Tag: shadows

august 13/RUN

1.8 miles
river road path, north/south
64 degrees
9:00 am

Overcast and cooler. Feeling more like fall is coming. Breezy. Heard lots of shivering leaves, some roller skiers’ poles clicking and clacking. Got a “good morning!” and “have a great day!” from Mr. Morning! and a “Say hi to my wife!” from Dave, the Daily Walker. No rowers or views of the lake. Lots of voices — from runners and walkers — hovering in the air.

Scrolling through my Safari Reading List, I found two poems I had saved, both featuring ants:

The Sunset and the Purple-Flowered Tree/ Joshua Jennifer Espinoza

I talk to a screen who assures me everything is fine.

I am not broken. I am not depressed. I am simply

in touch with the material conditions of my life. It is

the end of the world, and it’s fine. People laugh

about this, self-soothing engines sputtering

through a nosedive. Not me. I’ve gone and lost my

sense of humor when I need it most. This is why I

speak smoke into a scene. I dance against language

and abandon verse halfway through, like a broken-

throated singer. I wander around the front yard,

pathless as a little ant at the tip of a curled-up

cactus. Birds flit in and out of shining branches.

A garden blooms large in my throat. Color and life

conspire against my idea of the world. I have to

laugh until I am crying, make an ocean to land

upon in this sea of flames. Here I am.  

Another late-winter afternoon,

            the sunset and the purple-flowered tree

trying their best to keep me alive.

With Ant and Celan/ Eamon Grennan

This tiniest mite of an ant, no bigger
than a full stop, is making its careful
way across a poem by Celan and
stopping to inspect with its ant
feelers (can it smell or see? is all in
the idiom of touch?) each curve of
each letter, knowing nothing of the
mill of thinking that ground into it,
into each resonant syllable of each
word. The ant stops on Sprache and
sniffs at its ins and outs, its blank
whites and curlicues of black, then
moves on to the next word, Sprache,
and busies itself with its own ant-
brand of understanding; but finding
nothing of what it seeks it moves to
the blank margin of nothing more,
stumbles over the edge of the page
and I have to imagine it is saying (if
that’s the word) to itself something
that translated means No food.
Nothing here . . . And so now, gone
back into its own weird world of
stones and weeds and grass and sun-
shadows, it is lost to me as I go back
into the dark wood of Celan’s poem—
a world of words I feel my diligent
way through, sniffing at its tangle of
branches, its brief sun-flower flashes: 
Language, language, it will sing in
translation: Partner-Star . . . Earth-
Neighbor. Poorer. Open . . . Then: 
Homelike. Homely. Homelandlike.
Heimatlich. And so I take its final
word to heart, the way that most
minuscule creature might take back
to its own earth-burrow a seed, a
scrap of anything either edible or
useful, anything it could translate to
nourishment, and live a little with it.

I have posted several poems by Eamon Grennan before. Such beautiful poetry! Here’s a link to more poems, read by the author.

august 11/RUNBIKESWIM

run: 3.1 miles
turkey hollow loop
70 degrees
9:00 am

Overcast this morning. Listened to an old playlist and ran a route I did a lot during the early days of the pandemic. No turkey sightings. Bummer. Don’t remember much about the run, except for that it felt pretty good. No need to stop and walk.

Read more of Alice Oswald’s Nobody yesterday and decided that I need to reread The Odyssey to get her references. So I picked up FWA’s copy from his first year of college. I recall reading it my freshman year too. It’s great, especially this recent-ish translation by Emily Wilson. Very cool. How long will it take my slow eyes to finish? Unsure.

Found a great poem by Linda Pastan on twitter yesterday:

Imaginary Conversation/ Linda Pastan

You tell me to live each day
as if it were my last. This is in the kitchen
where before coffee I complain
of the day ahead—that obstacle race
of minutes and hours,
grocery stores and doctors.

But why the last? I ask. Why not
live each day as if it were the first—
all raw astonishment, Eve rubbing
her eyes awake that first morning,
the sun coming up
like an ingénue in the east?

