Tag: poem

aug 27/BIKESWIMRUN

bike: 8.6 miles
lake nokomis and back
64/71 degrees

Hooray for feeling comfortable on a bike! Able to see enough to not feel scared.

…sitting on the back deck to write this, a wave of ear piercing cicada buzz just passed by. Wow! What’s the decibel level of that?

Rode into the wind for a lot of the ride — and not just the wind I was making with my moving body. Wondered if it would be choppy at the lake. (it was). At one point, when the wind seemed particularly strong, I could feel how un-aerodynamic I was — an upright form fighting against air. I tried to get more aerodynamic, leaning low and over my hips, my bike as parallel to the ground as I could get it. Thought about ironman triathletes who can bike like in an even more parallel position for almost 5 hours. Wow, how many hours of training and lifting and working with a coach must you need to keep that form for so long?

The bike ride back was wonderful. What a beautiful late summer day! Sunny, warm in a way that’s welcome because it was cooler in the morning.

swim: 2 loops
56 minutes
lake nokomis main beach
66 degrees

I did it! 1440 minutes, 24 hours, one day swimming in August! Hooray for ambitious goals that push you to do a little more than you would have otherwise. Swimming a total of 24 hours (over 21 swims) was a commitment for sure, but it wasn’t an unreasonable commitment. And the biggest challenge was not getting my body to swim that many minutes — and miles, over 40 — but having clean water and an open lake. Lake Nokomis was closed for 2 weeks in August due to elevated e-coli and algae blooms.

24 hours was a good goal. Enough to challenge me and enable me to get deeper into my swimming and writing about swimming, but not too deep to sink me, to overwhelm and injure me. That’s another definition of Mary Oliver’s deepening and quieting of the spirit: deepening my commitment, steadily chipping away at the time (a quiet = still = steady approach).

The water was empty of other humans. I don’t remember seeing/hearing any ducks or geese or seagulls either. Lots of milfoil, both tethered and floating in segments on the surface. Too many milfoil vines near the white buoys. They seem to be increasing every time I swim. Boo! I went much farther out to avoid them, and when I veered closer, I could feel them wrapping around my wrists and ankles. Join us, I briefly imagined them saying. No thanks!

Yesterday while looking up recent drownings in Lake Nokomis — the ones I remember are the South High football player in 2013 and the 11 year old girl in 2023 — I discovered that someone else drowned last week. A woman who (presumably) took her own life. Rescuers were searching for more than 24 hours, looking for the body. They found it. As I swam out to the white buoys, I thought about this woman and the others that had drowned, wondered how terrified I would be to encounter their dead bodies bobbing in the water. Another meaning of deepening/quieting of the spirit.

The water shimmered in the sun, sometimes like silver, sometimes glass. There were little waves, big enough to make a noise, but not big enough for white caps. Before I got used to the rocking movement, I was slightly dizzy. I liked the chop. I was able to got faster heading north with the wind, and more powerfully heading south against it.

The sky was a deep blue with a few clouds. They were fluffy like cotton balls, some of them big, like a whole ball, some of them wispy and small, like one chunk of the ball. Noticed a plane, parallel to the water.

The water was thick with particles, impossible to see too far in front of me — only my hand and the trailing bubbles.

Heading north, following the path of an open swim loop, I looked up and imagined that the orange buoy was far off in the distance. Oh, to have it appear to be able to swim out and beyond it!

When I finished the swim, I sat on the sand, feeling the sun on my back, looking out at the water and reflecting on the season. What a summer! I hope to come back to the lake more times this week and until they remove the buoys, but whatever happens, I met my goal and have no regrets about how much I swam this summer. Good job, Sara!

today’s inspiration

One of the poems-of-the-day offers inspiration for my Swimming One Day project:

Task/ Ari Banias

There’s a poem I tried to write about
bathing you the last day you were alive.

On one of our drives home:
I want to die without shame.

You didn’t elaborate.
I described standing across from a stranger

paid to do this work, her presence
anchoring me in the task

with you between us.
From this distance I can use the word task.

Your pain the astrologer said A gift
for others

A mixing bowl
filled with warm water

we dipped washcloths into before
wringing them out

rested between your legs.
The phrase utilitarian tenderness served

some containing purpose
I needed at the time.

A great effort
to come up to the surface of yourself

to say what you said to us.
A student writes two lines

about an aging parent
they think are boring and may cut.

That poem did not belong
to language, and surpassed touch

Dough rising somewhere
under a red and white

dishtowel in that bowl

about this poem

“The task is attempting to write the poem again the task is bathing the dying the task is work done for wages the task is recognizing the encounter that refuses containment that insists on experience outside narrative time the task is to not entomb memory in language to not reduce grief to a quotable thing the task is to feel the edge of a void and keep going inside the feeling the task summons in you the task continues despite”

inspirations

  • create a set of poems — one of them is the main poem, another about it, explaining it in some way, sideways or front ways or back ways, and maybe a third one that condenses it (like Hardly Creatures and the original poem, replica, souvenir)
  • a pair of poems, the second, the reflection of the first, as if on the surface of water, and darker, like A Oswald’s line about water letting you see twice but more darkly
  • take an idea — in the poem it is “task” — and play around with a wide range of meaning. I’m thinking: “day” or “quiet/still”

run: 2.45 miles
around lake nokomis
76 degrees

Went back to the lake in the evening with Scott. He started running north, I started south around the lake. I haven’t run here at all this summer. Stopped at the little beach briefly to check out the algae. Since my swim this morning, the test results have come in and there is an blue-green algae advisory at both beaches. They tested it on Monday when it was the worst. It’s better today.

