Tag: poem

nov 28/RUN

3.1 miles
locks and dam no. 1
23 degrees / snow flurries

A 5k run with Scott in the snow! Flurries collecting on the edge of path and in the cracks of the asphalt. Flurries in the air making my already pixelated view — due to dead cone cells — even more pixelated. Strange, dreamy, disconnected. It was cold, but not too cold. I was overdressed: double gloves, double tights, a buff, a hood, a cap. Before the end of the first mile I was losing layers: 1 pair of gloves, then a hood.

We talked about last year’s marathon, and doing it again next year, and how it wasn’t as cold as we thought it would be. I mentioned that one of my favorite views is blocked because of too many branches. Scott liked how I described it, thick with thin branches.

10 Things

  1. brown leaves on the edge of the path, mixing with the snow
  2. a white-gray sky
  3. the flurries with big and clumpy, one flew in Scott’s throat and he freaked out a little
  4. the ravine below the double bridge was open and brown and bare
  5. a steady stream of cars, distanced from each other, flowing south on the river road
  6. all the benches were empty
  7. as we ran on edmund, a car behind us gently revved to alert us to their presence
  8. bright green leaves on a tree near the savanna
  9. a biker biking by in bright yellow shoes
  10. after the run, FWA driving us, we counted 6 wild turkeys crossing the road

That was hard to come up with 10 things today!

1

In January of 2024, I devoted a month to windows. This morning, on poets.org, I found this beautiful window poem, Wooden Window Frames / Luci Tapahonso. Here are the opening lines:

The morning sun streams through the little kitchen’s  
wooden panes; its luminescence tempts me to forego coffee.  
But I don’t. The dark coffee scent melds with the birds’ 
chirping along the hidden acacia. Then, a small bird 
alights on the cross of the wooden clothesline.  
Its tiny head turns from side to side, then as if sensing me,  
it gazes at me through a window square.  
We ponder each other, then remember our manners,  
and it flies off into the clean, cold air. 

2

My Faith Unfolds Itself/ Alafia Nicole Sessions

after Faith Ringgold’s exhibit, “Black is beautiful,” at the Picasso Museum, Paris, 2023

like a ribbonless plait:            
the rain outside descends in strands:
percussive opera for the sheltered:            

petrichor of hominy and green:
grief everywhere, all at once : and then
            the sun : reminds me I’m not new:

they are my dowry : the gone ones
            and their light : refracted through
the body’s fluids : o rivers : how to

            marry threads of water with faith:
predates language : but the word was
            the beginning : have we come this far by fate:

roots fracture, forget, then return : curse
            the pattern of rupture then mend : not unlike
the making of a quilt, or muscle : broth born

            of fire and water : fists full of ephemerals:
blood-honey : water always finds her way:
            I plump and soften : like soaked grain.

nov 26/RUN

5.5 miles
franklin hill turn around
22 degrees

Colder. A double tights day. Sunny, not much wind, clear. I love running in this weather, even if it was harder during the first mile because of lingering congestion. I wasn’t sure how much I could manage, but once I warmed up, I was fine.

Greeted Dave, the Daily Walker — hi dave! — and looked down at the floodplain forest — almost all bare branches. Heard some geese. Noticed the pink graffiti under the I-94 bridge. Passed another lone black glove on the ground, and a black jacket draped over a tree, making the tree look like a person. Was tricked again by the stone slabs under franklin that look like someone sitting. Avoided the uneven asphalt halfway up and out of the tunnel of trees. Saw that there were stones stacked on the boulder, but forgot to count them. I know I looked down at the river many times, but the only thing I can remember about it was the thin line of icy foam at the edge of longfellow flats.

Thought about breathing and whether or not running in this cold was good for the crud in my throat. Tried to keep my shoulders relaxed and my left arm swinging forward more, my right swinging backward.

Found this quotation yesterday. So much of my writing centers on counting syllables and using syllables to guide my lines. And not just any syllables, but syllables that mimic my breathing pattern while swimming (5) or running (3/2).

The most important thing I find is to live by the syllable. When I’m writing, I don’t think about sentences, lines or words, I’m totally living by the syllable.

Rowan Rocard Phillips

The poem of the day on poems.com had a line that made me smile because it’s almost one of my favorites from Anne Sexton’s “The Nude Swim” — the real fish did not mind.