You grind the coffee
with the small roar of a mind
trying to clear itself. I set
the table, glance out the window
where dew has baptized every
living surface.

Speaking of the sun coming up, this morning I woke up too early, around 5:45. I was going to try to fall back asleep then suddenly I thought: if I get up now, I’ll get to see the sunrise. Wow! What a sunrise. One half of the sky the color of a neon pink crayola with edges of bright blue. It lasted less than 5 minute. I sat out on the deck, wrapped in a blanket with my coffee and marveled at it. I remember thinking how ridiculously simple it seems to make a day worth it, and how difficult it is to remember to do it.

bike: 8.6 miles
lake nokomis and back
82 degrees
4:45 pm / 6:45 pm

Biked with Scott over to the lake. Perfect weather for biking and being outside!

swim: 3 loops
lake nokomis open swim
82 degrees
5:15 pm

Another wonderful swim! Why does open swim have to end in 2 weeks? Oh well, then it’s time for fabulous fall and winter running, and listening to crunching snow and breathing in the crisp, cold air.

Tonight it was crowded — at Sandcastle, on the beach, in the water. Lots of menancing sail boats and swan boats and kayaks. I kept seeing them at the edge of my vision and feeling wary.

Scott asked how the water was. I said there were waves, but they were gentle like a cradle, not rough like a spin cycle.

I felt strong and fast and amazing, cutting through the water. What a great feeling!

Looked down: opaque, almost greenish-yellow.

The water was warm. No pockets of cold, just warm.

Rounding the far orange buoy, a sudden shadow and coldness. Strange.

august 8/RUNSWIM

run: 5.5 miles
ford loop
57! degrees
8:15 am

What a wonderful morning for a run! I love when it’s cooler. So much easier. Ran the ford loop without stopping. Slow and steady. Only a few thoughts that I can remember, an overheard conversation, and foot strikes, breaths, a few things noticed.

thought: my desire for a view to the other side is not about seeing it, but feeling it, being aware of it.

overheard conversation: 1 male roller skier to another, while climbing a hill ahead of me: She’s only waterskiied once! I told her, you can’t say you almost died waterskiing when you’ve only tried it once!

10 Things I Noticed

  1. gushing water out of the sewer pipe below 42nd st
  2. the voices of kids playing on the playgrouds at the church daycare and Dowling Elementary
  3. dripping water from the bluff on the east side of the river
  4. rowers! the coxswain’s voice, 2 shells with 4 rowers each on the river + the boat with the coxswain
  5. climbing the hill near Summit Avenue, almost catching up to the biker ahead of me who seemed to be struggling
  6. beautiful flowers near the monument — can’t remember what kinds or what colors
  7. more views of the blue river on the east side (as opposed to the west side, where I regularly run)
  8. screeching blue jays and squirrels
  9. the small hill just off the ford bridge and down to the river road was dark green and looked mysterious
  10. at the top of the Summit hill on the east side, everything was darker, greener. So dark that the street lamps lining the path were on

Love this poem by Alice Oswald. It would be a great one to memorize — maybe as part of a group on listening?

Birdsong for Two Voices/ Alice Oswald

A spiral ascending the morning,
climbing by means of a song into the sun,
to be sung reciprocally by two birds at intervals
in the same tree but not quite in time.

A song that assembles the earth
out of nine notes and silence.
out of the unformed gloom before dawn
where every tree is a problem to be solved by birdsong.

Crex Crex Corcorovado,
letting their pieces fall where they may,
every dawn divides into the distinct
misgiving between alternate voices

sung repeatedly by two birds at intervals
out of nine notes and silence.
while the sun, with its fingers to the earth,
as the sun proceeds so it gathers instruments:

it gathers the yard with its echoes and scaffolding sounds,
it gathers the swerving away sound of the road,
it gathers the river shivering in a wet field,
it gathers the three small bones in the dark of the eardrum;

it gathers the big bass silence of clouds
and the mind whispering in its shell
and all trees, with their ears to the air,
seeking a steady state and singing it over till it settles.

swim: 5 little loops = 3 big loops
cedar lake open swim
73 degrees
5:30 pm

Wow, what an evening! Sunny, no wind, cooler. The water was clear (visibility at cedar lake = 15.5 feet vs. Nokomis at 1.5 feet). I didn’t worry about getting off course. Not a single swimmer routed me. I swam 4 loops without stopping, then took a quick 30 seconds break before doing the last loop.