Over halfway around, I passed a young boy walking by himself. After I passed him, I heard somebody running like they were trying to catch me. I think it was him. The footsteps lasted for 30 seconds? a minute? then stopped. I kept running until I reached the overlook on the cedar bridge then briefly stopped to take in the view. I noticed waves and the silhouettes of 2 kayaks in the distance, silvery water.

10 Lake Things

  1. a guy calling out, no! drop it! drop it! no! no! — I’m assuming they were talking to their dog, but I didn’t see
  2. a kid’s loud foot strikes
  3. a group of people crossing the path, heading for the dock
  4. the soft sand of the dirt trail next to the path
  5. 2 kids climbing the leaning tree that I used to run by and think it looked like a woman arching her back
  6. an opening in the vegetation, an empty bench, a person closer to shore
  7. 2 women’s voices on the water near shore — were they in a kayak or a canoe?
  8. the bridge has lane markings for a bike path — that’s new
  9. the smell of cigarette smoke near the booth where they test for zebra mussels
  10. a woman and a man blocking part of the path — the guy practicing a stretch as the woman gave him pointers — his coach?

aug 21/RUNSWIM

3.6 miles
locks and dam #1
74 degrees
humidity: 88% / dew point: 65

I’m trying to write this entry but I’m distracted by the little kids next door in the front yard — such cute voices. One of them was singing a song — take this grass. . .broken world. . . broken glass.

Refrain: hot, humid. Even so, a better run today than the last one I did. When was that? Tuesday (checked my log). Ran all the way to the bottom of the locks and dam #1 hill without stopping. Noticed the river. Such reflections! Clouds, trees, the bridge. Took a picture:

bridge / clouds / surface / sky

The water was smooth beneath the bridge and rippled (corrugated, as Anne Carson wrote) farther out.

Everything is still this morning, calm, quiet. Partly inspired by my 21 aug 2024 entry, I thought about being still. Not as not moving, but as a calm, steadiness. Stillness as the space between beats, when both of my feet are off the ground. Or, stillness as my strong core that floats through that space — suspended as held up in the air, not as stopped.

10 Bridge Things

  1. at the top of the hill, in-between the top and bottom of the bridge, a family was sitting on a bench
  2. the gate near the columns of the bridge was unlatched and slight ajar
  3. beyond it, hollowed out bricks with a strange pattern
  4. empty benches all the way down
  5. the reflection of the bridge on the water’s surface, upside down
  6. a car nearing the bottom, voices — couldn’t hear what they were saying but imagined it was about whether or not the locks and dam was open
  7. the echo of my footsteps under the bridge
  8. the clicking of a bike’s gear across the service road
  9. thought about what RJP told me yesterday: someone went over this locks and dam in a canoe (or was it a kayak?) yesterday
  10. at the top of the hill again, a man read the sign to a little kid who started jumping and asked him to join — by the time I reached them, they were both jumping and laughing and making goofy noises

the deepening and quieting of the spirit
among the flux of happenings

still

I thought about being quiet and calm and the opposite of restless and anxious. Then I thought about my core — literally and figuratively. Core = my core muscles, strong back, a straight spine. Core = enduring values, character. I felt the stillness within my self and my body even as the world blurred and floated and drifted around me. Then, Mary Oliver’s “deepening and quieting of the spirit” popped into my head — amongst the flux of happenings. Yes! A stillness of the spirit, where stillness is being satisfied and balanced and present in the moment, not needing to do more or feel guilt or regret for what was or wasn’t done. 

21 aug 2023 log entry

I still the clock./ Endi Bogue Hartigan

/I still the clock.

/I still the clock by holding the pendulum coin still so that
the mechanism stops
and I can sleep without the consciousness of it.

to still the clock is a ritual of the demagnification of clocks.

/it is a kind of violence of fiction for the clock to not
function as a clock while others click and breathe and blink.

the eyes blink more before they stop functioning as eyes.

/the rapid eye movement of dream frightening being pure
pulse, pure frenetic zag force

/to watch a gold-painted platinum extravagant clock you’re an excess you’re
a fire you’re in competition with the tiredness of time.
/to hold in your satiny eyelids the still unstill pendulum of
the gaudy machination you are in unison

with the aspirant expirations of the day.

still / holding / pending / stop
sleep / not function /
click / breathe / blink / dream / pulse / excess / rapid fire extravagance / tiredness / still unstill / aspire to expire

underwater the end (expiration) is the breath (expire)
the end / forced above / evicted from below / no longer water but air

In this poem, to still is to stop, to end, the deep sleep

swim: 6 loops
110 minutes
cedar lake open swim
82 degrees

The final open swim of the season. It goes so fast! Another great night for a swim. Warm, sunny. I liked that the wind made the water less smooth — not too rough, a gentle rocking. The course was set up strangely and even though I complained about it afterwards, I think I liked the challenge of it. One buoy was in the middle of the lake, the other was at the far left edge of hidden beach. At first I worried that this set-up would cause chaos with swimmers crossing over the path and running into to each other, but it was fine.

a risky moment: Because the course was so far to the left, I swam in water I haven’t before. Almost halfway across, I swam straight into a nest of vines — the biggest cluster of vines I’ve ever experienced. I didn’t panic and was able to swim out of it, but I could imagine a weaker swimmer struggling to free themselves and getting wrapped more tightly. As I swam away from it, I thought about the high school football player that drowned off of the little beach at lake nokomis about 10 years ago. That’s probably how it happened.

