Tag: poem

march 11/RUN

4.75 miles
river road, north/south
30 degrees / snow
100% snow-covered

Even though I saw that snow showers were predicted for this morning, I wasn’t expecting it to be snowing today, or if it was, to only be the big flakes that fall but never land. Wrong. The snow started around 8 and hasn’t let up yet (at noon). The most irritating thing about the snow was that it was blowing in my face, even with the brim of my cap pulled way down. The most delightful? Maybe the sharp, quick snap of the crunching snow, or the way the not slippery but also not solid surface made me feel faster or more like I was flying then plodding, or how the rare pops of color — the yellowish-green crosswalk sign, the blue bike path sign, a runner’s pink hat, the hot pink and lime green stripe on another runner’s pants, the orange water jug on the side of the path set up by some running group — stood out against the relentless backdrop of white, or the cross-country skier! skiing on the path. A great run!

At the end of my run, right in front of my house, I heard the snow crunching and the birds chirping and I had to pull out my phone to record them. I made the mistake of holding the phone down at my side — is it a mistake? — and so the crunching sound is so loud that it’s distorted. It was loud, though. I remember passing another running and hearing her feet CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCHing!

LOUD! / 11 march 2023

Before I went out for a run, I read through the third page of Schuyler’s poem. So much of it is about color. I wanted to spend my run looking for color, and I did, at least some of the time, but I became focused on avoiding rough snow and making sure I noticed the river — open, wide, the snow looking like a white mist hovering above the water.

Colors I Remember Noticing

  1. a pale yellow flag in the snow
  2. a yellowish-green crosswalk sign
  3. blue biking and walking path signs
  4. a bright pink hat on a runner
  5. chartreuse running tights on a runner
  6. my purple jacket
  7. almost everything, white
  8. a dark gray strip of bare pavement
  9. running tights with a stripe of lime green and hot pink
  10. an orange water jug

Schuyler, Hymn of Life, page 3

Begins with Below Lee, ends with Or simply lying down to read. A lot of color. Decided to pick out only the color lines, except for one delightful one about birds that I couldn’t resist:

Created no illusion of lived-in-ness. But the periwinkles do, in beds
That flatten and are starred blue-violet, a retiring flower loved,
It would seem, of the dead, so often found where they congregate.

I’m unfamiliar with periwinkles, so I looked them up:

Tough, low-maintenance, and pest-free, Vinca minor (commonly known as periwinkle) has pretty broadleaf foliage and flowers that thrive in the sun or shade. It is also useful for providing ground cover and is known for its creeping habit. Periwinkle can come back every year as a perennial when planted in warmer climates but is an annual in cooler regions. Vinca minor vines most commonly put out a blue flower in spring, but the color can also be lavender, purple, or white. 

How to Grow and Care for Vinca Minor

Oh wow, I think I have these in my back yard! I love the little purple pops of color, breaking up the monotony of green. Usually I’m able to see them. And, are these flowers that I write about in an entry dated july 29, 2019 periwinkles?

Forgot to look for the river again today. Instead saw lots of green. A few slashes of light purple. What are those wildflowers? Green with purple all over the edge of the path.

Doubtful. I searched periwinkles and Mississippi River Gorge and vinca minor and Mississippi River Gorge and nothing came up.

The sky
Colors itself rosily behind gray-black and the rain falls through
The basketball hoop on a garage, streaking its backboard with further
Trails of rust, a lovely color to set with periwinkle violet-blue.

A rosy sky behind gray-black clouds? Not pure reddish-pink or pinkish-red but the hint of it behind something darker. The rust — did I see rust anywhere on my run? I don’t think so.

in the west appear streaks of different green

So under lilacs unleaved/ Lie a clump of snowdrops

What are snowdrops, and can I find them here in Minneapolis? Yes! But not today.

The Minnesota Landscape Arboretum gardeners and I are on the lookout each March for the first snowdrop flowers, the first perennial garden plant to bloom and a marker of the beginning of the growing season.

A few of the white, bell-like flowers opened March 16 last year, announcing the end of winter.

In botanical and gardening books, snowdrops are described as hardy bulbs with nodding flowers that bloom, while lingering patches of snow are still seen.

Nature Notes: Snowdrops (from 2016)

I think I’ve seen them in my backyard in very early spring. I’ll have to look out for them at the end of this month or in April.

and one purple crocus. Purple. A polka-dotted
Color little girls are fond of: “See my new dress!” and she twirls
On one foot. Then, crossed, bursts into tears.

Purple. A polka-dotted Color? Is there a crocus that is purple with polka dots, or is he suggesting that like polka-dots, purple is a color that delights little girls? I don’t like his emotionally erratic little girl image.

Smiles and rain, like
These passing days in which buds swell, unseen as yet, waiting
For the elms to color their further out most twigs,

The early buds on the tips of tree twigs! I notice these all winter, waiting for them to turn green.

only the willow
Gleams yellow.

When I lived much closer to Minnehaha Creek, I would often walk by a beautiful willow tree. Several years ago, it was cut down. It has appeared in a few of my early poem fragments. I remember how it looked yellow in the spring. What a beautiful tree! Now, when I think of willow trees, I mostly think of Carl Phillips (see the end of this log entry).

These
Days need birds and so they come, a flock of ducks, and a bunch of
Small fluffy unnamed balls that hide in hedges and make a racket.