Anything I remember? I knew where I was going so it didn’t matter, but I couldn’t see the orange buoy closest to the start until I was almost on top of it. The cause? My vision + a strange placement of the buoy + bright sun in my eyes

One other thing I remembered: as I swam toward hidden beach, I kept thinking someone was next to me, on the left. Almost like a black shadow. Whenever I looked, nothing. Later, swimming back to east point beach, I kept thinking there was a kayak or paddleboard or something off to my left (again, to the left). Nothing and no one. Strange.

august 4/RUN

3.1 miles
marshall loop (short)
62 degrees
8:00 am

Ran the marshall loop with Scott. The plan was to end at Dogwood and get some coffee, but Dogwood was too busy, so we skipped it (and saved $20 which makes the frugal me happy).

The river was a beautiful blue. Calm. On the way back over it, I heard the distant voice of the coxswain. The rowers! Also noticed the shadows of the trees on the water — on the far side, turning the water a dark green, on the near side, reflecting fuzzy outlines of the tops of the trees.

No sound of water trickling as we ran above shadow falls. It’s very dry here.

july 22/SWIMRUN

swim: 1 loop
lake nokomis open swim
75 degrees
9:30 am

FWA did it! Today, he swam across the lake and back again. 1200 yards. It was fun to stop at the little beach and talk with other swimmers, while we took a break. We met an older woman, who loves to swim around the lake, even when it’s not open swim. She said her kids told her she better stop because the fine is big if you are caught. (I think it might be $2500!) One of her responses, Technically I’m not swimming across the lake, but around it. I like her.

The water was great for the swim: smooth, and not choppy at all. Much easier than when it’s windy. It has been fun training with FWA. I’m hoping he’ll swim some in August. What a gift to spend this time with my wonderful son!

run: 3 miles
marshall loop, shortened
80 degrees
11 am

A little while later, I ran with Scott. It was hot. We walked a lot, which was fine with me. A memorable sighting: an eagle circling around, high above us, riding a thermal. It took a while for me to be able to see it in my central vision, but finally I could. What a wing span!

The other day, searching for something else, I found this beautiful interview with Marie Howe from 2013 for Tricycle. She’s talking about losing her beloved brother Johnny and the space she had for grieving. These words fit with other words of her that I’ve read and loved and just used in my class. Putting them in the context of her grief makes them glow even brighter for me:

MH: That was really a big deal. I was given this place to be without any expectations really. And everything changed so that the particulars of life—this white dish, the shadow of the bottle on it—everything mattered so much more to me. And I saw what happened in these spaces. You can never even say what happened, because what happened is rarely said, but it occurs among the glasses with water and lemon in them. And so you can’t say what happened but you can talk about the glasses or the lemon. And that something is in between all that.

KPE: It’s like the Japanese esthetic word of ma. It’s so wonderful. The space between….

MH: This is the space I love more than anything. And this became very important, but there’s no way to describe that, except to describe “you and me.” And there’s the space. I make my students write 10 observations a week—really simple. Like, this morning I saw. . . , this morning I saw. . . , this morning I saw. . . —and they hate it. They always say, “This morning I saw ten lucky people.” And I say, “No. You didn’t see ten lucky people. What did you see?” And then they try to find something spectacular to see. And I say, “No.” It’s just, “What did you see?” “I saw the white towel crumpled on the blue tiles of the bathroom.” That’s all. No big deal. And then, finally, they begin to do it. It takes weeks. And then the white towels pour in and the blue tiles on the bathroom, and it’s so thrilling. It’s like, “Ding-a-ling, da-ding!” And some people never really take to it. But I insist on it. What you saw. What you heard. Just the facts, ma’am. The world begins to clank in the room, drop and fall, and clutter it up, and it’s so thrilling.