Some things irritated me: the swimmer that I tried to pass but sped up to prevent it, another swimmer stopped at the buoy, blocking the way, the unmoving lifeguard on his kayak too close in on the course, the bright sun making it almost impossible to see anything on the way back, the scratchy vines. But more things relaxed and delighted me: the gentle water, feeling strong and able to swim for so long, swimming past other swimmers like they were standing still, the faint clouds in the sky, the solitary orange buoy sitting on the surface of the water glowing, glimpsing other swimmers off in the distance — only inklings: the flash of a yellow or orange buoy, a bright pink cap, white foamy water.

overheard:

a mom with 2 kids, one who was around 4 or 5, the other a baby in her arms, to a lifeguard: Can he swim out to the orange pyramid?
lifeguard: (thinking she meant the baby and not the kid) alone?
mom: oh no, not the baby!

Later I heard her recounting the story to a friend. They were laughing about it.

At the end of the second to last loop, I stopped at the beach, stood in the shallow water and the sand, checked my watch, and decided to do one more loop. For the final loop, I felt Mary Oliver’s one day in August, everything calm and quiet. I thought about what a great season it has been, how grateful I am to have this time swimming, and how satisfied I am to have taken advantage of it. No open swims until next June. I thought about how no next season is guaranteed; a lot could happen between now and then. Then I remember the story of my great-grandmother Johanna standing out in the field at the farm near the end of the fall to behold the familiar view, wondering if she’d still be around the next fall.

aug 17/SWIM

4 loops (8 cedar loops)
95 minutes
cedar lake open swim
69 degrees

Would it rain? Would they cancel the swim? It seemed uncertain when I woke up to gloom, but the storm stayed south and the water was great. Smooth, mostly calm, not too crowded, easy to see. The first 3 and a half loops felt so easy and fast. I stopped at hidden beach for a quick break and a chance to see the lake from above the water for more than a brief flash every 5 strokes. The beach was quiet, empty. I could hear wind in the trees, then some bugs. I think I saw a few people getting ready to do open swim. They were up in the grass putting on wetsuits. Started swimming again and did another 3 loops before taking a minute or two break at hidden beach again. swam 1.5 more loops before deciding I was done — my legs decided for us. Nearing the first buoy, my legs felt like they were about to cramp, so I stopped kicking and dragged myself in for the last 50 feet or so.

strange vision

Several times, something strange happened with my color vision. Looking up quickly to sight, I noticed the lifeguard’s kayak. Instead of red in looked white and (almost) robin’s egg blue. Later, getting closer to more than one swimmer, their swim cap was white and the same blue instead of bright pink. Both with the kayak and the caps, when I got closer they returned to normal — red and pink.

10+ Things

  1. white sky — sometimes I could see the sun through the clouds, but it never emerged
  2. a swirl of vines, passing over my head, shoulders, torso, lingering near my ankles
  3. the swimming area at hidden beach was wide and long and almost empty — at least one other open swimmer was standing in the shallow water
  4. for the first 4 loops, the water was all smooth, during loop 5 it was much choppier heading to hidden beach
  5. a bird in the air — was it big or small? I couldn’t quite tell. I’m thinking small
  6. opaque water
  7. a scratchy vine, pricking my arm
  8. noticing the surface above the water from my vantage point: submerged, only my eyes out of the water, like an alligator
  9. stopping at the little beach: a dog barking, a collar clanging
  10. making note of the procession of swimmers on the other side of the course, heading to hidden beach when I was heading from it — a slow and steady line of swimmer
  11. after the swim, walking past a big puddle on the dirt/gravel road, its surface had scales on it from the wind

I never got completely lost in the swim, although I had moments where I wasn’t thinking about my stroke or breathing or sighting.

Thinking about time, last night I started reading Endi Bogue Hartigan’s on orchid o’clock. Here’s the opening poem, which I think will be a great inspiration for me in playing around with “one day in august.”

I’m talking about the rotation/ Endi Bogue Hartigan

—The predictable commencement of annual flooding of the Nile River is said to have formed the foundation of the ancient Egyptian calendar. Calculations were made using nilometers, vertical water-measurement devices, influencing taxation, crop planning, and more.