These days need birds. Yes! I love that line, and the sentiment. Also, the small, fluffy unnamed balls that hide in hedges. No color mentioned; I just wanted to make note of this great bit. I can see a soft, intense, egg yellow of fluff.

It is more
Mysterious than that, pierced by blue

I think the pierced by blue is a reference to the color that cuts through the gloom of a rainy, cloudy day.

I read somewhere that in addition to writing poetry, James Schuyler was an art critic. I would imagine that all the time he spent studying various paintings has influenced how he sees, understands, is able to describe color. He’s a great color poet.

march 10/SHOVELWALK

shovel: 25 minutes
about 2 inces

At some point during the speculation over this storm, they predicted 3-5 inches. We might have gotten 3 total, over 2 days of on and off snow. The snow was soft and not too difficult to shovel, except for the bits caked on that my shitty Target shovel couldn’t seem to scrape.

walk: 1 mile
neighborhood with Scott and Delia

A beautiful walk through a winter wonderland. We headed north on Edmund and I was able to admire the white Welcoming Oaks from across the road. Later, on 34th, I made sure to check and see if the house that recently acquired new owners still had the little anemometer (measures wind speed) perched on the fence near the garage. Yes! Noticed how all the snow on the streets had melted. Excellent.

the tree outside my window

During my month with Linda Pastan, I read a lot about the tree outside her window. The tree outside my window belongs to my neighbor. Earlier this week, the heavy, wet snow caused a a big section of it (which is a big tree) to fall. Here’s what I wrote about it on Monday:

Woke up this morning, walked downstairs, opened the blinds. Hello huge tree branch sprawled across the side yard! Sometime during the night as it snowed a branch from my neighbor’s tree fell. It starts in their yard and ends by the edge of my house. Luckily, no damage. I wonder how long it will be before it’s removed?

RUN! log entry from 6 march 2023

How long will it be? It’s still there. Yesterday Scott and I talked about whether or not we should do anything about it. We decided we’ll wait until it’s warmer. It’s not blocking anything, or causing any damage, and it is their responsibility. I wouldn’t mind clearing off some of the branches, but the biggest part of the fallen tree looks heavy and will be difficult to remove. Of course, this fallen tree isn’t a big deal, but it’s difficult to ignore when it’s right outside my window, always there, reminding me that something will need to done about it at some point, and that I’m incapable of talking with my neighbors about it.

a mini-project on Schuyler

Yesterday I decided to print out James Schuyler’s lllooonnnnggg poem, Hymn to Life. 10 pages 1.1 spaced in 13 pt Helvetica-Neue. It just fits on my desk, under the glass. My plan is to spend some time with a different page each day (or each time I read it and write about it) and pick out bits that stand out for me.

James Schuyler, Hymn to Life, Page 2

Today I worked on page 2, which begins with As the seasons turning, and ends with bigger gravestones than the lesser fry. Why did I begin with page 2 and not page 1? Maybe it was because I’ve read the first page many times, but rarely beyond it — I was too daunted by the number of lines left to read. And because I discussed the first page a little yesterday.

tree, that dominates this yard, thick-waisted, tall/ And crook branched. Its bark scales off like that which we forget:/ Pain, an introduction at a party, what precisely/ happened umpteen Years or days or hours ago. This line reminds me of a bit of Schuyler’s diary that I read yesterday:

March 5 — in this case from 1971:

“As beautiful a morning as ever was, as though the two days wind had blown something away and left — not spring, by any means: a kind of russet flash in this swept clean clarity.  The plane tree looks as though it’s shedding its flakes and scabs of bark in the interest of a new nakedness, its upper trunk like a sinewy throat. 


Putting these two fragments together complicates and deepens my understanding of that which we forget. When I initially read the poem, I was thinking more about the regret of forgetting someone’s name, or what happened in the past. Also — just last week, RJP had a check-up at the dentist. After she was safely done, I told her about how painful one of my cleanings had been and how I wished I could have recorded that pain I felt because I hadn’t flossed enough and play it back for myself every time I didn’t want to floss! Now reading the lines in Schuyler’s diary about shedding bark and becoming something new, I’m thinking about why I sometimes want to forget, to let go of old memories and experiences, to become something new. So, some things we want to forget — like me and the problem of the tree — and some things we want to remember — like the voices and gestures of someone we love, the pain of a bad cleaning. Both are true, and the tree bark can be about forgetting as welcomed or feared.

And that same blue jay returns, or perhaps/ It is another. All jays are one to me. This makes me think of bird as form, which is how I often understand birds because of my inability to see their fine details. Although, as I learn more of their songs, I can distinguish between some types. Just this past fall I finally realized that what I thought was an irritating crow call is actually the screech of a blue jay, and that the tin-whistle song that I always here is a blue jay too. I’m also thinking about the rare occasion when I wonder about the life span of the creatures I encounter — squirrels, birds, butterflies, bees. I looked up blue jay: 7 years, on average, but as old as 27. I’ve lived in my current house for 8 years, so I might be encountering the same bird each year.

But not the sun which seems at/ Each rising new, as though in the night it enacted death and rebirth I don’t imagine the sun in this way. Is this because I hardly ever sit and watch it set? I should. What would it feel like to imagine that the sun is performing death every night, being reborn every morning? How could that shift my perspective on everything?

a future which is just more Daily life. I love daily life — the mundane, sometimes made magical, but often small and quiet and repeated. I find comfort in the patterns, find meaning in the accumulation of day after day.