KPE: Because it clanks and falls?

MH: Yes! It does. It’s like, “Did you see it? Did you see it?” Everybody goes “Whoa!”

Marie Howe: The Space Between

It is thrilling to notice the world! To hear it clank and drop, watch it create clutter. This reminds me of 2 other things I have recently encountered, one for the first time, one again, after a few years.

First, this poem was posted on twitter the other day:

Do Not Ask Your Children To Strive for Extraordinary Things/ William Martin

Do not ask your children
to strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable,
but it is the way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonder
and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting
tomatoes, apples and pears.
Show them how to cry
when pets and people die.
Show them the infinite pleasure
in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself.

The space between us, reminds me of Juliana Spahr’s amazing post 9-11 poem: This Connection of Everyone With Lungs

as everyone with lungs breathes the space between the hands and the space around the hands and the space of the room and the space of the building that surrounds the room and the space of the neighborhoods nearby and the space of the cities and the space of the regions and the space of the nations and the space of the continents and islands and the space of the oceans and the space of the troposphere and the space of the stratosphere and the space of the mesosphere in and out.

july 14/RUNSWIM

run: 3.6 miles
marshall loop
67 degrees
8:40 am

Another beautiful day! After all the biking yesterday, feeling tired today. The run felt good, but now I lack motivation to write or remember my run. Still, I’ll try. This week in my class, we’re shifting gears to talk about rhythm, breathing, and translating wonder into words. I decided I’d try to think in triples as I ran: strawberry/blueberry/raspberry/blackberry. Now I’ll try to summarize my run in triples:

singing birds
serenade
neighborhood
daycare kids
playground yells
lake street bridge
up the hill
one lane closed
passing cars
feeling tired
sweating lots
stop to walk
cross the road
avoid bikes
yellow vest
trimming trees
shadow falls
up the steps
down a hill
music on
Taylor Swift
Paper Rings
lifting knees
quick fast feet
ending strong
check my stones
wipe my face
breathe in deep

That was fun! Writing out, “singing birds,” reminded me of the birds I first heard as I walked out my door and up the block. Their 2 note song (not the black-capped chickadee “feebee”) sounded like they kept telling me to Wake up! Wake up! No rowers on the river, which was a pretty shade of blue. Admired how the trees along the shore cast a gentle shadow on the water.

Last night, or was it very early this morning?, I woke up and went downstairs to get some water. Something bright was behind the curtain. The moon? The moon! So big, so bright, so perfect hanging half way up the sky over my backyard. I went out on the deck and marveled at it for a moment. The moon, never not astonishing! Here’s an acrostic poem (I love acrostic poems!) about the moon.


Moon/ AMY E. SKLANSKY

Marvelous
Opaque
Orb.
Night-light
for the world.

swim: 3 loops
lake nokomis open swim
85 degrees
5:30 pm

Writing this the morning after. Arrived at the beach: so windy! The water was choppy, but not too bad. Tried to think about rhythms and breathing as I swam. I remember thinking about how chanting words can help in many different ways: connect you with your breathing, keep you focused and on pace, open you up and make words strange which could lead to new (and better?) words, and is a way to hold onto/remember ideas that come to you while you’re moving (try to remember the idea through a few words or a phrase). I thought about that for just a few minutes. The rest of the time, I was preoccupied with breathing, staying on course, avoiding other swimmers, and worrying that my calf and feet might be tightening up. Can I remember 10 things?