I’m talking about the black cows in the pasture along the highway between here and the office: some days the black cows’ snouts are pointed in the same direction in the morning and the opposite direction in the evening, all 200-300 or so, parallel dipping their snouts: some days they are helter-skelter; some days the shadows are crisp some days the shadows are swallowed but they have shadows on all days; and the wet eyes of the cows have an angle with which they lean into the wet grass, so they are a kind of dials to themselves and their light, visible to themselves or not. I might be comforted driving by saying cow shadow o’clock, saying east black cow o’clock, I might be comforted by talking about their rotation.

/it is child eyelash o’clock /it is having to look o’clock it is
Nile flood o’clock /it is percolate o’clock

/it is morning birds plus socket sound of car closing / 21st century pastoral
o’clock it is flashflood fear o’clock /it is TV van at the shooting site rim

/it is miscount of the dead o’clock
/it is remember to call remember to call find a corner to make a call o’clock

/it is the blue jay screech o’clock /it is having to look o’clock
/it is innocent eyelash o’clock /it is the clock continuing despite

o’clock /people emptying from their eyes
/it is yesterday’s rose-dew o’clock

/it is tearing the work blouse off its hanger o’clock/ it is
tearing and not /it is that blouse again that headline again it is

everything I forgot creeping up in tides
/it is people split and swelled

confiding overflow o’clock /it is the shadow of a gun / the shadow of
the cow o’clock /it is what is allowed in the shadow

/it is the president’s turned up o’clock it is America’s deadliness and dailiness
o’clock /it is glued to the headline o’clock

it is lunchhour-beeline o’clock /it is it’s only Tuesday o’clock another
curbside memorial o’clock another caterpillar miracle o’clock another

people emptying from their lives o’clock or into their
lives o’clock the Nile floods every hotspell in this week

/it is child-wake, it is flood of what’s at stake o’clock,
/it is the morning rupture the American rupture that

shadow-bleeds and swells /it is the felling of the shadow o’clock
/I’m talking about the black cows.

Wow!

I found this helpful essay by Hartigan about the book and the process of creating it: process note #2: on orchid o’clock

And here’s an earlier book of hers that might be interesting to check out: Pool (5 choruses)

aug 10/RUN

2.1 miles
to falls coffee
75 degrees / humidity: 91%
dew point: 70

Maybe because it was overcast, it didn’t feel as bad as the numbers would suggest. Still sweat a lot, but didn’t feel miserable. Ran with Scott to Falls Coffee. Ran on edmund, parallel to the YWCA tri racers biking on the river road. I remember doing this race — three times, in 2013, 2014, and 2015. I can’t remember why I didn’t sign up for it in 2016 — maybe because my favorite part, the swim, was too short and the bike was too long. In 2017, I was signed up, with RJP, to do a mother-daughter super sprint, but then I got injured. After that, I didn’t do it because my vision was too bad to go that fast and be that close to other bikers (and, because I never really liked the biking part). I love watching professional triathlons — Ironmans, T100s, WTCS Olympic distance races, and Super-tris, but I don’t like racing them.

Scott and I didn’t talk much as we ran; I think we were both too warm. Heard cicadas and birds and people calling out, good job! you got this!, way to go ladies!, to the racers. A steady stream of bikers on the road, some heading out, others returning.

We got coffee at Falls Coffee then walked back through the neighborhood, including through the playground at FWA and RJP’s elementary school. My favorite thing: little birds — sparrows? — lifting off from the pavement, like little bubbles bursting up in the air. Another thing: hearing cicadas buzzing and birds chirping at the same time — not a duet, I said to Scott, but two songs being sung at the same time that almost, but not quite, fit together.

Oh, this poem!

Difference/ Mark Doty

The jellyfish
float in the bay shallows
like schools of clouds,

a dozen identical — is it right
to call them creatures,
these elaborate sacks

of nothing? All they seem
is shape, and shifting,
and though a whole troop

of undulant cousins
go about their business
within a single wave’s span,

every one does something unlike:
this one a balloon
open on both ends

but swollen to its full expanse,
this one a breathing heart,
this a pulsing flower.

This one a rolled condom,
or a plastic purse swallowing itself,
that one a Tiffany shade,

this a troubled parasol.
This submarine opera’s
all subterfuge and disguise,

its plot a fabulous tangle
of hiding and recognition:
nothing but trope,

nothing but something
forming itself into figures
then refiguring,

sheer ectoplasm
recognizable only as the stuff
of metaphor. What can words do

but link what we know
to what we don’t,
and so form a shape?

Which shrinks or swells,
configures or collapses, blooms
even as it is described

into some unlikely
marine chiffon:
a gown for Isadora?

Nothing but style.
What binds
one shape to another

also sets them apart
— but what’s lovelier
than the shapeshifting

transparence of like and as:
clear, undulant words?
We look at alien grace,

unfettered
by any determined form,
and we say: balloon, flower,

heart, condom, opera,
lampshade, parasol, ballet.
Hear how the mouth,

so full
of longing for the world,
changes its shape?

We look at alien grace/unfettered/by any determined form


aug 7/SWIM

5 loops
90 minutes
lake nokomis open swim
86 degrees

Yes! A wonderful swim, and another hour and a half to add to my goal of reaching 34 hours by the end of the month. The water was choppy, which I liked, except for when it made it hard to get a stroke in and I felt like I was sinking. The water was thick and filled with my sparkle friends. Several times it felt like the buoy kept getting farther and farther away, until I broke the spell and suddenly had reached it. I saw some menacing sailboats and 1 or 2 paddle boarders. The light during the last loop was very cool — why? I guess because it was giving very chill twilight vibes. Noticed a few planes flying low and lots of seagulls and ducks. A few flashes down below — fish?

