3.9 miles river road, north/south 22 degrees / feels like 12 75% snow and ice-covered
Another good run. Not too cold, sunny. Near the beginning, I ran with my shadow. The road was slick in spots — that invisible ice that you can’t see, only feel. Greeted Mr. Morning! and a few runners. Noticed the river at the trestle. It was open in a few places just below. The open water wasn’t dark, but gray. Heard the drumming of a woodpecker, the screech of a blue jay, 2 quick caws on repeat from a crow, and countless chirp chirp chirps from some other birds. The path was slightly better, but still mostly uneven ice and snow. Maybe this week, as it climbs to the 30s, the rest of it will melt?
After I finished running, when I was walking home, I remembered that I had memorized the first sentence of Linda Pastan’s “Vertical.” I had intended to recite it in my head as I ran. I was too distracted by the path and forgot. Walking home, I whispered it into the cold air:
Perhaps the purpose of leaves is to conceal the verticality of trees which we notice in December as if for the first time: row after row of dark forms yearning upwards.
Last night I went to Moon Palace books and bought Linda Pastan’s last collection, Almost an Elegy. The rest of February will be dedicated to her and her words — reading them, memorizing them, being with them.
4.3 miles lake nokomis — one way 19 degrees / feels like 10 50% snow and ice-covered
Hooray for moving outside! Hooray for warmer air! Hooray for getting to run to Lake Nokomis! It felt good to be outside breathing in fresh air. My legs and lungs felt strong. At one point, I remember breathing in deeply through my nose, then out through my mouth and watching the frozen breath as it hovered in front of me.
layers:
2 pairs black running tights
1 bright yellow TC 10 mile racing shirt (2018)
1 pink jacket with hood
1 black winter vest
1 pair of black gloves, 1 pair of pink and white striped gloves
1 fleece lined cap with brim
a gray buff
1 pair of socks
Only a few layers short of my most layered look. Maybe someday I’ll invest in an expensive running jacket and be able to wear less layers, but maybe not.
10 Things I Noticed
the call, but not the drumming, of a pileated woodpecker
the path on the biking side of the pedestrian bridge had packed down snow that was uneven, but not too slick. It had little flecks of light brown — sand? grit? dirt that Minneapolis Parks put down to make it less slippery?
a fat tire! I could hear the crunching of their wheels as they approached from behind. After they slowly passed me, they stopped just past the locks and dam #1. Why? To rest? To figure out where they were? To take a picture?
a few days ago I mentioned hearing construction noises near the falls. Heard them again today. Pounding hammers at another new apartment building going up on the other side of Dairy Queen
heard a high-pitched whine near all of the apartments; it was coming from a gas vent by the roundabout
minnehaha creek was mostly frozen, with a few stretches of open water
heard, but didn’t see, kids’ voices — yelling, laughing — somewhere on the creek
more voices down by the dock, near the shore, at lake hiawatha
noticed the creek water leading into the lake was not completely iced over
there were stretches where the path was an inch of solid brown ice, but most of it was a combination of bare pavement, stained with salt, patches of packed snow and smooth ice
I don’t remember noticing anything particular delightful. I devoted a lot of attention to my effort, staying relaxed, and avoiding slippery spots.
I follow the Mary Oliver Bot on twitter and they posted a line from this beautiful poem:
The Moths/ Mary Oliver
There’s a kind of white moth, I don’t know what kind, that glimmers by mid-May in the forest, just as the pink mocassin flowers are rising.
If you notice anything, it leads you to notice more and more.
And anyway I was so full of energy. I was always running around, looking at this and that.
If I stopped the pain was unbearable.
If I stopped and thought, maybe the world can’t be saved, the pain was unbearable.
Finally, I noticed enough. All around me in the forest the white moths floated.
How long do they live, fluttering in and out of the shadows?
You aren’t much, I said one day to my reflection in a green pond, and grinned.
The wings of the moths catch the sunlight and burn so brightly.
At night, sometimes, they slip between the pink lobes of the moccasin flowers and lie there until dawn, motionless in those dark halls of honey.
