4 miles hidden falls to crosby farms and back 37 degrees
Just like yesterday, another beautiful morning! Sunny, calm, not too cold. Sharp shadows, cloudless blue sky. Today’s route started and ended at the Hidden Falls parking lot, right next to the sunlit river. So wonderful! Ran with Scott and talked about Amy Winehouse, NCAA cross country races, lurking shadows, and why there was a car driving on the no vehicle path — lost golden retriever. As we neared Crosby Falls, we ran over a root that was embedded in the path and looked like a snake. Very cool! Scott took a picture of it:
Scott’s picture of a root in the paved path / near Crosby Farms
10 Things
chirping birds, shrieking squirrels
shadows, 1: ours, sharp, beside us then in front of us
shadows, 2: the trees, casting long lines across the paved path
shadows, 3: the trees on the water, making the bright blue water look dark brown
question pondered: what’s the difference between a shadow and a reflection — Scott’s answer: the position of the light
a walker in a bright pink jacket
the sandstone/limestone bluff — high and looming — on one side of us
graffiti spray painted on a barricade in the parking lot, uh oh stinky
smoke from a campfire on other side of a little lake near Crosby Farms
running up a short, step hill on the tips of my toes and remembering when I tried (and failed) to bike up it a few years ago without shifting gears
Yes! A near perfect morning for a run. Sunny, still, cool but not cold. Deep blue sky, sharp shadows. Relaxed hips, knees, shoulders. A moment to remember and return to when needed. So calm, happy, not anxious. Walking back after I was done, I heard a knock so I stopped and looked up to the top of a tree — a woodpecker! And I could see it! I watched for a few seconds then listened deeper: another chirping bird, leaves rustling underfoot, a leaf blower.
10 Things
good morning Dave!
the floodplain forest is bare and a beautiful, soothing brown
with everything so bare and exposed because of the lack of leaves, I thought about how it all looks bigger (wider, more open) and smaller (no mystery, all out in the open) at the same time
glancing down at white Minneapolis rowing club building, it looked like it was a shimmering mirage in the sun
almost to the trestle — I could see it through the bare trees, stretching across the water. It looked so far away, even though I was almost there
took the recently redone steps just north of the trestle down for a better view of the water — the river was such a deep, dark blue — but a dark blue that was still clearly blue and not black (which is what navy looks like to me)
on those same steps: my shadow ahead of me — hi friend!
another shadow: a runner approaching me from behind. I could hear her slowly gaining on me, then suddenly her shadow appeared, almost lurking behind me for a moment
running on the sandy, gritty dirt just off the edge of the trail
smelling breakfast — can’t remember what type of breakfast, just breakfast — wafting down from longfellow grill
As I was running on the dirt trail just next to the paved path, I had a thought about my haunts poem and the recent ones I’ve added about the trails. So far I have three — the dirt trail on the grassy boulevard, the official paved trail, and Winchell. I think I should add this one, and maybe more. I could sprinkle them throughout the poem, or just add that one in with the others, near the beginning?
I was planning to run a little longer and listen to a playlist for the second half, but a mile into my run I realized that I had forgotten my phone. That has happened maybe once or twice ever, in all of the years I’ve been running. Today, I didn’t care, but still didn’t want to run too long without it, especially since I hadn’t told Scott which way I was running.
Another windy day. I had to hold onto my cap several times so it wouldn’t fly off. Running east on the lake street bridge, I put my hood so my cap wouldn’t fall off. Running west over the ford bridge, I took the cap off and held it in my hands. The wind made it difficult, more draining. Is that why my legs feel so sore?