It/Is spring. It is also still really winter. Not a day when you say,/“What a beautiful spring day.” A day like twilight or evening when/You think, “I meant to watch the sun set.”

I meant to watch the sun set. This line comes after the flowers blooming, daily life, and a bit about his cat is always getting into fights. A fun surprise to realize, just now as I read this again, that Schuyler was setting me up for regret about not seeing a sun set! And now, noticing how I wrote sunset and he wrote sun set, I’m thinking about the difference between the two, one as a noun, the other a verb, and how believing in the sun setting as opposed to the sunset is much more fun, and open, and makes imagining that the sun could be doing something like performing death every night much more possible. Verbs are the best!

march 9/RUN

4.5 miles
minnehaha falls and back
32 degrees / light snow
99% clear path!

Hooray for slightly warmer weather and finally having a clear trail. This winter has been especially bad for icy, treacherous paths. Today there was some wind and snowflakes flying like daggers in my face, but there was also sizzling in the trees (from dead leaves shaking in the wind), a gushing waterfall, and a flowing creek. I don’t remember looking down at the river even once, but I do remember listening for the sewer pipe at 42nd (more gushing water) and glancing down at the sledding hill at the park (empty of sledders but not of snow). I thought about how this felt like a late winter, early spring snow: not likely to last. I appreciated how the new flakes covered the old ugly gray snow that’s been accumulating since december. Yesterday I noticed it too, while walking and thought it looked like powdered sugar on a cake with a cracked crust.

On the second half of my run, I recited the poem I memorized last night, Listen by Didi Jackson. Not in my head this time, but out loud. Quietly, but more than a whisper. The poem was easy to speak as I moved. Maybe I should road test all of the poems I write? If it’s not easy to recite while moving, it needs to be revised! It can’t be too easy, though.

my body doing strange things

Yesterday after my run, I had something strange and unsettling happen. All of a sudden, without warning, my ears plugged up, my head felt full or stuffed up or about to explode, and I could feel the vibrations of sounds. Everything felt (not just sounded) loud. So loud! Not painful, just uncomfortable. And there was constant noise. Sometimes it sounded like a dryer with something thump thump thumping in it. Sometimes it sounded like I was standing next to the engine of a plane. And sometimes it sounded like the inside of a seashell. My ear often gets plugged up, but never like this. It lasted the rest of the day and until I went to bed (around 12:30 am). I woke up today, and it was gone.

What happened? My best guess is that it was an intense episode of tinnitus, possibly brought on by something that happened Tuesday night during band rehearsal. Whoever was playing timpani decided to hit the drum as hard as they could. BOOM! The noise was so loud it made me jump in my chair.

Before my run, I revisited a poem I first posted on this blog on feb 16, 2019: Hymn to Life by James Schuyler. Wow, is this poem long! Too long for me and my failing vision. But so good. Here is a passage I’d like to remember (and maybe use someday):

The turning of the globe is not so real to us   
As the seasons turning and the days that rise out of early gray   
—The world is all cut-outs then—and slip or step steadily down   
The slopes of our lives where the emotions and needs sprout.

Hymn to Life/ James Schuyler

I especially like the idea of early gray as a time when the world is all cut-outs. That’s my world a lot of the time. Flat, not quite real, only forms, cut-outs.

An idea: I think I’ll print out this poem and put it under the glass on my desk to read and reread all month! I haven’t read much James Schuyler, but what I have, I like. Linda Pastan talks about him somewhere (in an interview? a poem — I’ll look it up later) and I can see his influence in this poem. Not too long ago, I found out about his diary and I’ve wanted to get it. It’s out-of-print, with only expensive, used copies available, at least where I’m looking.

update on the previous paragraph:
First, I did print it out and am slowly making my way through it.
Second, Linda Pastan talks about William Stafford, not James Schuyler. Maybe I was thinking about this discussion (A Day Like Any Other: A Discussion of James Schuyler’s “February”)of Schuyler that I listened to at the same time I was reading Pastan?

In case I decide to study Schuyler some more, here’s something to read: Some James Schuyler Resources

march 8/RUN

5.5 miles
franklin loop
35 degrees
snow flurries

Not completely sure if my body — my knees, left hip, lower back — were quite ready to run today, but the rest of me was, and I’m glad I did. The trail was almost completely clear with hardly any ice. And, there was only one short stretch of puddle-y slush so bad that I stopped to walk in the street to avoid it.

10 Things I Remember

  1. the Minneapolis park crew had spread some dirt/sand on the trail to help make it less slippery. It was especially helpful under the lake street bridge on the marshall side
  2. heard the drumming of a woodpecker somewhere in the gorge — it cut through the thick air. Also heard at least two geese, flying low and honking
  3. the flurries were at an angle and I pulled the bill of my cap way down, almost covering my eyes, so that the snow wouldn’t fly directly into my eyes
  4. the river, part 1: the river was gray and open as I crossed the franklin bridge
  5. smelled the sewer a few times — a result of the recent (slight) thaw. Yuck!
  6. the river road on the east side south of franklin was in terrible condition. So many potholes — dozens. I couldn’t tell if they were deep, just that there were a lot of them!
  7. river, part 2: crossing back over the lake street bridge, the river was almost completely open, only one small chunk of ice
  8. the river, part 3: near the small chunk of ice, I noticed that the river looked blueish green. A strange, delightful color. But what was causing it?
  9. don’t remember hearing all the grit under my feet, but I remember feeling it. I like sliding on it. Why? Maybe because it’s more interesting than flat, hard pavement?
  10. Favorite spot: near Meeker Island Dam, there’s a spot with an open view of the river and the other side. Only a few slender tree trunks in the way

Before heading out for my run, I had started revising my “How to Sink” poem. Thought I might get some inspiration by the gorge. Later, as I ran, I realized that I should wait to finish this poem when it’s spring, or at least warmer, when everything is dripping and oozing and flowing down to the river. I thought of this as the sharp flurried stabbed my face. Was thinking that I should do a “How to” poem related to water through the seasons.