3.5 miles under the ford bridge and back 0 degrees / feels like -9 75% ice and snow-covered
Brrr. This isn’t the coldest run I’ve done this year, but it felt like it! Well, most of me was fine, just not my feet or my forehead. Running into the frigid wind, I got a brain freeze. A mile in, I had mostly warmed up. The path was in terrible shape. All uneven with long sheets of slick ice. I never worried about falling, but I got tired of moving all around the path trying to find bare patches.
I thought about Bernadette Mayer and her list of experiments, especially this one: “attempt writing in a state of mind that seems less congenial” (Please Add to This List, 12). Extreme cold + uneven, icy paths + lots of layers = less congenial. I wondered how these conditions affected what and how I noticed the gorge.
10+ Things I Noticed
crunching snow, loud and brittle
the smell of smoke from the usual chimney (the one on edmund that I always smell every winter)
the river, half frozen, half open, all cold-looking
the path, 1: almost completely covered in snow and ice
the path, 2: the ice is flat and smooth and light brown
the path, 3: an occasional bare strip, sometimes what I thought was bare was actually brownish grayish ice
at least 2 other runners — we held up our hands in greeting
2 or 3 walkers — all bundled up, faces covered up to the eyes
the buzzing of a chainsaw, laboring in the cold — workers trimming dead branches at Minnehaha Academy
looking across the ravine from the double bridge, noticing someone dressed in dark colors walking along the retaining wall at the top of the overlook
haunting wind chimes
the sizzling of dead leaves on a neighbor’s tree
the sharp scratch of another dead leaf as the wind blew it across the sidewalk
At the end of my run, walking back home, I marveled at the chattering birds, sounding like spring. I saw them, not their details, just their movements, fluttering, swooping, soaring, flashing. Then I heard the distinctive knocking of a woodpecker on some dead wood. Before I had a chance to enjoy the sound, the beep beep beep of truck backing up silenced the bird.
layers:
2 pairs of black running tights
2 pairs of socks
a green long-sleeved shirt
a pink jacket with hood
a thicker gray jacket
a gray buff
1 pair of black gloves
1 pair of pink/red/orange mittens, wool and fleece combo
a fleece-lined cap with brim
sunglasses
Lots of layers!
Oh, I needed this run! What a difference it makes for my mental health to get outside and move.
This morning, I happened upon this beautiful prose poem:
We made our bed in its mounds and all our furniture was covered in mossy baize. We swam through velvet-lined tunnels, swagged ourselves in greenness all winter. It was the green of pond algae, the painted shed at the bottom of the old garden, kale, tourmaline, the needlecord skater’s dress I wore in 1979. It was the emerald brilliance of moray eels, of tree snails; pea soup green. We were moss creatures, felted deep in woods. It was the first plant on earth, at least four hundred and fifty million years old, its rhizoids like a forest of stars, rootless, absorbing moisture and minerals from rain, surviving in the harshest of climates. We became bryophyliacs, singing hymns in the sunken moss cathedrals, while light through the leaves flickered over us in waves, like signals, as if we’d been blessed. I believed moss could live forever. You told me about the Barghest who haunted the valley, could turn you to stone with a look.
I need to add this to my growing list of green poems!
bike: 15 min warm-up run: 3.2 miles outside temp: 2 degrees / feels like -15
Because of the cold air, the icy paths, and the 10 mph wind, I decided to move in the basement today. Finished the episode of Dickinson I had started a few days ago while I biked, listened to the latest episode of If Books Could Kill (Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus) while I ran. Running on the treadmill in the basement is very different from running outside. A dark, unfinished basement with windows mostly blocked by a shelf with old lamps on it. Staring straight ahead, I can see a blank tv screen and then behind that, a dark window and the old coal chute. To the side, shelves with old paint cans (left) and a long work bench (right). Not much to notice, except spiders and dust. Difficult to run for that long and to remember any of my thoughts. I don’t mind running down here on occasion, but I couldn’t do it all the time. I’m so glad that I have the gorge.