Returning to the Village/ Stephanie Niu

That gray hut is where I first learned to swim. They pushed us
through a gap in the floorboards. Dropped down a rope
to hold. It took us several panicked kicks to find

that we knew how to do it. Once under, our eyes adjusted
to the salt’s burn and gleam. The fish did not care. 
They turned their long bodies and became something’s dinner. 

At home, toweled off, we ate from plates of tasteless crackers
bought from the only supermarket with sides salt-faded
to white. The woman who owns it still lives inside. 

She has no sons; the fish she sells comes frozen
in boxes from the mainland. I once saw her crouch
on the jetty at dawn and place a basket into the water,

raise it again full of leathery fish flopping against her arms.
She gutted them. They were so small. I watched
her toss what was left of them back to the ocean.

nov 17/RUN

4 miles
minnehaha falls and back
43 degrees

Sun! Sharp shadows. Blue sky. The river burning white — wow! Rushing falls. A leaf-littered slope down to the river. A clear view across. Crowded trails, mostly walkers. At least one roller skier. People emerging from the oak savanna near the big rock shaped like an armchair. A little kid on a bike in the parking lot. The usual smell of smoke coming from some house on edmund or from the gorge; every fall/winter I can’t quite tell. My ponytail forcefully swinging in the wind. I don’t remember hearing any birds or dodging any squirrels. Where are the geese?

I also don’t remember what I thought about. I wanted to work through a part of my poem about progress and conservation of matter and the entanglement of decay/rusting/softening of the gorge and my shifting eyesight. But, if I did, I can’t remember.

This Kay Ryan poem was the poem of the day on Poetry Foundation:

Surfaces/ Kay Ryan

Surfaces serve
their own purposes,
strive to remain
constant (all lives
want that). There is
a skin, not just on
peaches but on oceans
(note the telltale
slough of foam on beaches).
Sometimes it’s loose,
as in the case
of cats: you feel how a
second life slides
under it. Sometimes it
fits. Take glass.
Sometimes it outlasts
its underside. Take reefs.

The private lives of surfaces
are innocent, not devious.
Take the one-dimensional
belief of enamel in itself,
the furious autonomy
of luster (crush a pearl—
it’s powder), the whole
curious seamlessness
of how we’re each surrounded
and what it doesn’t teach.

nov 14/RUN

4.1 miles
trestle turn around
45 degrees

Moist this morning. Wet sidewalk, wet leaves, wet air. Something was squeaking — my shoes on the leaves or the leaves on my shoes? Only one stone on the boulder, looking lonely and flat. The black stocking cap I mentioned yesterday was still there on the pole. Today I remembered that it was above the old stone steps. Greeted Dave, the Daily Walker with a good morning Dave!, greeted Daddy Long Legs with a wave. He was with his walking partner again. Smiled and gave a head nod to another walker who I think I’ve mentioned before. They always wear a long skirt with tights, and most of the year, a blue puffer jacket. They have gray hair in a long braid. I looked it up, and when I wrote about them before (26 jan 2024), I described them as wearing a dress and tentatively named them, All Dressed Up.

Anything else? I’m pretty sure I looked at the river, but I don’t remember what I saw. No fat tires or roller skiers or geese — where are all the geese? — or turkeys. More YELLOW leaves, falling fast. Some sour sewer smells, puddles, empty benches.

I listened to squeaking leaves and thudding feet as I ran north, then my Color playlist returning south: “Not Easy Bein’ Green,” “Roxanne,” “Mellow Yellow,” and “Let’s Go Crazy.” Speakig of color, I discovered this excellent color poem yesterday afternoon:

Night Comes and Passes Over Me/ Carl Phillips

There’s a rumor of light that
any dark starts off as. Plato speaks
here and there of colors, but only
once, I think, does he break them
down into black and white, red,
and a fourth color. By then they’d
reached for California high country
where, knowing none of the names for
all the things that grew there, they

began to make names up. But to have
trained an animal to come just a bit
closer because here, here’s blood,
doesn’t mean you’ve tamed it. Trans-
lations vary for what Plato calls his
fourth color: what comes closest
to a combination of (since they
aren’t the same) radiant and
bright–what shifting water does,

with light? Violence burnishes
the body, sometimes, though we
call it damage, not burnishing, more
its opposite, a kind of darkness, as if
to hide the body, so that what’s been

done to it might, too, stay hidden,
the way meaning can, for years, until
some pattern by which to trace it
at last emerges. There’s a rumor of light.