Summer = How to Float

Spring = How to Sink

Winter = How to Settle? — something about snow that’s packed, layer, staying (not melting), compacting — How to be compact? or, How to Shrink?

Fall = I need to think about this one some more. What does water do in the fall? Maybe something related to decomposing — leaves falling, drying up, becoming brittle? water leaving — freezing — frost? fog? or, How to Rust?

Recited from memory my ED poem, “I measure every Grief I meet” before the run, then during it as I walked up the hill between the meeker dam and lake street. Recorded it into my phone. Only missed a few prepositions. Nice! My memorizing and reciting has improved over the years. This skill will come in handy when my ability to read gets worse. I’ll be able to memorize my poems for reciting to others.

I recited some of ED’s poem in my head as I ran. It follows a steady beat, so it’s easy to keep in rhythm, harder to recite without getting sucked into a sing song-y cadence.

This poem popped up on my twitter feed this morning:

Lake of the Isles/ Anni Liu

After my grandfather died 
I waited for him to arrive 
In Minneapolis. Daily 
I walked across the water 
Wearing my black armband 
Sewn from scraps, ears trained for his voice. 
Migration teaches death, deprives us 
Of the language of the body, 
Prepares us for other kinds of crossings, 
The endless innovations of grief. 
Forty-nine days, forty-nine nights— 
I carried his name and a stick 
Of incense to the island in the lake 
And with fellow mourners watched 
As it burned a hole in the ice. 
He did not give a sign, but I imagined him 
Traveling against the grain 
Of the earth, declining time. 
Spirit like wind, roughening 
Whatever of ourselves we leave bare. 
When he was alive, he and I 
Rarely spoke. But his was a great 
And courageous tenderness. 
Now we are beyond the barriers 
Of embodied speech, of nationhood. 
Someday, I will join him there in the country 
Of our collective future, knowing 
That loneliness is just an ongoing 
Relationship with time. 
It is such a strange thing, to be 
Continuous. In the weeks without snow, 
What do the small creatures drink?

About This Poem

My grandfather died during the first winter of the pandemic. His was the first death of someone I loved. That winter, people everywhere experienced the impossibility of being with dying loved ones. No one knew how to mourn in absentia. Having been separated from him and the rest of my family for twenty-two years due to my immigration status, I had had practice. I turned to poetry. Poems can enact impossible journeys. So, even though I wasn’t able to see him or be with my family, I could mourn. Here, in this room I made for us to be together.

A few weeks ago, my daughter walked on the ice at Lake of the Isles with her friend. They didn’t visit the island, but she talked about going back, and she wondered what happened there. I told her about this poem this morning as she made her coffee. Together we wondered if this actually happened, that during the pandemic people visited the island to mourn. Now I wonder, what does it mean to “actually” happen? If it was only conjured for this poem, does that mean it didn’t happen? [No.]

Love these lines:

That loneliness is just an ongoing 
Relationship with time. 

It is such a strange thing, to be 
Continuous.

In the weeks without snow, 
What do the small creatures drink?

Now I’m wondering, how would Emily Dickinson measure Liu’s grief?

march 4/SWIM

1.75 miles
ywca pool

Went swimming with my daughter this morning at the y. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go, but she needed to for her gym class. So glad I went! Swimming is magic. Felt strong and relaxed. Lost track of time. Forgot about everything but counting my strokes between breaths — 123 or 1234 or 12345 or 123456.

Swam 122 laps. Had an idea for a possible goal this month: 200 laps

Admired the beautiful bodies underwater. The swimmer next to me had something on his feet — not fins, but? — and was alternating between running in place and sliding his feet out in a half split. When he ran he lifted his knees high up in the water. When he slid his feet, I wonder how that felt on his legs.

Kept noticing a brown thing on the pool bottom one lane over. It stayed where it was until someone — the swimmer I mentioned in the last paragraph — started swimming in that lane. Slowly, it drifted over. First on the edge of my lane, then just below me, then over to the next lane. Had to ask my daughter what it was: a bandaid. Hello gross friend. As I swam above it, I had an idea for a poem/series of poems about my pool friends — the strange white thing stuck on the edge of the slanted floor, the brown speck, the fuzzy clump of hair, this bandaid. All of us together in the water.

I tried to pay attention to the shadows on the pool floor, but they were difficult to see. Was it because I was so far away from the windows?

Found this poem in Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room. Wanted to think about it as I swam, but got distracted by my effort or my counting or the brown bandaid.

I Try to Plagiarize Moonlight/ Kelli Agodon Russell

If you could sign your name to the moonlight,
that is the thing!
-Mark Tobey

Sometimes waves scribble their initials
over a path of moonlight. This is the closest
to a signature I’ve ever seen. Maybe,
or maybe it’s the clouds with their C-curves
crossing in front of the O—mouth open,
head thrown back and singing.
I cannot steal words if they’re kept
unspoken, but who wants to live that quietly?
Instead, I want to swim in the dark
sea across paper, climb the barges
and docks that float there. Moonlight invites itself
to my desk and I try to nail its beam
to my paper. I’ve been swimming here
for years, trying to steal what hasn’t been
written, diving to the bottom of an unread sea.

