of me. No fish, no dragonflies, no menacing swans.

june 9/REST

I might have biked or swam today if it hadn’t been so breezy and cool. 57 degrees? No thanks. Tomorrow, no matter the temperature, I’ll be swimming in the lake! Open swim! Open swim!

Become/River/ Meridian Johnson

How does it feel
              to be
in that moment before we take the full-length of our flesh?
Lie still and breathe.
There are no mistakes here.
Stillness of mind.

The universe is a shawl to wrap about the shoulders
              dark     pervasive
                           ever-sensing.

                           By the river two ducks fly above the morning current.
On the opposite bank
              two black dogs rousing the bushes.
The naked tree shadows scratch the ground, shifting through wind.

To own the space deep in the cell
                           deeper
                                          deeper yet
                                                            cobalt blue.
                                                            The Beginning.

When we’re giving ourselves that much space
principle shimmering                                          intake.

                                                                              The river begins.

The naked tree shadows scratch the ground, shifting through wind. I love this description of tree shadows on the ground!

When we’re giving ourselves that much space . . . the river begins. I’m thinking about the idea of rivering — to river — that poets have discussed. who? I’ll search for it on this log. Found some!

from swims/ Elizabeth-Jane Burnett

The river is something that happens,
like exercise or illness, to the body
on any given day
I am rivering.

Not that the river is like the body
or the river is the body
but ooooooooooo both have gone
and what is left is something else.

a thought from 16 aug 2022: I wonder, is there such a thing as lake-ing? How does it differ from rivering? Also: what is the something else that is left? I like the idea of the water being a verb and not a noun.

opening line from Gave/ Cole Swensen

no river rivers 

What is to river? I can imagine rivering as the act of being beside and with the river — walking or running — or in it — swimming, rowing — witnessing the river.

a note for future Sara: Since we (the Saras) are interested in this sort of thing, here’s how I found this poem:

  1. reading past entries from 9 june, I clicked on a link to an essay about green poems that I mentioned in 2019 (good job past Sara!)
  2. read through the essay, and clicked on the link for a poem discussed in it: Reverent Green
  3. which is in a lit journal called, Wildness.
  4. checked out the submission guidelines — I’m going to submit here! — where it was recommended that I read through past issues to see what they’re looking for
  5. scrolled through the issue from 2017 that Reverent Green is in and found Become/River

Back to the river and rivering. Every summer, during open swim season, I devote myself to water, especially the lake. A perpetual question: how does a lake form of water differ from its river form or rain form (it’s raining right now) or sweat form or puddle form or glass of water form or creek form? Will this be the summer that I’m able to write a poem/poems about this? I hope so!

Before writing these last few sentences, I intended to give attention to green, and growing in green, and my ekphrasis project, and circumambulation, but now I’m thinking it’s time to return to water. It is time now, I said, for the deepening and quieting of the spirit among the flux of happenings.

I’m remembering last year’s attention given to the rules of water (Anne Carson) and liquid looking (Alice Oswald). Yes! Time for summer/swimming-Sara to emerge!

hardly creatures

Still reading and thinking about Rob Macaisa Colgate’s Hardly Creatures and how it’s inspiring me with its inventive form and powerful voice. A few things:

  1. the collection as a museum, organized around different wings of an imagined building (“a gallery of our own”), including: entryway, fine art, audiovisual room, gift shop/exit. What if I created a collection of poems about the gorge that was organized around a route, with different sections corresponding to different landmarks?
  2. places to rest or to gather strength or to be cared for: the “bench” sections, which are all about Eli, Colgate’s partner. Benches have become increasingly important in my gorge running practice. I have started regularly pausing at a few benches, and I have made note of the plaques on many of them. Ooo — maybe benches could be a theme for a month!
  3. “Hopescrolling” — labeled as ALT text and consisting of a series of brief descriptions of engagement with social media

Speaking of “Hopescrolling,” here’s RMColgate’s explanation of the poem:

JGJ: Can we talk about “Hopescrolling?” The poem felt very modern, how it referenced so many different virtual spaces, all these posts on social media, and captured tens of disparate experiences all at once. What inspired you to capture that?

RMC: I love to scroll, and I don’t really feel bad about it either. Like, I’m really on that phone! 