a moment of sound
On days when it’s too cold for me to move outside, I record a moment of sound. Today’s moment was on my short walk back from the alley, where I had brought out some trash. It features my favorite, crunching snow, and another irritating delight: the cold, shrill creak of our iron gate. I walked through the snow in my small backyard and stopped briefly by the crab apple tree:
jan 30 / 3:00 pm
Here’s a poem I found on twitter today by Dana Levin about walking and thinking and wandering/wondering and being in and out of a body:
To be born again, you need an incarnation specialist—a team from the Bureau of Needles to thread you through— Your next life turns on an axle of light—which Plato likens to a turning spindle—what was that? I mean I knew
what a spindle was from fairytales—how it could draw blood from a testing finger, put a kingdom to sleep— but what did it actually do, how did a spindle look in real life? I didn’t know. As with so many things: there was fact and there was
a believed-in dream . . .
Everyone had one back in the ancient day, spindles. When we had to weave our living-shrouds by hand. “A slender rounded rod with tapered ends,” Google said. Plato’s, so heavy with thread, when viewed from the side, looked like a top— though most diagrams assumed
the hawk-lord view . . .
Moon thread, threads of the planets, earth thread. Your thread. Everyone else’s. Nested one inside the other, a roulette machine— If a thread could be spun from liquid light was what I kept thinking— imagining a sluice of electric souls between the earth wheel’s rims— there “I”
was a piece of water, Necessity wheeled it around―Necessity, who was married to Time, according to the Greeks— Mother of the Fates. Who would measure and cut your
paradise/shithole extra life . . .
Well we all have ways of thinking about why, metaphysically-speaking, anyone’s born— though the answer’s always Life’s I AM THAT I AM —how it hurls and breaks! on Death’s No there there . . .
—which sounded kind of Buddhist.
According to the teachings we were all each other’s dream . . .
And soon able to vanish—
out of the real without having to die, whoever’s got the cash—to pay the brainier ones to perfect a Heaven upload—to cut the flesh-tether and merge
with the Cloud . . .
Well we all have ways of constructing Paradise. To walk alone deep in thought in a city park was mine for several minutes, thinking about spindles. Before the vigilance of my genderdoom
kicked in—
And there it was, the fact of my body— all the nerves in my scalp and the back of my neck, alive— How it moved through space, how close it had strayed toward concealing trees, my female body— Jewish body—inside my White body—dreaming it was bodiless
and free . . .
to decide:
how and when and if to fill the body’s hungers— how and when and if to walk in thought through the wilderness . . .
before Death comes with its Fascist hat.
Its Park Murder Misogyny hat.
Its Year Ten in a Nursing Home stink
hat—
However spun
my thread . . .
Anyway, it’s peaceful here in the park, at midday, if a little deserted. I’ve moved to the path that winds closer to the street. Thinking again, as I always do, about body and soul. How they infuse each other. How they hate each other. How most people pledge allegiance to one or the other. How painful it was! To be such a split
4.5 miles minnehaha falls and back 24 degrees / feels like 9 wind: 16 mph / path: 99% snow-covered
This run was both hard and easy, and I loved it. Hard because of the wind, often in my face, and the soft, slippery snow. Easy because it felt so good to be outside and moving through the wintery world.
Even with yak trax, the soft snow makes it harder for me to lift my legs. Today I felt it in my right knee — what I call the “OG” knee because it’s the one that first started giving me problems (my kneecap was slipping out of the groove) and that led to never doing the marathon. Every so often, a short sharp pang. Nothing too alarming, just enough to remind me that my body is still here, tethering me to the world. I started thinking about Thomas Gardner and something I wrote almost exactly (one day off) 6 years ago, right after I started writing in this blog:
My right calf is still a little stiff from where I strained it last week doing mile repeats in the cold. Just enough to not let me out of my body.
Poverty Creek Journal/ Thomas Gardner
I wrote: “Even as we try to transcend our bodies while running, we are constantly reminded of our limits. We are bodies. We need that reminder to ground us and to keep us from getting too lost in the dreamlike state that running creates (jan 26, 2017).