I’m thinking about my brown bandaid again as something at the bottom of the pool. What stories does it have to tell? Who, but me, would want to read them?

I want to swim in the dark sea/across paper. I like the idea of imaging the blank page as a pool. Maybe not an empty pool, but a pool with a wide, clear lane just for me. This image reminds me of Linda Pastan’s poem for William Stafford, “At My Desk,” and her lines,

I think of you
miles west
floating on the tide of language
so easily, giving only
a scissor kick now and then,
coming to shore
some unexpected
but hospitable place.

In a different direction, I like Russell’s line:

Moonlight invites itself
to my desk and I try to nail its beam
to my paper.

I like the bit, I try to nail its beam/to my paper — the image it conjures for me. I also like the idea of the moonlight inviting itself on her desk. When I sit at my desk, which has a piece of glass on top, recycled from an old IKEA coffee table, shadows and reflections often invite themselves to my desk. Reflections of tree branches from the neighbor’s tree, the form of a bird flying across the glass. I love watching the birds fly on my desk — usually a graceful soar, sometimes the quick, awkward flutter of wings in early flight. There’s a poem there…

march 3/RUN

6 miles
ford loop
32 degrees
20% deep puddles with ice

Wasn’t planning to run 6 miles today, but when I got closer to under the ford bridge and saw a maintenance truck blocking the way, I decided to take the path up to and then over the ford bridge. I briefly worried that it might be too much for my IT band, but decided to do it anyway. My IT band is sore, and it did grumble a little during the run, but I think it’s okay. Another reason I was willing to do this route: the part of the path between 42nd and the double bridge had 2 big stretches of jagged ice + deep, cold puddles + slush. I had already gotten my feet wet once (brrr), and I wasn’t excited to do it again.

Crossing the ford bridge, I admired the river. Farther north, it was open but right below, it was still iced over. Later, crossing the lake street bridge, I admired the river more. Open, undulating, and blue. The sun was shining on the waves, making a sparkling path towards the east side of the river. Beautiful! I wondered if it sparkled there because of a sandbar just below the surface. Probably not, but maybe?

Had to stop and walk a few times to navigate the slick, slushy trail.

Heard at least one drumming woodpecker, and a bunch of other chirping birds. Saw a bird soaring in the sky. Also heard what sounded like rushing water near Shadow Falls. Was it water, or dead leaves. Water, I decided.

Saw my shadow ahead of me. She was enjoying the sun as much as I was.

On the east side, I saw two walkers stopped for a minute, looking up into the tree. What were they seeing, I wondered.

My plan was to read all of My Emily Dickinson this month, but I made it about halfway and stalled. Too academic for me. Maybe I’ll return to it later? Still thinking about Emily Dickinson, though, and windows (which was another possible topic for this month). In the spirit of that, here’s a poem from Kelli Agodon Russell and one of her books that I just discovered and bought, Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room:

Another Empty Window Dipped in Milk/ Kelli Agodon Russell

“I’ve had nothing yet,” Alice replied in an offended tone: “so I can’t take more.”
“You mean you can’t take less,” said the Hatter: “It’s very easy to take more than nothing.”

I am the opposite of duende.
I am the humdrum, monotonous, the blah blah blah
when you want dazzling, a passion
flower with hipbones.
I’m not the voodoo that you do,
but the bone from the salmon on the side
of your plate. My lips say hiatus, say corpse pose.
All morning I make Ku Ding tea, serve crumb cake.
Trust me, it’s not bitterness I carry
in my blood, but the pulse and flow
of ordinary, the white picket fence
I like to call my ribcage. Listen—
the faulty valve of my heart quotes Einstein,
believes everything’s a miracle instead of nothing is.
All around, birdsong and background
music. All around, diamond birds and beetles.
To the mirror, I’m less than a gem. Some days
I see green glass while others see emeralds.
I needle through this, trying to sew synchronicity
into my stories. Sometimes I drop a stitch
and have to back-tack spiritus mundi to my hem,
slide the universe beneath my slip.
I would live differently if I knew passion
flowers would bloom in my bourbon,
if I believed randomness
wasn’t only a bone I choked on.
At night God speaks to me while I’m balanced
in dead bug pose. He says I’m beautiful
balanced in dead bug pose, but
I want to be the voice and not the insect,
the hipsway of tail feathers and not the egg
broken beneath a wingspan of worry.
I tell myself I’m safe from extinction
living in a marsh of marginal, a swamp
of so-so, but I’m afraid I’m becoming the common
seagull. Deep down, hope perches in my ribcage
and its song is enough to make me soar.
And this hum I thought was a murmur,
was another’s words—dwell, dwell—in a voice,
a ventricle, in the vital song of a hermit
thrush singing, here I am right near you,
to the robin outside my window
repeating as I serve the crumb cake,
the bitter tea: cheer-up, cheer-up, cheer-up.