As we entered the later stages of the pandemic, and because of the challenge of the earlier stages, a lot of the reciprocal energy was clapping back at things like Zoom, virtual events, and people started talking about how much they loathed them. I don’t think it was totally because they loathed them. I think a lot of it was because it reminded them of a challenging time. Of course, the interpersonal connection is different digitally—I’m not necessarily going to say worse or better—but I also spent a lot of time thinking about how essential digital community is for so many disabled people. 

Like I said earlier, I’m a really sleepy person. I take these anti-psychotics, and they have a huge sedative effect. I have trouble getting out of bed a lot of the time. I rarely work at my desk more than I’m working on the couch, like I am right now. And sometimes I still want to be at my friend’s event, but I’m about to pass out, and so I want to do it from bed. With “Hopescrolling,” I was trying to have a poem that was like, “You know what, the internet is good and digital connection is actually meaningful. And I know we don’t want to say that because we love being together in person, but let me just make a case for it.” And so I just started literally bookmarking tweets, Tiktoks, and Instagram posts that had takes on disability. You could see people in the comments, expressing their authentic feelings on disability without feeling like they were in a conversation about ableism or something. 

Interview

june 8/RUN

3.1 miles
marshall loop
65 degrees

No walk breaks today. Slowly I’m building back confidence in my legs and lungs and brain. Ran through the neighborhood then over to the lake street bridge, up the marshall hill, down the summit hill past shadow falls, and back over the bridge again. On the northeast side of the bridge, 2 fire trucks and — was it an ambulance? I can’t remember. No sirens or anxious yelling. I wonder what was happening? No rowers or sparkles on the river. No pelotons or packs of runners.

Midway through the run I chanted triple berries: strawberry/blueberry/raspberry/blackberry/red berry/orange berry/green berry

Walking back, I observed a family of four on the opposite sidewalk. The voices of the two young kids were on the edge between losing their shit with joy and losing their shit with frustration over a puppy. Frustration prevailed. I could hear the little girl’s shrieks, I want to pet the puppy!, for more than a block. Passed by a house with several signs in the front yard, nestled between hostas and hydrangeas: Democracy dies when we are silent and Love is love and another one about hope. At the next house, a garage sale. A few blocks later, one kid swinging, another kid on a bike at the corner, sitting motionless and looking creepy, two dads talking about their wives and their upcoming girls’ weekend.

Hardly Creatures

I like the form Rob Macaisa Colgate creates and uses in Where Does Joy Live in the Body. It’s a series of three poem: 1. the original poem, 2. an erasure of that poem, 3. a condensed version of the erasure. Original, replica, souvenir

Where Does Joy Live in the Body/ Rob Macaisa Colgate

Original artwork: Feel free to look.

1. At the department dinner, I drink too much and spill
to Heather about my body dysmorphia. She nods, then
shrugs and laughs, carefree: It’s great to be blind.

2. I get indecisive trying to choose the most perfect avocado
while making lunch with Lorriane. When I ask for her help
she stares, gives ma wry smile. They all feel the same to my hands.

3. Alex witnesses my descentinto psychobabble as we walk
each other home from Lee’s Palace after teh Joy Division tribute concert.
The next day, they text: Lol, you make me doubt that I could read lips.

4. When I offer Leah one of my Oreos, she perks up, holds
the cookie to her nose, closes her eyes as she inhales. I can’t handle
the tast, but eventually I feel in love with the smell.

Multisensory replica: Feel free to touch, listen, taste, smell.

the art
the body
are
perfect
witnesses
to
each other’s Joy
yes
even you

Souvenir replica: Feel free to take home with you.

artbody perfect
witness each other
joy yes you

Reading the third part, I thought of my interest in condensing images and ideas to their barest form, partly because that’s how I see them and also because it makes them easier for my weak eyes to read and because it’s more possible to take them with me on a run. Cool — I want to play around with this form!

june 6/RUN

4 miles
minnehaha falls
65 degrees / dew point: 55

At first it felt cool, pleasant, but after a few minutes, heavy, warm. Slept in until 8 and then waited too long to go out — around 10:30. Oh well, a good run anyway. Another 9/1 with a pause at the halfway point for a bathroom break at the falls.

10 Things

  1. flushed
  2. bright yellow vest
  3. green
  4. turkey!
  5. busker
  6. accordian
  7. workers
  8. a kid losing their shit
  9. I’m a Barbie Girl
  10. thick

Flushed face, flushed toilet at the falls. Voices below me, then 2 people in bright yellow vests discussing where to start doing whatever they were doing — trimming trees? pulling buckthorn? Green green green everywhere — no blue sky, just a green one. A turkey beside the path! Then more turkeys all around. A busker at the falls, playing an acordian. Workers at the falls, workers, at the Horace Cleveland Overlook. Daddy! Daddy! It’s THIS way! Daddy! — a kid losing his shit near the parking lot. Seen not heard — a little, high voice signing, I’m a Barbie girl. By the end of the run, the air felt and looked thick.