I need to give more time to this poem; there’s so much I don’t quite get. But I love the discussion of Plato and color and what shifting water does to light.

nov 13/RUN

5.85 miles
ford loop
42 degrees / humidity: 78%

November! A day for singing a song of gray. A pale, sunless sky, some wind, lots of bare branches. The tree outside my window and a few others by the gorge were YELLOW! Greeted Dave, the Daily Walker — hey Dave! Almost tripped on a few rocks on the dirt path next to the trail on the east side. Admired the waves from the bridges: from ford, little scales and from lake, a slight current down the center — from a sandbar? Heard a chickadee — chick a dee dee dee dee — and the constant grumbling of the city beneath everything.

Thought about different time scales and how time works for me while I’m running — encountering memories of past Saras, echoing their movements. Imagining the gorge before Cleveland created the Grand Rounds, before Longfellow was a neighborhood, before the gorge was a gorge. Having no idea how much time had passed — never hearing the bells of St. Thomas or looking at my watch. Having no memory of small stretches of the trail — being lost in a thought or the motion or my effort.

10 Things

  1. the fast slapping of a runner’s feet passing me from behind
  2. the clear open view from a bluff on the east side of the river, looking over to the west side
  3. 3 stacked stones on the boulder
  4. a black stocking cap placed on the top of a pole beside the trail
  5. the frantic bark of a dog, bothered by a nearby leaf blower
  6. the barricades blocking the sidewalk in front of Governor Walz’ house
  7. the ravine near Shadow Falls, mostly yellow from leaves on trees and the ground
  8. voices from below, near Longfellow flats beach
  9. a sour sewer smell near the Monument
  10. a man call out a command — drop it! — to his dog near the south entrance of the winchell trail

While looking for something else, I came across this beautiful poem by Minnesota’s first indigenous poet laureate, Dr. Gwen Westerman:

Breathe Deep and Sing/ Gwen Westerman

We sing for the mussels,

we, the otters and beavers, the frogs and dragonflies,

the waterbirds and songbirds, the coyotes too.

We breathe deep, and sing for the mussels

who are the lungs of the Mississippi River.

Our river—polluted by

sewage and wastewater,

dredged and dammed,

pockmarked by dead zones

of chemicals and dyes,

banked by the edge

of destruction.

Our river—

A global super-flyway,

it flows through the heart of us,

flowed through the heart of us

for centuries, beyond centuries,

beyond memory.

Through wetlands and backwaters,

communities and economies,

plagued by invasive species,

invasive humans—

environmental degradation

that flowed through the heart of us.

Our river—

It calls to us, it beckons us,

our dreams flow along with it.

So, we sing for the mussels,

we, the otters and beavers, the frogs and dragonflies,

the waterbirds and songbirds, the coyotes too.

We breathe deep and sing for the mussels

who are the silent sentinels of our river.

They hold the stories and the pain of

our river—40, 70, 200 years ago.

Like the trees above them

along the banks of

our river, the rings of the mussels’ shells

are a living record of our environment

and of our river.

They mark the resilience,

the struggles, the restoration

of floodplains and river bottoms,

the restoration of health and hearts.

How do we heal our river

without healing ourselves?

Our river—

It calls to us, it beckons us,

our dreams flow along with it.

Its water shapes us, embraces us,

and is our first medicine.

So, we sing for the mussels,

we, the otters and beavers, the frogs and dragonflies,

the waterbirds and songbirds, the coyotes too.

Breathe deep and sing with us for the mussels.

nov 7/RUN

3.1 miles
trestle turn around
48 degrees

Ran with Scott around 3:30. Love that late afternoon fall light! Soft, with long shadows. Do I remember anything else?