I like this poem, even as I don’t completely understand it. Because I’ve been thinking about the ordinary — Linda Pastan’s line, It is the ordinary that comes to save you — I was struck by Russell’s lines,

it’s not bitterness I carry
in my blood, but the pulse and flow
of ordinary

I also like living in the marsh, a swamp of so so. And, the birdsong and the bird — ED’s hope is a feather perching in her ribcage — as being enough to make the narrator soar. I looked it up and found a source for Russell’s robin singing cheer up and her hermit thrush singing here I am right near you: Bird Songs: Putting Words to What You Hear

feb 26/RUN

3.5 miles
trestle turn around
23 degrees
60% snow-covered

Sun. Blue sky. Low wind. Most of the sidewalks are cleared, the path is not. Usually there was a strip of dry pavement. Not the best conditions, but definitely not the worst. I meant to notice the river, but forgot to look, or didn’t remember what I saw. Most of my attention was devoted to making sure I didn’t fall. Heard at least one woodpecker.

Looking down at some clumps of snow, I remembered noticing the clumps by the falls on my run two days ago. Big half-oval lumps of snow, much bigger than a snowball. What made these? For a flash I wondered if there could be a frozen body under that snow then I dismissed the idea. Speaking of lumps of snow: running on the road, heading home, I noticed a big dark gray something ahead of me. Was it a squirrel, stopped in the street? A dead animal? As I swerved to avoid it, I realized it was a chunk of snow that had probably fell out of the wheel well of car. Gross.

Waved to a lot of other runners in greeting. Didn’t see any regulars. No headphones running north. Put in a “Summer 2014” playlist on the way back south.

My Emily Dickinson, part three

Each word is deceptively simple, deceptively easy to define. But definition seeing rather than perceiving, hearing and not understanding, is only the shadow of meaning. Like all poems on the trace of the holy, this one remains outside the protection of specific solution.

Susan Howe referring to ED’s “My Life had stood — a Loaded Gun”

I’ve been meaning to post this wonderful poem by Franz Wright for some time now. It feels right to do it today after reading more of My Emily Dickinson and thinking about the Self, or losing, rejecting, being free of, moving outside of the Self. Often I think about being beside the Self (my self) as a desired thing, but is it? Today I wondered about what it could mean to claim (and celebrate) a self, to have a voice.

Poem with No Speaker/ Franz Wright

Are you looking
for me? Ask that crow

rowing
across the green wheat.

See those minute air bubbles
rising to the surface

at the still creek’s edge—
talk to the crawdad.

Inquire
of the skinny mosquito

on your wall
stinging its shadow,

this lock
of moon

lifting
the hair on your neck.

When the hearts in the cocoon
start to beat,

and the spider begins
its hidden task,

and the seed sends its initial
pale hairlike root to drink,

you’ll have to get down on all fours

to learn my new address:
you’ll have to place your skull

besides this silence
no one hears.

I must admit, I didn’t initially read this poem as about someone who has died, their new address their grave. And maybe it isn’t.

feb 25/RUN

5k
ywca track

Ran on the track with Scott this morning, not together but at the same time. I thought about swimming, but knew it would be crowded, so I ran. Listened to a playlist titled, Sara 2020. Started with Tower of Power’s “What is Hip” and ended with Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy.” Focused on my cadence, arm swing, and not running into people as I passed them, including 2 runners who were running in the far lane. There were soccer games going on below me in the big gym, but I didn’t notice them at all. Too lost in my run.

The thing I noticed the most were the people:

  1. a man with white hair, wearing shorts and a tank top, running
  2. a woman in turquoise shorts and a tank top, running in the far lane, making it difficult to pass
  3. another runner in dark sweatpants and a light shirt running in the far lane
  4. 2 people walking, one of them carrying dumbells
  5. another pair of women, the one in the middle lane wearing a bright blue shirt
  6. a woman in mid-calf light blue patterned running tights and a white tank top running in the middle lane
  7. someone in tan shorts walking faster than the other walkers
  8. a woman stretching her calf muscles on the steps in the far corner
  9. a guy in gray, walking
  10. someone in red (I think?) sitting on the bench near the punching bag and the exit

I was listening to music, so I couldn’t hear what anyone was saying, but Scott told me that he overheard 3 interesting things from the pair of women walkers (#5 above). He called them chatty Cathys, he guessed they were in college, and he heard them say this: First, just as he passed them, he overheard one of them call out in disgust, Yuck! Next time, They’ll see it on your transcripts. Finally, You should really stop binging. Binging a show, food, alcohol? What will they see on your transcripts, and is this a good thing, or a bad thing? I love overheard conversations and imagining what they’re about.

Here are two poems I discovered today that move in opposite directions:

Rain/Jack Gilbert

Suddenly this defeat.
This rain.
The blues gone gray
And the browns gone gray
And yellow
A terrible amber.
In the cold streets
Your warm body.
In whatever room
Your warm body.
Among all the people
Your absence
The people who are always
Not you.

I have been easy with trees
Too long.
Too familiar with mountains.
Joy has been a habit.
Now
Suddenly
This rain.

Love: I have been easy with trees/too long.

Opera Singer/Ross Gay

Today my heart is so goddamned fat with grief
that I’ve begun hauling it in a wheelbarrow. No. It’s an anvil
dragging from my neck as I swim
through choppy waters swollen with the putrid corpses of hippos,
which means lurking, somewhere below, is the hungry
snout of a croc waiting to spin me into an oblivion
worse than this run-on simile, which means only to say:
I’m sad. And everyone knows what that means.