As I ran this morning, I thought about how I like that running outside in the winter tethers/connects me to my body. It’s impossible for me to get too lost in any dreamlike state, or any one thought or series of thoughts. The path, the wind, the cold always brings me back to my body. Sometimes, bringing me back to my body involves suffering and complaining, but more often it is about grounding me and helping me to stop overthinking things. Of course, these reflections only came in flashes that lasted less than a minute or two. When I’m running, I can’t hold onto thoughts for longer than that. Now, as I write this, I’m sure that I’m missing something else I was thinking while moving. It all made so much sense as flashes and feelings. Much harder to remember it and put it into words later!
10 Things I Noticed: Wind
running south, the wind was in my face
cold, but not brain-freeze cold
strong, but not strong enough to shove me off the path
I could hear it rushing through the dead leaves on the trees in the oak savanna — sizzling
it stirred up an occasional dead leaf from the ground
at one point, I felt the spray of water on my cheek — was that the wind blowing the snow? probably
ahead of me on the trail, I could see something big-gish — was it a chunk of hard snow or ice? no, it was a branch with a few orange leaves on it. As I ran past it I was startled when the wind picked up and made it move slightly
near the falls, I felt the wind from several directions — was it swirling, or was I winding, or both?
no sledders enjoying the hill — is this because of the strong wind?
the wind was not loud enough to roar, but it seemed to grumble non-stop for most of my run
Found this poem the other day when it showed up in my instagram feed. It’s from episode #799 for The Slowdown Show:
What has a soul, or pain, to do with a stone?
–Ludwig Wittgenstein
You could walk not far through the grass to the shed barefoot restless eye landing on distance there not far you could walk looking down at various grasses weeds clover along the way your toes in the green the undersides of your feet the cool damp where is significance you think as you imagine walking across grass to the shed barefoot what counts here does anything count on the short walk while looking down and then over then up at the catbird in the lilac where there are now dry brown sprays at the robin hopping in the grass over there what counts you ask incredulous at the pace not your pace the pace of time as if rolling downhill gathering speed wound around itself like giant twine but invisible so not present in the sense of seen the way you assign to the visible presence even as what is on your mind as you walk across the grass toward the shed is invisible names their persons hunger mistakes the lost and the recently slaughtered because of words believed by the hopeless lost from view tossed into the past like a weed a rind a stone found in grass so find solace in the particular single crow high in the dead ash its one-note cry sky pale blue low light sliding across wires.
I was drawn to this poem because it reminded me of how I think and how I notice as I’m walking. Lots of wandering and words running together without a break. One thought into the next. From here to here to here.
5.4 miles bottom of the franklin hill and back 30 degrees / snowing 100% soft snow-covered
What a wonderful run! Even the soft, slippery snow couldn’t bother me. So difficult to move through, nothing solid or stable. Who cares? I got to run outside by the gorge when it was snowing! A soft, steady snow. A winter wonderland. The sky was a light gray, almost white. The river was a grayish brownish blue. I liked watching the headlights from the cars as they approached. The bright lights cutting through the gray — not gloomy, but monotonous.
At the start of my run, I smelled smoke from someone’s chimney. I heard the birds chattering. I felt my feet slipping on the soft, uneven ground. I saw a walker up ahead on the road, waving their arms in an awkward rhythm. Did I taste anything — a snowflake, maybe?
No fat tires or cross country skiers. A few sets of runners — or was it the same set seen twice? No honking horns from cars. Although I did hear some geese honking under the trestle. And I also heard the steady rush of cars moving across the 1-94 bridge.
At the end of my run, I heard the irritating screech of a blue jay. I wondered (and hope) that once I passed and the danger was over, I might hear the sharp, tin-whistle sound of a blue jay’s song. Nope.
In the middle of my run, after turning around at the bottom of the franklin hill and then running until I reached the bridge, I stopped to pull out my phone and record some thoughts and sounds:
jan 25 / halfway point
It’s difficult to pick up, but in the middle, when I stop talking and stop walking, you can hear the soft tinkle-tinkle of the snow hitting my jacket. In the moment, standing there, the sound was much louder and so delightful! Hearing it, then looking down at the still river and up at quiet gray sky and the bare branches, was magical.