Listened to chainsaws and scattered voices as I ran south. Put in my “Doin’ Time” playlist heading back north.

While drinking my coffee and scrolling through Instagram, I read about how a favorite running podcaster’s cancer has returned: stage 4 metastatic bone cancer. Other than her podcast and instagram posts, I don’t know her, but I know she has a beautiful 5 year old daughter and I am sad.

Hardly Creatures

What a book! Rob Macaisa Colgate has such a compelling, beautiful voice. Here’s the title poem:

Hardly Creatures/Rob Macaisa Colgate

“A healed femur”

      —Margaret Mead, anthropologist, on the first evidence of human civilization

The digital tour guide tells us how we are animals
as if we don’t already know, as if sleep is a game
we play, as if hunger is incidental every day at lunch.
We enter a virtual room with an improbable flock

of birds suspended at eye level, a hundred
species flying together. The guide tells us about
a bonded pair of male crows, how when one
lost his lower mandible to a crashed window

the other began to forage for them both, chewing up
seeds and worms and pushing the bolus
down his partner’s throat. In another room
we pivot the camera angle and see a hill country creek

running beneath our feet under thick clear plastic.
We learn how the blind salamander compensates
for its lack of eyesight with advanced sensitivity
to changes in water pressure, sweeping its lonely head

back and forth to detect small aquatic invertebrates—
We creatures have always found a way,
the recording chuckles. We have, I think,
though this should not mean that we must.

We pause the tour for Rosie to rest with her camera off.
I wish the guide would stop calling humans creatures, she says.
We’re hardly creatures, the way we love each other.
I nod, but can’t stop thinking about the crows

that love each other, the salamander that loves itself,
the crows that only know caregiving, the salamander
that only knows survival, every creature forever feeding
whatever mouth is in front of them

either born knowing how to love
or picking it up down the line.

Question: Is Ross suggesting that we love more/better than “creatures” or less? Are they challenging the narrator’s assessment or reinforcing it? I can’t decide.

every creature forever feeding/whatever mouth is in front of them — what a beautiful line and idea

june 5/RUN

5.45 miles
franklin loop
60 degrees

Another 9/1 successfully done! Left the house by 8, so it was cool. I wasn’t sure which way I would run until my feet turned to the left and I was heading for the franklin bridge. Went by the welcoming oaks, through the tunnel of trees, above the floodplain forest, below the road. Deep in the trees, I felt a truck rumbling by. Near the rowing club, I thought I heard some rowers below me. The bridge was backed up and thick with cars, so was the east river road. A line up of 25 or 30 or more cars. Like I usually do, I wondered if these cars were watching me and if they wished they could be outside on a run instead of cooped up in a car. Running across the lake street bridge, I looked for boats in the water, but it was empty.

A thought mid-run: Instead of trying to notice anything particular, why not stop noticing or thinking and just be. Of course right after that, I started listening to the birds and then the cars and then the voices of other walkers.

10 Things

  1. rustling
  2. sprinkling
  3. hovering
  4. green
  5. rowers
  6. flat
  7. traffic back-up
  8. back pack
  9. construction cone
  10. whirring

Yesterday I picked up Hardly Creatures at Moon Palace Books. I’m very excited to start it today!

An hour later: I’m reading Hardly Creatures. Wow! I feel like I need to read through the whole collection, then read through several more times and think about all that Rob Macalisa Colgate is doing in this book with accessibility. It’s in the content and the form. He’s writing about his experiences with (in) accessibility, but also offering different ways to access the stories, the words, the ideas in this collection.

So far, I’m struck by the opening to each section:

Access Check-In

There is no right way to end
the sickness,
to stomach it.
A reasonable
failure to care for yourself like a child. No
body
is useless.

page 19
page 21
page 23
page 24
page 27

page 29
page 31

And what made me stop and decide to write about the book, were these lines in the poem, “Ward”:

Window:




Form:

what allows you to see out
what separates you from what you see
your only chance

a body
a set of rules
a set of empty spaces to fill out at the front desk

june 4/RUN

4 miles
minnehaha falls and back
67 degrees

Another successful 9/1 run, where success = picking something and committing to it and keeping steady and relaxed. Yesterday it rained most of the day, so no running. Evn if it hadn’t been raining, I wouldn’t/couldn’t have fun; smoke from the Canadian wild fires made the air quality terrible. Not just hazy; I could smell/feel the smoke. Today it’s much better.