10 Things
ridges and white caps in the blue water, from the wind
kids at the church daycare, at the far end of the fenced-in playground. Running by I could hear their tiny, sweet voices plotting something
more filled benches than usual along the route, including one with a person sitting and a stroller behind it
in the neighborhood: knocks on the roof — not a woodpecker, but roofers … or was it a woodpecker?
running straight into the wind, wondering if would push me up against the railing (not quite)
my shadow down in the ravine near shadow falls — lucky shadow, sheltered from the wind
everywhere hazy — it might have been my vision, but I think it was dust stirred up by the wind. Yuck!
running north, at the end, feeling the wind pushing me, but not in a helpful way
the wind didn’t rush or roar, it just pushed and pulled
a walker, walking in the middle of the path, blasting talk radio
I stopped on the double bridge to take a picture of the ravine and to put in my headphones:
a warm, windy November day / 16 nov 2023
today’s view out my window
It’s snowing leaves. Mostly they are drifting down slowly, one after the other. Sometimes at a distance, occasionally almost on my window screen. My neighbor’s yard is covered with them, a dead leaf carpet. Yesterday, as Scott and I cleared out our leaves we could see that the neighbor’s tree was still full of leaves. I wondered what would happen when the wind came back. Today I found out.
What a day! Sunny and calm and beautiful. I overdressed — didn’t need the gloves or the headband, maybe should’ve worn a lighter sweatshirt? Ran south to the falls, over the creek, behind John Steven’s house, over the creek again, to the grounds of the Veterans’ home, down the hill to the locks and dam no. 1, north on the river road, past the welcoming oaks, down through the tunnel of trees, across to Edmund, then done. Ran 5 miles without stopping. I didn’t even stop while taking off my sweatshirt and wrapping it around my waist. It would have been smart to stop for that, but I wanted to keep moving, so I did, and probably looked ridiculous.
10 Things
chirp chirp chirp
my ponytail swishing and hitting my shoulder
my shadow — sharp and straight and solid
a group of people — was it kids and a teacher, or all adults? I’m not sure — standng silently on the grass between Minnehaha Academy and Becketwood
shimmering scattering glowing river water
rushing gushing falls
the fake bells from the light rail sounding like the beginning of an ABBA song (at least to me) — I thought about listening to an ABBA playlist on my run back, but I forgot
running over the bridge that leads to the Veterans’ home, hearing the creek rushing way below me
encountering a few walkers — a short woman, later a tall man — as I ran down the steep hill to locks and dam no. 1
4 stones stacked on the ancient boulder
As I ran down a hill into Minnehaha Park, I tried to remember the sun and the warmth and the bare ground, and thought about how this same path will be cold and snow-covered within a month.
Before my run, I thought about how before works in my Haunts poem and revisited a wonderful poem, “Transubstantiation,” that plays with befores and afters. I wanted to explore the idea ofafter while I ran — what comes before, what after? But I realized as I moved that I am most interested in playing around with the before, creating layers of befores that don’t follow a linear progression, but circle around unresolved. I held onto as many of my thought as I can, then recorded them into my phone once my run was done.
notes / 13 nov 2023
transcript: November 13, 2023. Just finished a 5 mile run and while I was running I was thinking about girl ghost and gorge and befores and how I’m not interested in doing afters, I’m interested in circling around these befores. Not in a linear way, but a circular way. I’ll do another one that is before there was gorge, there was girl. That one will be about me before I started paying attention, before I started running by the gorge, before this practice. Then there will be one that’s before there was girl, there was ghost. This one will involve more of my mom as a ghost. I’m interested in playing around with the befores and making it disorienting; there’s no real origin point. It’s circular and repeats itself, phrases repeat themselves.
repetition: chiasmus and chanting
Thinking more about the circularity of my befores and the chant-like repetition of girl ghost gorge / ghost girl gorge / gorge ghost girl. Before my run, during my morning ritual of coffee and poetry, I encountered Jane Huffman’s poem, “The Rest” and her discussion/explanation of it in, “Backwashes and Eddies: Jane Huffman on “The Rest”“. She mentions the chiasmus, which I had to look up to remember what it meant:
Repetition of any group of verse elements (including rhyme and grammatical structure) in reverse order, such as the rhyme scheme ABBA. Examples can be found in Biblical scripture (“But many that are first / Shall be last, / And many that are last / Shall be first”; Matthew 19:30). See also John Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (“Beauty is truth, truth beauty”).