I found this poem on twitter this morning. I decided to add it to my collection of dirt/dust/earth poems that I started during my monthly challenge last April. I also decided to add it here:
To the topsoil and subsoil: returned. To hums and blistered rock: returned.
To the kingdom of the masked chafer beetle, the nematode and the root maggot: returned.
To the darkness were a solitary star-nosed mole arranger her possessions and pulses
through a slow hallway, and to the vastness where twenty-thousand garden ants compose
a tangled metropolis: returned. it was summer, and they lowered
a body into the ground. I did not say they lowered you into the ground.
It seemed like you were elsewhere, but the preacher insisted: And now, he returns to the One who made him.
Most likely, he meant: God. But I thought he meant the Earth, that immensity
where everything changes, buzzes, is alive again and — Amen.
The poetry person who tweeted about this poem especially liked the twenty-thousand garden ants and the italics from the preacher. I like the possessions and pulses, the tangled metropolis, the separation between body and You, and the idea that the maker we return to (and are reborn in) is the Earth.
4.1 miles river road path, north/south 24 degrees 90% snow and ice-covered
More of the same very poor path conditions. Hard, rutted, uneven ice and snow. So hard to move through! My legs are sore again. Sore like I worked them, not like I injured them.Two days ago, it was one of the muscles in my right quads — looked it up and I think it was the rectus femoris. Today it’s my calves. I looked at the river — open, brown, cold. Ran north with no headphones, listening to the crunching of my yak trax on the crusty snow. Listened to Beyoncé’s Renaissance on the way back. Smelled fried food wafting down from Longfellow Grill. Ran past the port-a-potty under the lake street bridge, the door was wide open. Noticed a walker hiking up the road that leads down to the rowing club. Encountered 2 different runners with their dogs. One of the runners was extra cautious, stopping and holding their dog as I ran by. Anything else? Smelled some cigarette smoke.
Almost forget: it was snowing at the beginning of my run. I remember thinking the falling flakes looked like something flashing — what? I can’t remember now. All I remember was that the sky was falling and it was beautiful.
This morning, I found an amazing poetry project by Anna Swanson called “The Garbage Poems.” It’s a series of found poems composed of words taken from the trash she found at swimming holes. She has an interactive site for the poems where you can create your own garbage poems. You can also read her poems and click on each word to find which garbage it came from. How amazing! I’m very excited to have encountered her work. Not only are these poems amazing, but she has also written many others about wild swimming!
4.35 miles river road trail, north/south 27 degrees 99% ice and snow-covered path, slick
Very slick outside today. A lot of ice covered with an inch or two of snow. That part of it wasn’t fun, but the rest of it — the cold air, the open river, the gray sky — was wonderful. Greeted Dave the Daily Walker. Passed Daddy Long Legs. Noticed all of the rusty orange leaves still on the trees near the tunnel of trees. Heard goose honks under the lake street bridge. Later, also heard some runner coughing as he crossed the bridge then turned down to enter the river road. No! Every few seconds, a deep cough, full of gunk. I sped up to try and stay ahead of him and his germs. It worked. For a few minutes, I kept hearing the jagged coughs, then it stopped.
Anything else? The river was brownish-gray, the sky sunless. No headphones for most of the run. During the last mile, I put in an old coming-back-from-injury playlist: I heard “Upside Down” and “Fantastic Voyage.”
FWA is on band tour in Spain and France right now. 29 years ago, Scott and I were on our European band tour. 29 years ago? Wow. Very excited for FWA.
Sitting at my desk, writing this, I’m also looking outside my window at the robins running around on the snow and rooting in the hydrangea bushes for twigs? seeds? Quietly, they scamper then fly low right in front of me. What are they looking for?
Encountered a beautiful poem on twitter this morning that I thought I had already posted on my log but hadn’t.