10 Things I Noticed

  1. a silver flash below me — this has to be fish, right?
  2. one dark plane hovering in the air, hanging in the sky for a long time
  3. nearing an orange buoy, it shifted in the wind and the waves. Hard to get around it.
  4. the green buoy was closer than it often is to the big beach, so was the first orange buoy
  5. clouds, no sun
  6. far off to my right: steady, speedy swimmers, approaching the buoy at a sharp angle
  7. a lifeguard kayaking in just before the beginning of open swim, apologizing for the wait (even though it was just 5:30). My response, “no worries,” and I meant it. The lifeguards really have their shit together this year
  8. wiped out after the 3rd loop, I thought I tucked my cap under the strap of my suit. Nope, it must have fallen in the water. Bummer
  9. lots of muck and sand and a few little bits of vegetation under my suit when I got home and took a shower
  10. feeling both so much love for the lake, the lifeguards, and the other swimmers AND also feeling irritated by and competitive with any swimmers near me.

No ducks, or seagulls, or dragonflies, or swans (peddle boats)…not too many people at the beach — are they on vacation this week?

july 12/RUNSWIM

run: 3.1 miles
dogwood coffee run
66 degrees
6:45 am

An early run with Scott to beat the heat. We ran north on the river road trail, then over to Brackett Park, then to Dogwood Coffee. We stopped to admire my stacked stones at the ancient boulder. Heard some bluejays. Noticed the sun sparkling on the water, and cutting through the thick, humid air. Heard the loud whooshing? thrashing? of an eliptigo as it sped past us on the bike trail. Scott said he thought it sounded like two lumberjacks were sawing down a tree, with one of those big saws that you hold on either end and push back and forth. I remember thinking Scott’s acting out of this saw was entertaining.

swim: 3 loops
lake nokomis open swim
80 degrees
5:30 pm

Another great swim, even though it was very choppy on the way back from the little beach. Managed to stay on course with barely any sighting of the orange buoys. I write about this so much, but it’s always strange and amazing to be able to swim straight and keep going when I can’t really see where I am.

Half the sky was blue and clear, the other half looked like a storm was moving in. Later, after we left the lake, it poured. I wondered how much it would have to be raining for them to cancel open swim. Usually they only cancel it when there’s thunder or lightening.

Saw more silver flashes below me. Also, a dark shadow as I swam around one of the buoys. At some point, I heard a squeak. Someone else’s wetsuit? I got to punch the water a few times, when I swam straight into it. Fun! Breathed every 5, then when it got choppier, every 4, or 3 then 4 then 3 again. I don’t remember seeing any swan boats or sail boats or paddle boarders. No music or yelling, laughing kids.

Back in April, I collected poems about dirt — soil, humus, fungi, and dust. Here’s another poem to add to the dust pile. It’s by Ted Kooser. He is such a wonderful poet!

Carrie / Ted Kooser

“There’s never an end to dust
and dusting,” my aunt would say
as her rag, like a thunderhead,
scudded across the yellow oak
of her little house. There she lived
seventy years with a ball
of compulsion closed in her fist,
and an elbow that creaked and popped
like a branch in a storm. Now dust
is her hands and dust her heart.
There’s never an end to it.

I love his line breaks and his beautiful first sentences. I should check out his collected works and study him more.

july 11/RUN

3.25 miles
2 trails (long)*
78 degrees
dew point: 67
10:30 am

Another hot morning. Couldn’t go out for my run until after 10. Would it have mattered if I went earlier? Already at 7, it felt uncomfortably humid and warm. For much of the run, I was thinking about the lecture I’m working on for next week and trying to work through a problem. A little over a mile and a half in, part of a solution came to me. I stopped and recorded my thoughts.

10 Things I Noticed

  1. overheard: a neighbor saying to someone else as she watched me run by, “I’m sweating just watching her run.”
  2. a bike behind me, very slowly approaching. First, a bell, the sound of bike wheels, a little kid talking. Then, a woman with a young kid in a bike trailer, and another little kid on a bike behind her passed by
  3. at least 2 women chatting far behind me — were they on bikes? on foot? how soon would they reach me? Never saw or heard them again
  4. the steady buzzing/thumping of a jack hammer
  5. the coxswain speaking through a bullhorn to her rowers
  6. the rush of wind through the trees sounding like water falling or rushing or being forced out of a hose
  7. the trickle of water out of the sewer pipe near 42nd street
  8. even through all of the clouds, the sun cast shadows of the trees on the sidewalk…a strange, slightly muted, image
  9. looked for my usual view of light and water piercing through the leaves near the tunnel of trees. It’s not there this year — why not? more vegetation? the angle from which I looking?
  10. the little stones I stacked on the ancient boulder yesterday were gone. Did the wind blow them off? Did someone/something knock them over? Were they there and I just didn’t see them?