9 Things

  1. mowing
  2. sweating
  3. bugs
  4. shadows
  5. voices
  6. laughter
  7. crowds
  8. cars
  9. potholes

I tried something new today with the 10 things. At the end of my run, I pulled out my phone and recorded a list of things. I ended up with nine because I forgot to count as I was doing it. By the end, I wasn’t sure of how many things I had listed.

On Monday, we moved RJP into her new apartment. She handled the stress of moving very well. What a difference a year makes!

Here’s another bit from Brian Teare’s Companion Grasses I’d like to remember:

from Tall Flatsedge Notebook/ Brian Teare

A guidebook calls it “tall Flatsedge” but at my desk
it doesn’t stick : each sketched notebook detail floats
slowly from what once had make it live. At its smallest
:matter has no ideals” : taking off my socks, I find
several flatsedge seeds hooked : no split of self
from self—it can’t lack—carbon, oxygen, nitrogen—
it’s being & being singly is. All day at Chimney Rock
I’d returned to three thoughts :

you; the “world

we wanted to go out into,
to come to ourselves into”;

& the right form
to bridge two subjects apart

“organizations in the sound of them
verg[e] upon meaning,
upon ‘Heaven;”

As part of this section, Teare includes sources for these ideas in the left margins. I fiddled around with columns to add them in, but I wasn’t able to. Maggie Nelson did a similar thing with sources in The Argonauts. And Alice Oswald does it in Dart to identify the “voice” that is speaking in the poem. I’d like to experiment with this in a piece involving my notes for a gorge run.

I also like his discussion of bridging the gap between two subjects — you and the world. Here I’m thinking of the you and the I, too.

june 1/RUN

3.15 miles
trestle turn around
56 degrees

Excellent weather this morning for a run. I decided to run without stopping to walk, instead of doing the 9/1, just to see if I could do it. I could. At the end of the run, a thought: I should do a 3 mile run like this on the first of each month and compare times and effort. Maybe I should do this test twice a month?

The thing I remember most about the run was the orange light. It’s from wildfires up in Canada. I didn’t see an orange sun, or orange light in the sky. I saw orange light on the paved trail. Strange. I wondered if it really looked orange, or it just felt orange. And, was anyone else seeing the light on the trail and thinking, orange?

The thing I remember second most was the cottonwood fuzz, everywhere. Lining the trail, turning the grass pale green. I think I inhaled some; it got caught in my throat and made it hard to breathe.

There were chatty bikers and small packs of runners and walkers, a few dogs. I think I might have heard the rowers briefly. I didn’t look for the river or hear any geese. I did witness a car ignore a stop sign. And I admired another runner’s bright orange compression socks. I noticed that the grass near the trail had been trimmed and wondered how short the parks had trimmed it. No more rubbery dandelion stalks.

To keep a steady pace, I chanted in triple berries: strawberry / blueberry / raspberry

Picked up Brian Teare’s Companion Grasses from the library. I’m particularly inspired by the sections/pieces/poems? that combine his hiking notes with descriptions and references to other thinkers.

from Tall Flatsedge Notebook/ Brian Teare

A mile’s hike outside the fence-enclosed vista point
we sat hillside so inside experience I wrote the wrong date
down–March twenty second–noticing no thought
but things : “when I think they animate my interior speech,
they haunt it as the little phrase.” Oceans tilted, the whole thing
leaning green, coastal prairie poised pre-Spring
a prosody for seeing landscape as aural, ambient trick
to hear the ear’s eye : far bass, near treble, I saw

I heard
low drone wind
cut by distant cliffs’ sheer fall

Above it below the hill

surf’s purr
& nearer

wind-shirred grass
bright brown birdsong

in back of one bee far
barking seals–

*

I wanted a hello sort of like I know you as if
to call a grass a subject like I can’t back home :
urbanity : a class-based lack of grasses shared
people, fog, sidewalks, architecture, money,
the smells of jasmine & feces, & five sounds :

suck of tread in water

window clicking against frame

recycling knicked from bins

footsteps above

heater’s hiss

A few pages later, he offers this quote:

at the edge
of what is bearable
in an image.