I felt strong and can tell that I’m getting stronger as I do more longer swims. A thought — could I possibly manage 7 loops in 2 hours? That would be amazing!

A few lines from two poems discovered this morning:

There is the clarity of a shore
And shadow,   mostly,   brilliance

summer

                the billows of August
(from “From the Sustaining Air“/ Larry Eigner

The clarity of a shore and shadow. Not sure about the shore, but I like the idea of shadows bringing clarity. They do for me.

2

I am pointless. This I come to know
by pressing ear to night’s machinery.
Outside, the words rub each other
until they are dull: calibrate, resurface,
surface, invest, investigate, snowy, open,
environ, woman, wooden, system.
I look where little nodes of language cling,
lichen-like, to what will have them.
(from “Rose-crowned Night Girl”/ Emily Skillings

I read this line about being pointless and it helped me to think about pointless meaning more than useful or not worthwhile. To be pointless is to not have points, to be smooth instead of rough, nothing sharp about you. My vision is point-less but not pointless. Everything softens with my fuzzy gaze.

added after the swim: During loop 4 or 5, I started thinking about pointless again as a way to indicate a dot — it’s a star without points. Earlier today I was working on a poem that describes a dot as a distant star. After thinking about pointless I thought about how the star/point, which was the far-off buoy, wasn’t always there — it flickered.

added 8 aug 2025: Just remembered a few more things. After the swim, I met Scott at Painted Turtle for a beer. We watched the ducks in the water, bobbing and floating and almost getting into fights with seagulls. We also watched the final swimmer being escorted into shore by 3 lifeguards. I told Scott that being the last swimmer, that is, staying until the very end of open swim, is a goal every year. I think I’ve done it once. Then we watched the green buoys heading in for the night, looking so much smaller than they do in the water when you’re right next to them.

aug 5/SWIM

a few hours before my swim: just got word, finally, that lake nokomis is reopening after a week of being closed. not because the e-coli was that bad all week, but because they only test it once a week.

5 loops
100 minutes
lake nokomis open swim
80 degrees

A wonderful night for a swim! The water was choppy, but gentle, and never forcing me to alter the side I breathed on. 1 2 3 4 5 right 1 2 3 4 5 left. Before the swim began, I encountered an older man and we talked about how much we love open swim. We agreed: it’s our favorite thing to do. As I started my swim, I thought about this wonderful exchange and this swimmer who loved what he was doing and I was happy.

10 Things

  1. a plane parallel to the water, flying low but not too low
  2. a dragonfly just above the surface
  3. a distant swan boat
  4. my sparkle friends were moving fast and into me as I swam
  5. thick, murky water
  6. seagulls
  7. ducks — quack quack
  8. the long, low light heading back to the big beach
  9. the alert on my watch beep beep beeping underwater at the end of a loop — was it a reminder about the amber alert we got earlier today — did other people hear it under water?
  10. more ghostly vines, one wrapping around my foot

I recited Mary Oliver’s, “Swimming, One Day in August” and felt the deepening and quieting of my spirit. Peaceful, calm, relaxed, in my element.

This entire poem is fire, but for the sake of space I’ll just the pertinent section in today’s entry:

from Swimming Chenango Lake/ Charles Tomlinson

There is a geometry of water, for this
Squares off the clouds’ redundancies
And sets them floating in a nether atmosphere
All angles and elongations: every tree
Appears a cypress as it stretches there
And every bush that shows the season,
A shaft of fire. It is a geometry and not
A fantasia of distorting forms, but each
Liquid variation answerable to the theme
It makes away from, plays before:
It is a consistency, the grain of the pulsating flow.

geometry: the shape and relative arrangement of the parts of something / relationship of points, lines, surfaces, angles


geometry and not
distorting form — angles and points and lines off due to water and unreliable vision

Thinking about geometries of water and Anne Carson’s anthropology of water and the relationship of points, lines, surfaces, angles. Suddenly remembered a reference to geometry that I’d like to experiment with:

“Closed because geometric mean of E. coli exceeds 126 MPN/100 mL“

It’s the message on the parks lake water quality map, explaining why the beach is closed. Will it reopen in time for tonight’s open swim? I hope so!

Geometric mean, what’s that? While Minneapolis Parks doesn’t explain, I found another site with some helpful information: E-coli Open Water Data

  • tests take 24 hours to process, that’s why I’m still waiting for the results to show up now, even though they tested yesterday (could this 24 hours be another example of swimming, one day in august?)
  • MPN = most probable number
  • this site is out of Toronto so it gives the acceptable rates for Canada. In Canada, it’s under 200 MPN, which is higher than here in Minneapolis: 126
  • e-coli stands for  Escherichia coli

I asked FWA — my science guy — what the geometric in geometric mean means and he explained it this way: they make an imaginary grid for the lake and then take samples from different sections of the grid, then they average those samples to get the MPN/ML number. So geometric = grid

The grid makes me think of my vision and the visual field test and the amsler grid and imagining the lake as a grid with different sections of it muted or extinguished or replaced with other sections of the grid that I can actually see.