10 Things

  1. lots of leaves on the path
  2. a woman bundled up with a winter cap and scarf
  3. a cute dog — small and brown
  4. the pungent smell of poop as I walked by a woman picking up after her dog
  5. feeling cold as the wind pushed up under my sleeves
  6. no stones stacked on the boulder
  7. the long, lean shadow of a tall tree cast on the road
  8. a quick glance down the wooden steps just past the trestle: bare branches
  9. pale yellow leaves on a tree near the lake street bridge
  10. a big crack and deep hole on the edge of the river road — that’ll pop a tire! (Scott)

And here’s part of a November poem I found in some notes for Haunts. It’s by A.R. Ammons, one my favorite poets:

Configuration/ A.R. Ammons

1

when November stripped
the shrub,
what stood
out
in revealed space was
a nest
hung
in essential limbs

2

how harmless truth is in cold weather to an empty nest

3

dry
leaves
in
the
bowl,
like wings

4

summer turned light into darkness and inside the shadeful shrub the secret worked itself to life

icicles and waterpanes:
recognitions:

at the bottom, knowledges and desertions

5

speech comes out,
a bleached form,
nest-like:

after the events of silence the flying away of silence into speech—

6

    the nest is held
    off-earth

by sticks;

so, intelligence stays out of the ground

erect on a
brittle walk of bones:

otherwise the sea, empty of separations

7

leaves
like wings
in the Nov
ember nest:

wonder where the birds are now that were here:
wonder if the hawks missed them:
wonder if
dry wings
lie abandoned,
bodiless
this
November:

leaves— out of so many
a nestful missed the ground

nov 5/RUN

2 miles
edmund south/river road, north
45 degrees / drizzle

Election day. Read an accurate description of how today feels: like we all are waiting for the results from a biopsy. I’m hopeful.

Did a quick 2 miles with Scott before the rain started. Throughout we felt drizzle but it wasn’t until we reached our alley that it began to rain. Everything gray and heavy. Most of the leaves on the trees have fallen — except for the one in front of our house — full and green. We talked about a color video that Scott had just watched. Texture and wine dark seas and having no names for blue but many for green were discussed.

My favorite view: bare trees means more open air and the other side visible! I admired the tree line on the east side of the river. It gave off the feeling of being a straight line stretching across. Of course, nothing is completely straight for me; it’s all approximation.

10 Things

  1. a cluster of headlights — stuck behind a slow-moving street sweeper
  2. a thick trunk pushing through the bottom of the fence above the ravine
  3. running past Dowling, hearing faint laughter from kids somewhere
  4. the water was a blueish-gray, the sky almost all white with gray smudges
  5. stopping at the overlook, noticing how uneven and slanted the paving blocks have become
  6. a house on the corner, all black or dark green or dark something, no contrasting trim, difficult for me to see anything but a hulking shape or a dark void, absent of color
  7. running past a water fountain and wondering if it was still turned on
  8. the welcoming oaks have lost all of their leaves
  9. passing above the savanna, seeing something white below — was it a hiker in a white shirt or the information sign?
  10. something remembered from yesterday: the sound of chainsaws in the savanna

Working on a section of my haunts poem tentatively titled, And. It’s inspired by a line from the first section: a gap grew/between girl and world. I realized that the and here is the gorge, and it’s more than a gap; it’s the place that be/holds girl ghost here there now then water stone. It’s also the absence around which I orbit. It’s not empty but filled with open air and possibility. Anyway, I was reminded of a Community clip from Troy and Abed:

Here I’m reading Troy’s and as making more space for the story Abed is telling. I love how Donald Glover delivers the ands.

I’m also thinking about this bit from a wonderful Maggie Smith poem:

If I list everything I love

about the world, and if the list
is long and heavy enough,

I can lift it over and over—
repetitions, they’re called, reps—

to keep my heart on, to keep
the dirt off. Let’s begin

with bees, and the hum,
and the honey singing

on my tongue, and the child
sleeping at last, and, and, and—

nov 1/RUN

5.6 miles
ford loop
40 degrees

I overdressed this morning in a long-sleeved shirt, sweatshirt, tights and gloves. The sun was warmer than I thought. Most of the leaves are off the trees and on the ground. The ravine near Shadow Falls was a beautiful rusty red. The thin creek running through it shimmered in spots.

It helped to get outside and be beside the gorge. It’s an exhausting time. Both of my kids are supposed to be in college this semester, neither of them are. They are each working on their mental health. It’s hard to see them suffer. On top of that, the impending election is terrifying. While I ran, I forgot about all of this.

