3 miles
stone arch/pink bridge/river road/stone arch
62! degrees
Ran with Scott while FWA was in his clarinet lesson. Warm. Sunny. Windy. Crowded. Instead of our regular run through Boom Island, we decided to take the service road to the U and run across the pink bridge. That loop is only 2.2 miles so we added one more trip across Stone Arch bridge.
This week in my poetry class we talked about the caesura (a stop of pause in the metrical line). Here’s a great poem, by a wonderful person, about the caesura. Love it!
WEIGHT
by Carolina Ebeid
(hush listen)
Is a caesura a quiet hallway
in a church? Is it a silence
with commandments to hush,
listen? Was it composed for
two voices? Is that silence
like the time you said stop it
wait to the boys, how you
should have said stop, but
you said nothing behind
la carnicerĂa that sold live
chickens? When a boy picked
up the brick throwing it at
the hen—wait— from a near
distance? Is the caesura that
near distance a brick travels
from hand to head? Is white
space like piano keys playing
softer & softer until zero
decibels? Is it the cleared
sweep after a missile falls
no more green? Does it share
the pull of gravity? Is it the living
body of Ana Mendieta? Dropped
—stop—out of a window?
Is she in a kind of white now?
Is it composed of no & no?
Wouldn’t you say the white
is like the space of an envelope?
Where the postage must go?
Dear person who won’t write
back, Most esteemed ghost
matter, My darling inventory
of nature? The white lie
white whisper hearsay flickering
all reaching the moment of
a candle blown out? Is the white
break like a hospital door
swinging open & there your father
delivered back to you? Linen
white muzzle across the face?
Does the break assemble into
a waiting room? One woman asks
for the housekeeper’s name
while her friend replies:
aren’t they all named Maria?
Is the white space clean
with the smell of ammonia?
Is there dizzying laughter? Say
stop it, wait. Is it like a hurricane
with the same name? Has it become
marble-quite like a wall
for interning ashes? Is it the sound
of rubble? Isn’t the empty white
more like moons growing brightest
from right to left? Right to left
like a message in the Arab
side of town, spray-painted
on a curfew night? Won’t you say
it’s composed for more than two
voices? Like a chorus that speaks
in unison there? Aren’t they all
named Maria? Do they make
the sound of rubble? The nothing
you say, is it dressed in white
like the guy in your group punching
the girl from the rival group who
talks trash at us & he hits her
because a woman is liberated just
like a man? Liberation?
Is it blurred & blank with flight?
Wasn’t it composed for a pyro-
technic finale? Whites of eyes
like the white of a room you walk into
& no one seems to be grieving?
Isn’t the white, the whites of human
teeth glossed with blood
on the concrete?