And now I’m thinking about the geometric ways in which I approach swimming in the lake:

  • angles
  • trajectories
  • following a line, working to understand that relationship between points and surfaces (swimmers’ hands piercing the water and plotting my course with glitter)
  • lines and angles (wider angles to achieve distance from other swimmers, to find the buoy without seeing it)
  • lines and surfaces (try to follow a line that cuts across a wave/swelled surface instead of directly into it)
  • the line of the rope tethered to the buoy and a weight, anchoring the buoy
  • the angle of that rope line
  • how the angle of the sun and the angle of the buoy determine how likely I am to see it and how much orange is reflected on the surface of the water
  • the angle of the lifeguards in relation to the angle of my projected path, how the difference between these angles affects how straight I swim
  • same with the angle of other swimmers’ paths
  • the sharp angles of prickly vines
  • parallel lines: water and airplane, kicking feet, body and bottom, body and big beach
  • perpendicular lines: water and light pole
  • buoys as balls, spheres, orbs
  • buoys as cylinders
  • buoys as equilateral triangles
  • angles of elbow, the arc of an elbow’s path from out of the water to back in
  • grid quadrants: 1. from big beach to little beach, 2. from little beach to middle green buoy, 3. from middle green to final green buoy, 4. from final green buoy to first orange buoy
  • rounding the buoy vs. cutting a sharp angle
  • coordinate points: hand/water, a swimmer/another swimmer’s toe, orange buoy/surface

More on geometry . . . searched geometry on Poetry Foundation and this was the first result:

Geometry/ Nancy Botkin

All the roofs sloped at the same angle.
The distance between the houses was the same.
There were so many feet from each front door
to the curb. My father mowed the lawn
straight up and down and then diagonally.
And then he lined up beer bottles on the kitchen table.

We knew them only in summer when the air
passed through the screens. The neighbor girls
talked to us across the great divide: attic window
to attic window. We started with our names.
Our whispers wobbled along a tightrope,
and below was the rest of our lives.

slopes angles

distance = feet


lines straight diagonally






screens = grid
divide line bar

We knew them only in summer when the air
passed through the screens. The neighbor girls
talked to us across the great divide: attic window
to attic window. We started with our names.
Our whispers wobbled along a tightrope,
and below was the rest of our lives.

All of this geometry talk has inspired me to craft a sonnet about grids and seeing and the grid in my eye tethered to the grid in the water. I have a first draft that needs a little work. The poem is about how I’ve been using sighting buoys during open swim to learn how to see in new ways, or to function without needing to see things clearly or often. Or, is it about the parallel paths that learning to sight and learning to rarely or unreliably see have taken and how that’s shaped my experiences with vision loss? or, are both of those conclusions too heavy-handed? Should it be stranger?

1

tethers us to each
other — swimming and
vision, buoy and
body, to sight
but rarely see

2

tethers us to each
other — swimming and
vision, buoy and
body, to use sight
to learn how to see

Typing up both of these endings, I like the first one better. I’ll keep thinking about it.

aug 3/RUN

2.25 miles
2 trails
70 degrees
AQI: 151

Another short run today. The air quality is still bad, but it didn’t bother me — or, I’m so used to it bothering me that I didn’t notice. Wore my bright yellow shoes again and felt bouncy. Listened to my “Slappin’ Shadows” playlist running south, the gorge running north: trickling water, laughing kids, someone talking about walking on a boardwalk, a beeping/ringing noise on repeat somewhere below. Noticed a haze above the river, everything washed out, pale. The tree that fell a few weeks ago is still there, unmoved. The benches were empty, the trails were thick with bikes. No more mud. Acorn shells on the sidewalk.

Walking back after the run, I thought about my inkling poems and how I like to/have to try and guess what something is based on very little data. Some lines came to me —

It’s a game, really —
Name that Tune but for
forms. I can name that
form in 2 curves . . .

Searching for “inkling” on poets.org, I found these great lines:

For what is prophecy but the first inkling
of what we ourselves must call into being?
The call need not be large. No voice in thunder.

It’s not so much what’s spoken as what’s heard—
and recognized, of course. The gift is listening
and hearing what is only meant for you.
(from Prophecy/ Dana Gioia)

And now I’m thinking about inklings as creatures, and not just hunches or ideas or guesses or a call/prophecy to listen to. An inkling is the tiny creature that speaks to us — not a little man, but a spirit or an insect or Dante’s spiriti visivi.

july 31/RUN

4.5 miles
minnehaha falls and back
59 degrees
AQI*: 157

*Air Quality Index

Cooler! Smoky, again. Ran on the dirt trail on the other side of the river road heading south. Noticed how the trail didn’t seem quite as wide as it did a few years ago during the pandemic when more people were using it. Wondered how many feet have to tread over the same spot to make a trail, and how long it takes for a forgotten trail to revert to grass. Crossed over to the paved path by Becketwood and stayed on it to the falls, then past the falls, then over the Veterans bridge then down the steep hill to the very bottom of the ford bridge then north thenhome.