I wonder if my dead mother still thinks of me. I know I don’t know her new name. I don’t know
her, not now. I don’t know if “her” is the word burning in a stranger’s mind when he sees my dead
mother walking down the street in her bright black dress. I wonder if he inhales the cigarette smoke
that will eventually kill him and thinks “I wish I knew a woman who was both the light and every shadow
the light pierces.” I wonder if a passing glance at my dead mother is enough to make a poet out of anyone. I wonder
if I’m the song she hums as she waits for the light to change or if I’m just the traffic signal holding her up.
This poem was posted as part of a thread. I want to post the next one, which is by Todd Dillard (one of my favorite poetry people). I like his introduction of the poem in a tweet:
I have so many poems also grieving my dead mother by giving her a kind of life after life.
Mom Hires a Stunt Double/ Todd Dillard
Sick of all the impossible I ask of her in these my griefiest poems,
Mom hires a stunt double: same white hair, same laugh, same false teeth, same dead.
Now when I write “Mom curls like rinds in a bowl” it’s her stunt double twisting herself into pithy canoes.
When I write “At night my mother sheds the skin of my mother revealing more mother”
it’s her stunt double that unzips her body, stands there all shiver and muscle and tendon,
waiting for the next line. “What’s in it for you?” I ask, and Mom’s stunt double shrugs,
lighting one of those familiar Turkish Silvers as behind her my mother mounts a Harley
and barrels into the margins. “You’re a good kid,” the double says. But she doesn’t touch my hair.
This close to her, her eyes are all pupil, all ink. Her smell: paper and snow.
When she exhales smoke spills from her lips and unfolds into horses.
4.5 miles river road trail and edmund, north/seabury and river road path, south 35 degrees / steady rain path conditions: a cold lake
Decided that I would go out for a run even though it was raining. It didn’t seem too slippery, so why not? I don’t regret the run, it was mostly fun and felt good, but the trail was almost completely lake, with a side strip of sheer ice. My shoes and socks were soaked after a mile. At first I didn’t care, but I started worrying (because as I get older, I do that more — sigh) that my toes/feet might go numb or worse. Nothing to do but just keep sludging through it. After I was done, my left ring toe seemed a little numb, but otherwise I was okay.
What a mess out there! The build-up of snow means there’s nowhere for the water to go. Lots of flooding in the streets and on the trail. Will this freeze overnight? I hope not.
In addition to soaking my socks and shoes, the water splashed up on my running tights. A gross grit. Because it was raining, my jacket was wet too.
It might sound like I didn’t like this run. Mostly, I did. My legs felt strong, so did my back. My arm swing was even and synced up with my feet. The rain helped me to not overheat. There was hardly anyone else out there. One other runner, 2 bikes — I noticed that at least one of them was a fat tire. Were there any walkers? I can’t remember.
I noticed the river! Almost completely open. Black, with one or two ice floes.
Anything else? Lots of cars. It was gloomy enough that most of them had their headlights on. Heard some splashing as they drove by, but never felt it.
I don’t remember hearing any birds or seeing any dogs. No skiers or sirens. No big groups of people.
As I’m writing this, I suddenly remembered that as I ran north on Edmund, down a hill, I could tell where the cracks and uneven parts of the pavement were by where the puddles were. Looking at this same road when it’s dry, I don’t think I would have been able to see. The puddles were very good pointer-outers. Look! Watch out! Here’s a bump, there’s a crack!
Wanted to find a puddle poem to add here. It took a while but I found “The Puddle” by Wisława Szymborska. As a kid, I never feared being swallowed up by a puddle. I imagine if I had any fears about puddles, it would have been that Jaws or a pirhana would have leaped out of the puddle to eat me. Okay, I don’t think I was actually afraid of that, but I could have been. Having watched Jaws and Piranha too much as a kid they were always appearing in my anxieties in the strangest ways.
I remember well this childhood fear of mine. I’d step around puddles, especially the fresh ones, just after it rained. For one of them might be bottomless, even if it looked like all the rest.
One step and it would swallow me whole, I would start ascending downward and even deeper down, toward the reflected clouds and maybe even farther.