Here’s how Huffman describes her use of it in “The Rest”:
Cut red / flowers hung in pink water. Cut pink flowers hung in red water. Cut red water hung in pink flowers. Cut pink water hung in red flowers.
The poem operates in reversals, in mirror images, in symmetries: “Cut [pink or red] [flowers or water] hung in [pink or red] [flowers or water].”
About the water and flowers, Huffman also says this:
Indeed, “The Rest” refuses to move on. It cannot. It is obsessive, recalibrating the relationship between “flowers” and “water” until its options are exhausted. Exhaustion is a teleology of sickness. One cough anticipates the next.
“The Rest” is about her frequent bouts with bronchitis and Huffman uses repetion, especially the chiasmus, for several reasons:
the bilateral symmetry of her lungs — inhale/exhale left lung/right lung
stagnation / the stasis of the bedridden body / back and forth / refusing to move on (the backwashes and eddies)
seeks to capture the banality of the body — daily routine
imperfect — not exactly the same, repetition with variation
poetic forms that use repetition in this way: villanelle, ghazal, duplex, pantoum
Huffman argues that her repetition of the flowers and the water give the poem its emotional thrust. I’m not sure what I want to do with these ideas, but I can feel them informing my choices about how to use repetition in this poem. One idea: maybe my 3/2 form could involve inverted repetition at some points?
repetition: for meaning, memory, magic, music to only repeat is boring the best chant poems are expansive repetition is important, but so is chaos/wildness
One key: it’s okay to use some nonsense words
an hour, or so, later: I’m returning to this entry because I want to make note of how Huffman’s poem has influenced/inspired me. In particular, I was thinking about her formula and the variations she created to play with the repetition, unsettling it and giving it movement and an emotional punch:
Cut [pink or red] [flowers or water] hung in [pink or red] [flowers or water].
After a few minutes of playing around with the ideas, my own formula emerged:
Before [girl, ghost, or gorge], [girl, ghost, or gorge]: or . [2 beat word — concise and expansive].
Here’s one that I came up with the I’ll put right before the section of the poem about wanting to run with my mom:
Before girl, ghost. Cancer. Terminal. Before ghost, girl: intact.
Ooo, I like this! I hope it’s an idea that sticks.
Ah, November! Ran through the neighborhood, past the kids playing outside at the church daycare, past the house that has a giant Packer’s flag hanging from their fence, past the window of the business where I watch myself run and wonder if the people inside are watching me watch myself, over the lake street bridge to the east side of the river. On the bridge, I passed a couple holding hands. A mile later, I passed another hand-holding couple. An unusual sighting, and twice. Ran up the long hill to the Monument, then beside the river until I reached the ford bridge. Stopped to take a picture on the bridge, then ran the rest of the way back with Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo.
taken from the ford bridge / 8 november 2023taken, with some trepidation, over the railing of the ford bridge / 8 november 2023
10 Things
kids playing at the church daycare, several of them huddled at the fence, one of them (accidentally?) threw a ball over the side
blue water, some waves, a few streaks or trails from something
running above shadow falls, not sure if I was hearing it dripping or the wind through the trees
running up the summit hill, a stretch of lit street lamps lining the path, the amber lights glowing softly
noticing the gloom and the absence of my shadow as I ran around the ravine
wondering if I would get to hear the St. Thomas bells as I ran close to campus (nope)
chickadee dee dee
turkeys! I’m not quite sure, but I think they were hanging out in the grass, just past the ford bridge, before you head down the hill to the locks and dam
an unnaturally vibrant green on some of the leaves on the east side of the river — is this spring or late fall?
an intense smell of cinnamon shortly before reaching the ford bridge — where was it coming from? someone’s gum? a bush?
before the run
Last night during Scott’s South High Community Jazz Band rehearsal, when I sit and listen and work on poetry, I returned to Susan Tichy’s North | Rock | Edge. Wow! This morning, before my run, I’m thinking about the lines I read and an interview Tichy did for Terrain.