Listened to cars and birds and voices as I ran south. Put in my “Remember to Forget” playlist returning north. Tried to forget that I was hot and wanted to stop as I listened to Peter Gabriel and Michael McDonald singing about forgetting.

10 Things

  1. orange light dotting the path
  2. turkeys! 4 female turkeys (hens) bobbing their necks and moving slowly, 1 male (a tom) following behind — the hens ignored me as I stopped to look, but the tom turned and stare
  3. the rush of minnehaha creek below me as I ran over the veterans bridge
  4. standing on the bridge above the falls, watching it tumble down to the creek below
  5. a man and a little kid sitting at the bench near the boulder
  6. the path blocked off near Godfrey by 2 trucks and some cones — not sure what they were working on
  7. the path blocked off near folwell by cones: park workers repainting the biking and walk signs
  8. a new person painted on the paved path — glowing white, I checked to see if anyone had drawn in a face yet (nope)
  9. my shadow — I could see my pony tail bobbing as I moved
  10. fake bells x 2: the ding-ding-ding of the light rail pulling out of the station and the chiming of the st. thomas bells at 7:45

excerpt from 38. Shedding the Old/ Samantha Thornhill

Such as the lobster 
cracking loose 
from its exoskeleton 
after moons of moulting,  
or the viper that squeezes 
out of the skin 
of its remembrance, 
this oracle invites you
to rewild yourself,
to unbox, detox, and de-
clutter your blood. 

Rewild yourself!

july 29/RUNRUN

2.5 miles
2 trails
73 degrees
dew point: 70

Another hot and hazy morning. I remembered to notice the river and it looked . . . thirsty? Trying to think of the best word that conveys the opposite of refreshing and cool. Uninviting? Thick? Stuck? Inert? By the Cleveland Overlook it was green and dull and thick. Below the Winchell Trail near the south entrance it was a pale blue with a soft haze hovering above it. Farther north on the trail it was bright blue with a few spots of sparkle through the trees.

Because of the intense thunder storm last night, there was water everywhere — puddles, gushing sewers, squishy mud. The puddles were small but filled with the reflections of trees and flat, still. The mud was slick and slippery. Two distinctive sewer sounds/movements: 1. below 44th street, the water was pulsing, coming in waves — a moment of steady flow, then nothing, then water flowing again. I stopped to lean over the railing and watch it. 2. below 42nd street, the water was rushing out of the pipe, making a small waterfall on the rocks below — a continuous dropping of water.

With all the wind and rain last night, I expected there to be more trees or branches down than there were. Was there any new debris? I don’t think so.

The weather is strange this week: very hot and humid and sunny during the day — we’ve had several heat advisories, then violent storms move in quickly at night. Last night, it started with the wind. I opened the front door and watched the trees bending, twisting, waving. Very unsettling to watch. Then the sky unzipped and rain came down in sheets. Will it happen again tonight? I hope not.

For future Sara: Scott and I discovered a new sport to watch during the Aquatic World Championships — men’s 27 meter (that’s 9 stories!) and women’s 20 meter diving. Why can’t the men and women dive from the same height? Anyway, I’d never heard of this before. An extremely HIGH platform is created outside with a small circular pool at the bottom — don’t worry, the water is deep. Divers jump — they enter feet first — from high up, doing flips and twists and somersaults as they plummet. It’s so dangerous that they have 4 first-responders in the pool waiting to rescue them if they need it. And the first thing they do after surfacing is alert the responders with a thumbs up. What? Wow. Like other diving competitions, a lot of the score is determined by how much splash they make entering the water. I can’t see the splash, because of my bad vision, but I still enjoy watching it. After the dive, they show several slow-motion replays, including one from below. You watch as the diver nears the water; Scott says it reminds him of seeing someone falling to their death.

Discovered this beautiful poem yesterday:

Someone Is the Water/ Austin Araujo

I am alone but for this vein
splitting the earth open
and we are silent, the stream and I

far away from our mouths. The stream
folds over itself, my hand
speculating under the surface.

The stippled faces of orioles
sail by slowly, their dark wings working
hard as tired men pulling oars

in a landscape painting, their lantern
chests dotting a modest pattern
across the sky, over this brook

a mile from your house—from you
who are alone but for your sons
and your sons’ refusal to recognize

you cloaked under a sadness,
the color of whose cloth is muted
as these late-afternoon birds.

The stream sluices crawdads
and stones, carefully takes its bend
like a tongue spackled with canker sores.
I still expect it to speak. I’ve come
to listen to this slow
unfurling, hoping I’ll fall

asleep as it turns like a lullaby
a child promises he will strain
to hear, to memorize. I make sense

of smudged pastoral visions.
Gone, the birds long gone.
Palms, I cup water with bent palms.

run: 3 miles
trestle turn around
86 degrees

I was supposed to go to open swim, but the beach has been closed for a week because of e-coli. Not sure why, but I’m guessing it’s because of the storm. What a bummer! I’m supposed to start my “swimming one day in august” project on 1 august. It will be more difficult to do it now that I’m missing august 1 and 3. Thankfully Cedar Lake is open so at least I can swim there tomorrow.