In the margins he provides a source: The Object Stares Back/ James Elkins. I looked this source up and got very excited. It’s all about how we see and our myths about what we think we’re seeing and doing when we see. Very cool. I requested the book from the libary; it should be ready in a few days.

may 27/RUN

2.6 miles
river road trail, south/winchell trail, north
64 degrees

Thought briefly about biking to the lake and swimming, but it’s drizzling off and on, and it’s not that warm, and I imagine the water isn’t that warm yet. Just checked the temp: 61 degrees. What’s the coldest water I’ve been in? Probably colder than 61 as a kid in Lake Superior, but as an adult, I’m not sure. Too cold for me today, so I did a short run.

I wanted to run to the south entrance of the Winchell trail but there was a very large — 40 or more? — kids up ahead, walking and blocking the trail, and I didn’t want to encounter them. So I turned down at 42nd. Before I turned, I enjoyed witnessing the kids from afar. They kept trying to get passing cars to honk by yelling honk! honk! honk! They were not quite in unison, and sounded almost like a vee of geese flying overhead. Nice! A few cars honked, one for several seconds — no quick tap, a long HONK! At first I thought they were part of a school group but would teachers let students yell at cars like that? Maybe it was a walk-out protest?

My weather app disagrees, but I think it was very humid. Now that funding for gathering weather data has been taken away, I don’t trust any forecasts. How could it only be 64% humidity when I ‘m sweating this much, and it is drizzling a little?

I ended my run on the dirt trail that climbs up the edge of the grassy boulevard. I had to watch carefully for roots or rocks. On either side, vivid, abundant (or excessive) green grass. In the middle, bare dirt — brownish gray, fuzzy, almost a nothingness that was difficult to see. The green, dizzying, disorienting. Inspiration for my green sonnet?

excerpt from Desire/ Christopher Buckley

Shuffling down
the path in the park, I go on whistling what was once
considered a lively tune, thankful to even be a satchel
of ligaments and bone still able to transact enough chemicals,
one neuron to another,
                                        that I can appreciate the day lilies,
star jasmine, and have some idea about what’s missing
when a streak of grey engraves hosannas of moonlight,
the spindrift off the rocks, anything that sounds
remotely like a prayer
                                       sent into the air to a god who,
in his infinite memory, must know he abandoned us
here—so many self-conscious molecular assemblies—
specs in a starry whirlwind of desire.

Wow — a satchel/ligament and bone still able to transact enough chemicals,/one neuron to another — what a description of a human!

spin-drift: sea spray; fine wind-borne snow or sand

may 25/RUN

3.5 miles
trestle turn around
63 degrees

Felt good today. Ran a little faster, felt a little freer. Even though the weather is great, it’s Sunday, and it’s almost noon, the paths weren’t that crowded. Was it because it’s memorial day weekend? Whatever the reason, I appreciate not having to dodge bikers or groups of walkers.

10 Things

  1. sea
  2. stacked
  3. stink
  4. staring
  5. shadows
  6. craters
  7. purple
  8. soft
  9. sitting
  10. saw

Running through the tunnel of trees above the floodplain forest, a sea of green. No sky or river or solid ground.

4 stones stacked on the ancient boulder.

Above the rowing club, a slight stink from the sewers — sweet and sour.

Running up the hill, past the old stone steps, 2 walkers and a dog about to descend the old stone steps. I couldn’t see their faces, but I felt like they were staring at me.

At the start of my run, bird shadows: a big one swooping, several smaller ones shooting across the street like bullets.

The craters in the patched crack near the trestle seem to be growing deeper.

Running past a tree, a flash of purple in the otherwise green leaves. Was that a trick of the light?

The soft sound of water falling or wind gently rustling the leaves near the ravine.

I was planning to stop at the sliding bench, but 2 people were already sitting there.