july 7/RUNSWIM

3.25 miles
2 trails, the mostly dirt version*
76 degrees
humidity: 81% / dew point: 70
9:15 am

*I ran south on the dirt trail between Edmund and the river road. Crossed over at 42nd to the river road trail, then down to the Winchell Trail. Through the oak savanna, up the gravel by the ravine, down through the tunnel of trees, over to the dirt trail at 33rd and Edmund.

A dew point of 70? That’s pretty miserable. It didn’t bother me today. I was thinking about attention and listening to all of the sounds: birds, trucks, lawn mowers, cicadas, cars, roller skiers, singing bikers.

one thing I remembered, one I forgot

remembered: As I ran by the ancient boulder, I remembered to check if there were any stacked stones. Yes! 4 tiny stacked stones, hidden in the curve of the boulder. I saw these stones yesterday too, but forgot to write about them. Seeing these small stones, I wonder how many times I’ve glanced at the boulder and thought there were no stacked stones on it, when there were these tiny ones, hidden.

forgot: I forgot to look at the river even once. I even ran closer to it, down on the Winchell Trail, then forgot to turn right and look. Was it blue? brown?

Near the end of my run, I stopped for a few minutes to record my thoughts:

thought after run / july 7

letting attention flow through you, not holding onto it, letting it go
things remembered: the steady soundtrack of my striking feet and my labored lungs because of the humidity
people talking loudly in the background
trading off of lines between birds and cicadas, no constant soundtrack, in and out
cars zooming by, a loud truck, bikers singing
what were the bikers singing? ridiculously delightful
overheard: a biker listening to talk radio
more cars whooshing by
all the things I’m curious about: surfaces and how they’re made — who made them and through what process
birds chirping, the steady striking of my feet on the dirt

As I listen back to the recording, I’m struck by all the background sounds, some of which I notice and remark on, others which I don’t. It’s funny how much of our surroundings we tune out — like the cars or the birds or the people.

Here’s a poem I found on twitter this morning. Love Carl Phillips!

My Meadow, My Twilight/ Carl Phillips

Sure, there’s a spell the leaves can make, shuddering,
and in their lying suddenly still again — flat, and still,
like time itself when it seems unexpectedly more
available, more to lose therefore, more to love, or
try to…

          But to look up from the leaves, remember,

is a choice also, as if up from the shame of it all,
the promiscuity, the seeing-how-nothing-now-will-
save-you, up to the wind-stripped branches shadow-
signing the ground before you the way, lately, all
the branches seem to, or you like to say they do,
which is at least half of the way, isn’t it, toward
belief — whatever, in the end, belief
is… You can
look up, or you can close the eyes entirely, making
some of the world, for a moment, go away, but only
some of it, not the part about hurting others as the one
good answer to being hurt, and not the part that can
at first seem, understandably, a life in ruins, even if —
refusing ruin, because you
can refuse — you look
again, down the steep corridor of what’s just another
late winter afternoon, dark as night already, dark
the leaves and, darker still, the door that, each night,
you keep meaning to find again, having lost it, you had
only to touch it, just once, and it bloomed wide open…

swim: 3 loops
lake nokomis open swim
80 degrees
5:30 pm

A great night for a swim! Calm water, overcast, not too crowded. I swam without stopping for 45 minutes, and I swam straight to each buoy, even though I hardly saw them. As usual, just the smallest flash that something was there. Sometimes I could tell it was orange or green, but usually it was just the idea of a hulking shape way ahead of me, or the smallest smudge of something. So strange.