Since I couldn’t swim, I decided to do another run. It was hot, but the humidity was lower so it seemed less terrible than this morning’s run.

10 Things

  1. I think I heard the rowers; I know I saw a few of them heading down the hill to the dock
  2. traffic was backed up — so many cars trying to turn onto lake street
  3. a mini peloton — a dozen bikers — whirred by me on the river road
  4. someone in a strange t-shirt with lots of words or logos or symbols that I couldn’t make sense of was sitting on the ledge under the trestle listening to heavy metal on their phone
  5. a walker, dressed in brown shorts and a brown shirt, passing me twice, their head titled to the side
  6. the sliding bench was a cool, dark green
  7. the spray paint on the ancient boulder looked extra orange today — did someone touch it up recently?
  8. a lime scooter parked in the middle of the walking path under the bridge
  9. the big crack north of the trestle looks about the same as it did last week — not bigger — but the path is blocked off with caution tape, orange cones, and a warning spray-painted on the asphalt
  10. as I neared them, someone was emerging from the old stone steps

july 16/RUN

Rain this early (7 am) morning. Hopefully stopping in a few hours. Watching the tour and rereading old entries from july 16ths. Discovered this excellent description of a buzzing bug:

The Locust/ Leonara Speyer

Its hot voice sizzles from some cool tree
Near-by:
It seems to burn its way through the air
Like a small, pointed flame of sound
Sharpened on the ecstatic edge of sunbeams.

note: I first posted this poem on 16 july 2022. I posted it again last year in 2024. Maybe I should memorize it?

a few hours later: what a stage of the tour (stage 11)! Pogacar crashing; Visma waiting for him. What will happen tomorrow in the Pyrenees?

It is 10:30 and a light rain. Won’t stop until 12:30. Do I wait, or go now? It’s probably refreshing and it might be fun to run in the rain . . .

4.25 miles
minnehaha falls and back
66 degrees
light rain

I did it, and it was a great run! Back to the 9/1 (9 minutes running / 1 minute walking) and feeling strong and relaxed. The light rain helped to cool me down, and I liked how my feet glided on the wet trail. Glided sounds strange. How about glode or glid or glod? Started the run by chanting in triple berries then turning everything I noticed into triples — river road, dripping trees, running feet, rushing cars. Listened to everything dripping for the first 30 minutes, then put in the “Energy” playlist for the last stretch.

10 Things

  1. gloom with the occasional bright flash from headlights
  2. one flash looked lower — I think it was a reflection in a big puddle!
  3. the ravine by 42nd was gushing like the falls
  4. the falls were giving off a fine, gauzy spray
  5. a stranded surrey near the longfellow house — were they getting wet in the rain?
  6. someone walking up the hill at the edge of the park, carrying an umbrella
  7. above the creek, the grass next to the sidewalk was soaked with a line of big puddles
  8. the sprawling reflection of a tree in a wide puddle on a sidewalk
  9. the silhouette of a bird on a wire, looking very Bird
  10. the bells of St. Thomas — faint, distant

an hour later: I was planning to do open swim at cedar lake tonight but I just got an email: “canceled due to inclement weather.” Bummer.

a few random Alice Oswald bits

1

On her process of translating what she notices into a poem, and on poetry as framing the silence:

She and her husband, playwright Peter Oswald, divide their day in two – walking their sons to and from school through fields. But she doesn’t take a notebook with her. She believes in the subconscious, in what is brewing on a ‘non-verbal level’. She thinks ‘a flavour or feeling builds up, almost a sculptural shape that could be a living creature, or a dance or a painting’. Only later comes the ‘plastic art of finding the words’.

There is also, in her poems, a sense of the silence behind every word. ‘One of the differences between poetry and prose is that poetry is beyond words. Poetry is only there to frame the silence. There is silence between each verse and silence at the end.’ 

into the woods

2

Wood Not Yet Out/ Alice Oswald

closed and containing everything, the land
leaning all round to block it from the wind,
a squirrel sprinting in startles and sees
sections of distance tilted through the trees
and where you jump the fence a flap of sacking
does for a stile, you walk through webs, the cracking
bushtwigs break their secrecies, the sun
vanishes up, instantly come and gone.
once in, you hardly notice as you move,
the wood keeps lifting up its hope, I love
to stand among the last trees listening down
to the releasing branches where I’ve been –
the rain, thinking I’ve gone, crackles the air
and calls by name the leaves that aren’t yet there

Oh, that ending! Now I’m imagining what the rain does when it thinks I’m not around! Today the rain didn’t crackle the air but . . . dotted it? feathered it? poked or punctured it?

3

The other day I came across Alice Oswald’s description of a project she’ll be working on next year as a fellow at Columbia University. She’s calling it Interviews with Anon:

At the Institute, Oswald will write a procession of passersby, not all of whom are human and many of whom are imperfectly seen: “My inspiration is the wandering, bartering, folktale style of Herodotus, who included 940 characters in his Histories. I shan’t be writing history. Perhaps it will be more like a headcount or even a carnival.”

Interviews with Anon

Very cool! I can’t wait to read/hear this in a few years.