Before I began running, I heard a woman’s voice — you did it! Then the sound of a saw buzzing, then good job! Her tone sounded like she was praising a little kid. I wondered if that were true and how old the kid was that she was teaching to use a power saw — not in judgment, in wonder.

indigo

I have returned to my color poems. Before I ran, I was thinking about indigo again. During the run, an idea popped in my head, so just past the trestle I stopped to record it:

Thinking about indigo and idea of wanting this time, at night, that is dark without stars. Which is referencing how, when I lose all of my cone cells, there may never be true dark. And then thinking also about how true dark is not possible (in the city) because of light pollution. The idea that indigo is something both wished for and feared.

another grass line

It will soon be cold here,
and dark here;
the grass will lie flat
to search for its spring head.
(Love in the Weather’s Bells/ Jay Wright)

may 24/RUN

4 miles
minnehaha falls and back
54 degrees

Ah, another wonderful morning. Sunny and just the right amount of warm. Ran with Scott. He talked about the book he’s reading — a murder mystery set in Austin, MN and Minneapolis. I talked about turning my color poems in to a chapbook. Also discussed: a YouTube video about taking a train from D.C. to Seattle (me), UAE cycling team doing altitude training (Scott), favorite and least favorite running shirts (me), possibly ordering a new bass (Scott), and voltas and vueltas and a tour as turn as hero’s quest (both of us). We also discussed an annoying woman last summer who wouldn’t let us use one of the drinking fountains because she was using the other to slowly fill up her big water bottle (both of us).

I don’t recall looking down at the river even once. Would I have been able to see it? A rare sight: a rollerblader, not a roller skier. Shirtless runners. The white foam of the falls. A stick flying up from under Scott’s foot. The cool green just before reaching the ford bridge.

bank

The other day I overheard one runner say to another something about banking time. I thought about the word bank and embankment popped into my head. Then I wondered about bank’s origins. Reading the poem-of-the-day this morning on Poetry Foundation, I encountered another bank line:

from Ode to the Midwest/ Kevin Young:

I want to jog
down to the river

& make it my bed—

I want to walk
its muddy banks

& make me a withdrawal.

a return to color

I’ve decided to turn my color poems into a chapbook for a contest. Time to study color some more. I need to write a sonnet about green, indigo, and blue. Maybe yellow, too? Here’s a wonderful yellow poem to inspire me:

Crown of Yellow/ Sarah Audsley

If I stay, I might notice things—the color of buttercups, their bright faces
en masse floating in green-grass-clouds, the lolling fields.

Butter—browned in a pan for the sauce to dress an expensive dead fish.

Yellow yolks make cake, custards, or the exact shade for stasis.

Or shame. I always think of yellow so.

A primary color, it arrives in packages, crushed natural iron oxide from a quarry in France.

Combine yellow with red, make orange. Shades shift by proportion.

The painter tells me about the color wheel, not the grey fear-sphere spinning in my head, or
anything I know something about.

The beehive above, swaying. Yellow bits move in and out.

How yellow the yellow finches’ bodies, how they lift so easily into the air.

The in-between color—traffic lights say, stop. Then, go.

The striking of a single ray of sunlight can cause cancerous cells to grow, mutate.

Paint the kitchen walls a shade—warms and comforts.

Color of the piss puddle I left on the hardwood floor. Little ballerina shoes tiptoed around the mess.
I did raise my hand, I did ask to go, I did try to do the right thing.

Tutus and twirls. Mrs. Stein said, Wait. Hold it! Her black leotard plastered to the curvature of her
small breasts rose with her commands.

If you prefer gold fillings, and can afford them, the dentist will place them inside decayed teeth.
Gold is a soft metal.

Combine yellow with blue, make green.

Are we back in the field, yet? Why do I ever leave it? The forest needs no grammar. Water splits
rock. Hawk shreds yellow birds’ feathers.
The mind, an unending sieve.

Dandelion wine is made from the tufts of heads, collected and boiled.
Alcohol is for adults. Some bitterroot.

Never dress Asian babies in yellow, my mother tells me. Clashes with their skin.
I learned from you, she says.

And, there is a fox running the median line on the bumpy road. I am not there, but I’m driving fast,
headlights off, because there is a full-bodied moon, and I want to move in the dark like I know
exactly, no precisely, without any hesitation, where I am going.

Barreling ahead.

Each hour the light changes, each minute angles shift.

Skylights are key in the studio. Naked. Put on my skin in layers—how many? What can the painter
see?

I prefer to sleep through sunrise. I trust the heliocentric turning of things that are difficult to
understand.

About yellowface I cannot say—enough. What is enough?

The channeling knife is the tool to make a lemon twist. I use it. Hovering over the glass, making the
cut infuses the air in the space above the liquid with the essence of the fruit.

Once, I plucked an entire bucket of lemons and lavender. Made lemonade.

I don’t believe in that phrase…because my mother took to the tug of the bottle.
More often than not, vomit is yellow.

In another dream, I am the lone sunflower swaying, shaken by the anticipation from the smell of the
oncoming distant rain.