Then the puddle would dry, closing over me, trapping me forever—but where— and with a scream that cannot reach the surface.
Only later did I come to understand: not all misadventures fit within the rules of nature and even if they wanted to, they could not happen.
4.75 miles edmund, north/river road trail, north/seabury, south/river road trail, south 26 degrees snow/ice-covered 75% (path) 25% (road)
For the first time since Monday, I was able to run outside. Hooray! What a difference it makes — for how the run feels, how I feel after the run — to run outside above the gorge. I ran on the road for part of it to avoid the worst stretches of the trail. Lots of loosely packed, slippery snow. I wasn’t as worried about falling as I was about having all my energy drained from the effort of running through the snow. Because of the bad conditions, I stopped to walk a few times.
Ran north to the Franklin bridge with no headphones. Turned around and put in a playlist.
10 Things I Noticed
some of the roads were bare, others were still covered in soft, slippery snow
a walker ahead of me on edmund was wearing a bright orange jacket
running north, the wind was at my back. Returning south, in my face — cold and stubborn
the river road was thick with cars, a steady stream
a few bikers, more walkers, some runners
a runner in a blue jacket, carefully making his way down the icy path near franklin
an orange sign, a porta potty, a few barricades off to the side: there must have been a race earlier today
a congress of crows cawing furiously, the sound echoing through the alley
the scrape of a shovel on a sidewalk somewhere
heading up from below the lake street bridge, hearing the wind shaking the dead leaves on the oak trees, sounding almost like water dripping — or was it water dripping?
Things I Forgot to Notice, or Didn’t Notice
the river — don’t remember looking at it even once
no regulars — no Dave the Daily Walker or Mr. Morning! or Daddy Long Legs or Mr. Holiday
no geese
no woodpeckers
no black-capped chickadees
no fat tires
no kids laughing and sledding
no overheard conversations
no darting squirrels
no music blasting from cars or smart phone speakers
Scrolling through twitter, I happened upon this poem:
Cousin–When a dozen robins blew into the yard yesterday– I’d never seen so many–I watched them hop, cock their heads, grab the thaw’s first worms. Such a pleasure, those yam- colored breast feathers. Then snow las night, enough for a fine white pelt, mostly gone by midday. (You’re better off doing your play in the City, till it warms up for good.) I wonder if the snow melted or–what’s that word?– sublimed. To go from solid to gas, skipping liquid altogether. The way I’d like to die. Grocery-shopping last night, I swear I felt like such a loser. Not a fully set of teeth in the house, yet I’m the freak: 45, alone at the Liberty Shop-Rite. And a snob: can you believe it took four people to help me find capers? So many breakups. My sister got the only keeper. God, I love those kids. I dream of children almost every night. Awake, I’m a eunuch. New vocal warmup, repeat before you go on tonight: “unique New York eunuch unique New York eunuch….” Give your boy a squeeze. The robins are back.
Lately I’ve been reading a lot about how poetry makes the familiar strange, but I think poetry can also make the strange familiar. Give us a door into the unfamiliar so we can get to know someone else and their experiences. The door in for me with this poem was all the robins. This past week, I saw so many fat robins on my crab apple tree, swaying and bobbing and getting drunk off the shriveled up apples.
a note about editing: I have a lot of typos in my writing. I didn’t used to. For years, that was a super power, being able to catch all the errors and to write a draft with hardly any mistakes. Now, I make lots of spelling errors (before I fixed it, I had spelled crab apple, CRAP apple), leave out articles and other secondary words, and for some reason, use an excessive amount of commas. I feel like I over-comma everything. Why? I think these errors and excessive commas are happening because I’m getting older, I’m writing more, the way spellcheck is set up with autocorrect is fucked up, and my declining vision. I think my declining vision is probably the biggest culprit. It’s frustrating and irritating and humbling to confront a decline like this, but I’m working on reframing it. Less of a decline, more of a shift to new practices and less worrying about stupid typos that don’t really matter. Maybe I’ll write a poem about it?