And in my sadness I’ll walk to a café,
and not see light in the trees, nor finger the bills in my pocket
as I pass the boarded houses on the block. No,
I will be slogging through the obscure country of my sadness
in all its monotone flourish, and so imagine my surprise
when my self-absorption gets usurped
by the sound of opera streaming from an open window,
and the sun peeks ever-so-slightly from behind his shawl,
and this singing is getting closer, so that I can hear the
delicately rolled r’s like a hummingbird fluttering the tongue
which means a language more beautiful than my own,
and I don’t recognize the song
though I’m jogging toward it and can hear the woman’s
breathing through the record’s imperfections and above me
two bluebirds dive and dart and a rogue mulberry branch
leaning over an abandoned lot drags itself across my face,
staining it purple and looking, now, like a mad warrior of glee
and relief I run down the street, and I forgot to mention
the fifty or so kids running behind me, some in diapers,
some barefoot, all of them winged and waving their pacifiers
and training wheels and nearly trampling me
when in a doorway I see a woman in slippers and a floral housedress
blowing in the warm breeze who is maybe seventy painting the doorway
and friends, it is not too much to say
it was heaven sailing from her mouth and all the fish in the sea
and giraffe saunter and sugar in my tea and the forgotten angles
of love and every name of the unborn and dead
from this abuelita only glancing at me
before turning back to her earnest work of brushstroke and lullaby
and because we all know the tongue’s clumsy thudding
makes of miracles anecdotes let me stop here
and tell you I said thank you.

This poem! The beauty that interrupts us and forces us out of ourselves and into the world! Ross Gay is wonderful.

My Emily Dickinson, part two

a new grammar grounded in humility and hesitation

Emily Dickinson took the scraps from the separate “higher” female education many bright women of her time were increasingly resenting, combined them with voracious and “unladylike” outside reading, and used the combination. She built a new poetic form from her fractured sense of being eternally on inteIlectual borders, where confident masculine voices buzzed an alluring and inaccessible discourse, backward through history into aboriginal anagogy. Pulling pieces of geometry, geology, alchemy, philosophy, politics, biography, biology, mythology, and philology from alien territory, a “sheltered” woman audaciously invented a new grammar grounded in humility and hesitation. HESITATE from the Latin, meaning to stick. Stammer. To hold back in doubt, have difficulty speaking. “He may pause but he must not hesitate”-Ruskin. Hesitation circled back and surrounded everyone in that confident age of aggressive industrial expansion and brutal Empire building. Hesitation and Separation. The Civil War had split American in two. He might pause, She hesitated. Sexual, racial, and geographical separation are at the heart of Definition.

Here’s something I wrote about this passage on March 17, 2021:

I really like this idea of hesitation and humility and aboriginal anagogy as a sharp contrast to progress, aggression, confidence/hubris, and time as always moving forwards (teleology). I tried to find a source that could explain exactly what Howe means by aboriginal anagogy but I couldn’t. I discovered that anagogy means mystical or a deeper religious sense and so, when I connect it to aboriginal, I’m thinking that she means that ED imbues pre-Industrial times (pre Progress!, where progress means trains and machines and cities and Empires and factories and plantations and the enslavement of groups of people and the increased mechanization of time and bodies and meaning and, importantly, grammar) with the sacred. Is that right? Is it clear what I’m saying?

A few paragraphs later, Howe writes this about ED’s grammar of “hesitation and humility”:

Naked sensibilities at the extremest periphery. Narrative expanding contracting dissolving. Nearer to know less before afterward schism in sum. No hierarchy, no notion of polarity. Perception of an object means loosing and losing it. …Trust absence, allegory, mystery–the setting not the rising sun is Beauty. No outside editor/”robber.” Conventional punctuation was abolished not to add “soigne stitchery” but to subtract arbitrary authority. Dashes drew liberty of interruption inside the structure of each poem. Hush of hesitation for breath and for breathing….only Mutability certain.

Some of this is starting to make sense. The periphery, the dashes as hesitation, mystery. I was curious about her take on sunsets over sunrises so I googled it and found this ED poem and helpful account from the Prowling Bee (love her!). She includes a list of ED’s sunset poems.

Howe ends Part One with one more description of ED’s hesitation and humility:

Forcing, abbreviating, pushing, padding, subtraction, riddling, interrogating, re-writing, she pulled text from text (29).

feb 23/SHOVEL

shovel: 111 minutes
18 degrees

Before I get into a description of my adventures in shoveling, I want to mention the delight I saw last night. Scott and I were sitting in the front room, listening to music, and looking out at the snow, when suddenly Scott cried out, A skier! Someone is cross-country skiing in the street! Yes! It’s not a real snowstorm until someone is skiing down the middle of your street in the middle of Minneapolis in the early evening while the snow is falling. Oh, to be that skier! A life goal, I think. Also: it’s pretty cool that Scott was the one who pointed it out to me, and with enthusiasm. My delight habits are spreading!

The epic storm wasn’t quite as epic as they’d imagined, but it was still a lot of snow, especially to shovel. It took me a little less than 2 hours to do it all. 46 minutes before lunch, 65 after. Ugh! No snow blower, all shitty plastic shovel from Target — lime green — and back, arm, and leg muscles made stronger from swimming and running.

Mostly I didn’t mind it, and I was happy to be outside, but my back is sore now, and so are my right fingers. Arthritis, I think. I listened to a good chunk of my audiobook, Moonflower Murders. That helped. It was satisfying to see my small driveway pad and the tall wall of snow at the end (thanks to the plow) gradually become clear. No — not become clear, but be cleared by me and my shovel. So much snow! Thank goodness it was powdery. I don’t think I could have shoveled all that if it had been heavy and wet.