10 Things

  1. the bells of St. Thomas tolling twelve times as I crested the Summit hill
  2. 2 small bowls on a neighbor’s front steps, filled with full-sized reese’s peanut butter cups
  3. a man walking a dog listening to talk radio without headphones — I couldn’t tell if it was about politics or sports
  4. water falling softly from shadow falls
  5. the river from lake street bridge: gray, rippled, a shimmering line of light near the east shore
  6. a graffitied port-a-potty with the jar very slightly ajar — was it open, or was the door unable to fully close?
  7. the trees on the west side of the river near locks and dam no. 1 were bare and a fuzzy brown
  8. the sudden start of sirens close by — a fire truck coming up the hill from the locks
  9. the stinky mulch that had been piled on the edge of the path was gone
  10. an opening on the bluff — what a view of the river and the other side!

Yes, That’s When/ Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

I like my body when I’m in the woods
and I forget my body. I forget that arms,
that legs, that nose. I forget that waist,

that nerve, that skin. And I aspen. I mountain.
I river. I stone. I leaf. I path. I flower.
I like when I evergreen, current and berry.

I like when I mushroom, avalanche, cliff.
And everything is yes then, and everything
new: wild iris, duff, waterfall, dew.

oct 22/RUN

3.1 miles
2 trails
65 degrees

A quick run after getting my flu and COVID shot and before taking FWA to an eye exam. Another beautiful, warm morning. Everything yellow and crunchy. The Winchell trail was crowded with hikers admiring the leaves and the view. Heard kids on the playground. Smelled the sour sewer. Felt the soft sand. The theme of the morning: leaves. Brittle leaves covering the trail, making it harder to see roots or rocks. Fluttering leaves falling from the trees. Absent leaves giving me a better view of the other side. And that sound! Before starting my run, yellow locust leaves near the curb sizzled after a car drove by. A few blocks later, a cluster of leaves — or was it a plastic bag? — crackled and crunched in the slight wind.

Near Folwell, after climbing the short, steep hill, I stopped to record a few lines for the next section of my poem. The section is called Nobody and it’s about bells and mom-ghosts and dead cone cells.

In the gray morning
the few cone cells that
remain are starved for
light, everything lacks
form — no edges, no
bodies, just blurs

Here’s a beautiful poem I encountered this morning. I’m adding it to my collection of dirt/dust poems.

Housekeeping/ Natasha Trethewey

We mourn the broken things, chair legs
wrenched from their seats, chipped plates,
the threadbare clothes. We work the magic
of glue, drive the nails, mend the holes.
We save what we can, melt small pieces
of soap, gather fallen pecans, keep neck bones
for soup. Beating rugs against the house,
we watch dust, lit like stars, spreading
across the yard. Late afternoon, we draw
the blinds to cool the rooms, drive the bugs
out. My mother irons, singing, lost in reverie.
I mark the pages of a mail-order catalog,
listen for passing cars. All day we watch
for the mail, some news from a distant place.

It’s 14 lines. Is it a sonnet? Is there a volta? Is it the dust, lit like stars?

oct 12/RUN

5.7 miles
ford loop
52 degrees

Peak fall this morning. Orange! Yellow! Red! Made even more vibrant by the gray sky. Wow! I felt strong and relaxed and dreamy. No sharp lines, everything soft and fuzzy and dissolving into the gray. It was dark enough for street lamps and headlights. Heard the rowers and the clicking and clacking of a roller skier in a bright yellow shirt, a squirrel cracking a nut. Smelled the sewer. Felt a few raindrops at the very end. Crossing the ford bridge, the tree line was oranges, yellows, reds on the st. paul side, but still a lot of green on the minneapolis side.

At the End, There Is Always a House / Sara Eliza Johnson

These days I move from room to room looking for a thing to
haunt. The filaments inside my teeth glow in the dark,
thirty-two beacons no one will see, except the mirror I
return to again and again, hoping for it to swallow me, to
find anything there but my face. Mirror is another word for
hunger. Hunger is another word for dead. Anyone would be
tired of hearing from me, the kind of woman — this repulsive
word — who’ll never have a garden or greenhouse, only a
fridge crisper full of broccoli and kale and lettuce, all
rotting to sludge, bananas on the counter blackening like
frostbitten skin. I used to quarter an apple with such
perfection I could have been autopsying my own heart. The
thing is there’s no way out of this house. Memory circles
like flies. Even the dead need to eat. Even the dead dream. I
left a note in the memory: You deserve so much more than
desire.

Wow, this poem!