10 Things I Noticed

  1. no fish below me
  2. the orange buoys were in a straight line, the one closest to the little beach wasn’t that close
  3. most of the buoys tethered to torsos were yellow
  4. a flash of green, then a swimmer directly ahead of me, way off course — I had to swing wide to avoid them
  5. another swimmer, pushing me off to the side. I had to stop and swim behind, then around them (this happened at least twice)
  6. the far green buoy was in line with at least two white sailboats, which made it hard to sight
  7. a plane overhead, no blue sky, only clouds
  8. breathed every 5 strokes: 1 2 3 4 5 breathe right 1 2 3 4 5 breathe left
  9. encountered a family of ducks out in the middle of the lake
  10. the water was slightly clearer than on Tuesday, but not as clear as at Cedar Lake. I could watch my hand stretch out in front of me, but only saw dark green below

june 6/RUN

5.75 miles
franklin hill + extra
67 degrees

Everything green. Not dark green, like yesterday, but glowing green. Greeted the Welcoming Oaks as I ran past them. Noticed again — and I’m remembering this time, finally, to mention it — the non-oak (what kind is it?) tree that looks like a tuning fork. A few months ago, looking at it, I thought, “time to tune my body to the gorge.” I think this came to my mind because I had just listened to John Denver’s version of “The Garden Song” and the lines, “Tune my body and my brain/ To the music from the land.”

Things the Flew in my Face, a list

  1. a small, but not too small, bird flying out of the leaves towards me, then veering quickly, making me stutter step and raise my hands to my eyes
  2. a gnat, into the liquid protein in my right eye — it might still be in there…yuck!
  3. cottonwood fuzz
  4. another bird, not as close this time
  5. the leafy branch of a tree on the side of the trail
  6. wind

Speaking of wind, there was a point early on in the run when I noticed the wind in several different versions, all at once: the sound of rushing air past my ears; a sound that was not roaring or howling but talking loudly in the trees; the dancing shadows of the leaves on the trail.

Heard the rowers; encountered some roller skiers; greeted Dave, the Daily Walker and Mr. Morning!; looked up at the fluffy white clouds; wondered if the big bird soaring high above me was an eagle or a hawk or a turkey vulture; noticed all the empty benches; tried to, but couldn’t, identify the song coming out of a biker’s speakers as they passed me; thought about how fast the river was going and whether or not that was faster than I was running up the hill; appreciated my shadow ahead of me; smelled too much lilac; successfully avoided lots of groups of walkers; ran way too fast down a hill.

Inspired by an interview I encountered this morning, here’s the first poem from Ada Limón’s latest collection, The Hurting Kind:

Give Me This/ Ada Limón

I thought it was the neighbor’s cat back
to clean the clock of the fledgling robins low
in their nest stuck in the dense hedge by the house
but what came was much stranger, a liquidity
moving all muscle and bristle. A groundhog
slippery and waddle thieving my tomatoes still
green in the morning’s shade. I watched her
munch and stand on her haunches taking such
pleasure in the watery bites. Why am I not allowed
delight? A stranger writes to request my thoughts
on suffering. Barbed wire pulled out of the mouth,
as if demanding that I kneel to the trap of coiled
spikes used in warfare and fencing. Instead,
I watch the groundhog closer and a sound escapes
me, a small spasm of joy I did not imagine
when I woke. She is a funny creature and earnest,
and she is doing what she can to survive.

Here’s the final question, and her answer, in the interview:

Question: What is the poet’s role in finding meaning in the world, and what is our duty in deciding to reject meaning? Talk to me about the work of meaning making. Talk to me about the work of surrender and release?

Answer: That’s the nature of life, isn’t it? To desire to make meaning and then surrender to the mystery and the repeat and repeat and repeat. Toni Morrison once said, during her Nobel Prize speech in 1993, “We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.” And to me that quote is all about surrendering to our mortality, accepting our end, and yet recognizing the ways in which we honor our time here. How we point out the beauty, the pain, the full spectrum of all of our experience, so that we can live wholly, completely, and not miss the living we’ve been granted. Sometimes the message is only, “Look, I am alive.” And it does not have to transcend that. Why would it? What could be bigger than that?