At the start, it seemed overwhelming. Too much snow and nowhere to put it. But I just started and kept going, and slowly it felt less overwhelming to imagine clearing it. Then, possible. Then, inevitable. Then, cleared. The runner Des Linden always talks about showing up and simply putting one foot in front of the other when you’re feeling overwhelmed by a big task, like a long run. Sometimes this idea seems too simple and impossible at the same time, but it usually works. It worked today. I didn’t believe I could clear it, but I started anyway. And then I did it.

Yesterday I finished up my (almost) month with Linda Pastan. Next up: windows and/or Emily Dickinson. But, before that, a quick break with Jack Gilbert. A few days ago, I encountered a beautiful poem of his on twitter. The poetry person sharing it introduced the poem by tweeting: “I love poems because they can do this.” Yes, I agree. I’ll write how I understand the “this” after the poem.

Alone/ Jack Gilbert

I never thought Michiko would come back
after she died. But if she did, I knew
it would be as a lady in a long white dress.
It is strange that she has returned
as somebody’s dalmatian. I meet
the man walking her on a leash
almost every week. He says good morning
and I stoop down to calm her. He said
once that she was never like that with
other people. Sometimes she is tethered
on their lawn when I go by. If nobody
is around, I sit on the grass. When she
finally quiets, she puts her head in my lap
and we watch each other’s eyes as I whisper
in her soft ears. She cares nothing about
the mystery. She likes it best when
I touch her head and tell her small
things about my days and our friends.
That makes her happy the way it always did.

Okay, I said I’d explain what I mean by the “this” in I love poems because they can do this, and I’ll try. I’ll start here: Last night I was telling Scott about this poem and the tweet. I didn’t have the poem in front of me, or any of its lines memorized, so I explained it as best I could, which was not very well. I think I didn’t succeed with my summary because the meaning and magic of this poem doesn’t come in a summarized telling of it, but in the specific words used, the line breaks, the order of the words, their rhythms. This poem isn’t so much telling the story of a man and his dead beloved who has come back as a dog, but inviting you into the story to witness it, to behold his grief and tenderness. And, it’s inviting you to believe in other worlds where such gentle, tender moments are possible. Or, even if you don’t/can’t believe in them as true/real/ scientifically possible, you can give room for them to live or to breathe or to be possible for someone. Also, it’s strange. I love strange!

feb 22/SHOVELWALKBIKERUN


shovel: 4 inches
14 degrees

The aftermath of the second round of the epic snowstorm: 4 inches of mostly soft snow. Cold, but not too cold, outside. Listened to the audiobook, Moonflower Murders as I shoveled. The coldest part of my body: my fingers. Even with gloves on, they were getting numb. More snow than I expected. I think I remembered hearing some other shovels scraping, at least one snowblower droning. Already we have big piles of snow on the edges of the driveway, near the garbage/recycling/organic bins on the side of the garage, and on the front sidewalk. If we get more snow tonight, where will it all go?

walk: 15 minues
neighborhood
me, Delia, and Scott
18 degrees

Brrrr. The temperature had increased by 4 degrees but it felt colder because of the wind. About half of the sidewalks we walked on were shoveled. The un-shoveled ones didn’t seem like they had 4 inches of snow on them. Did they? The most enjoyable, warmest feeling direction to walk was east. Heading south, west, or north, we felt the cold wind in our faces. I could sense a brain freeze induced headache about to happen. Delia didn’t care. She sniffed the edges of every block, her tail wagging as she gave attention to the yellow missives from the other animals who had walked these same sidewalks.

bike: 20 minutes
run: 1.5 miles

Because of the wind and the snow, I decided to move in the basement today. Watched the first 20 minutes of the Netflix documentary, Break Point, while I biked. Listened to more of my audiobook while I ran. Wore my new running shoes: Saucony Ride 14s, color: Jackalope (white with orange accents, a red tongue, blue laces). Not my first choice, but they were in my size and $40 less than any other color. Now that I have them, I think I especially like the blue laces.

Before heading downstairs, I started memorizing a poem by Heather Christle that I especially like, “What Big Eyes You Have.” I worked on the first 2 sentences:

Only today did I notice the abyss
in abysmal, and only because my mind
was generating rhymes for dismal,
and it made of the two a pair,
to which much later it joined baptismal,
as — I think — a joke.
I decided to do nothing with
the rhymes, treating them as one does
the unfortunately frequent appearance
of the “crafts”adults require children
to fashion from pipecleaners
and plastic beads.

Wow, it is fun to memorize poems. And, it really helps me to do a deep reading of the words and ideas and rhythms and rhymes. I wish I had time to memorize all of the poems I love!

Here is a Pastan poem that seems fitting to read after encountering so many of her dark ideas about death and its inevitability and wondering why her poems were almost always so dark.

Why Are Your Poems so Dark?/ Linda Pastan

Isn’t the moon dark too,
most of the time?

And doesn’t the white page
seem unfinished

without the dark stain
of alphabets?

When God demanded light,
he didn’t banish darkness.

Instead he invented
ebony and crows

and that small mole
on your left cheekbone.

Or did you mean to ask
“Why are you sad so often?”

Ask the moon.
Ask what it has witnessed.