There’s also a sensory excitement in a sea-rock-light-wind-bird-flower-seal-seep-peat-rain-salt—oh look, there’s a whale!—environment that subsumes attention to any one thing into the press of the whole.
I love how she describes the environment and her idea of attention to the whole, not just to any one thing.
Rock blurs the categories of time and space by making time visible and place temporal. A poem uses both rest and motion to create a form, which can be seen and must be heard—as the Susan Howe epigraph says, fleeting and fixed. These poems, like many in Avalanche Path, have a surface texture of fragmentation, abrupt change, and brokenness metamorphized into a new whole, voiced in present time, human time. Nothing is still; nothing is uniform.
And here’s a wonderful bit from the first part of Tichy’s poem, 60 North|Arriving, Stand Still:
& here wind
elevates to a theory
of time : to not miss a single
wave’s decay, a verse
of coast becoming dearth
of certainty, to undefine
the edge as noun, dissolving
in the not unyielding mouth
of cliff : verse/reverse
from the root of turn :
wind-wave & swell
compounded to a single
force, broken
by the thing it breaks—
In the next section she offers this line, what place is not. The gorge as what place is not, or where place one was?
during the run
I think Tichy’s poem influenced my thoughts indirectly as I ran. I was thinking about a part of my Haunts poem I’m working on, particularly about how I am sometimes a girl, sometimes a ghost, and sometimes a gorge. Am I the gorge, I wondered as I started running. And as I ran over the lake street bridge I came up with an answer: yes. Later, when I reached to ford bridge, I stopped running to record some thoughts:
I am the gorge because the gorge is the remains, what is left behind, what continues to exist even as ground erodes, self erodes, vision erodes. The gorge, constantly shifting, but always there. The gorge is the eroded. Is the ghost the verb, the eroding? … I am also the gorge because I’m constantly leaving part of myself here and becoming this place and not just moving through the place, becoming the place.
5.4 miles franklin loop 25 degrees / feels like 20
Yes! A great temperature for running. I love the cold air and not getting overheated. Wore black running tights, black running shorts, my 10 year-old base layer green shirt, an orange sweatshirt, black gloves, a hat and a buff. Such a great run. I feel satisfied and happy and energized. A great start to the winter running season!
the Welcoming Oaks are almost bare. Where was I when the leaves fell? hello friends!
a bright white circle of sunlit river burning through the growing gap between the trees
everywhere more of a view to the other side
empty blueish gray water — so calm and pleasing to my eyes
passed Daddy Long Legs, dressed in black. His hi was so quiet it didn’t register until it was too late to call back a greeting
Hi Dave! — greeting Dave, the Daily Walker in the final mile
crossing the bridge, approaching 2 talkative runners from behind: excuse me. / Oh! [a runner jumps to the side looking freaked out] / Sorry I scared you!
the smell of smoke down below on the east side of the river
a roller skier! I couldn’t hear the clicking and clacking of his ski poles until I was right next to me
bats, bells, noisy road work, and late fall leaves
Found this poem from DH Lawrence the other day while looking for poems about bats. Wow, he didn’t like bats!
At evening, sitting on this terrace, When the sun from the west, beyond Pisa, beyond the mountains of Carrara Departs, and the world is taken by surprise …
When the tired flower of Florence is in gloom beneath the glowing Brown hills surrounding …
When under the arches of the Ponte Vecchio A green light enters against stream, flush from the west, Against the current of obscure Arno …
Look up, and you see things flying Between the day and the night; Swallows with spools of dark thread sewing the shadows together.
A circle swoop, and a quick parabola under the bridge arches Where light pushes through; A sudden turning upon itself of a thing in the air. A dip to the water.
And you think: “The swallows are flying so late!”
Swallows?
Dark air-life looping Yet missing the pure loop … A twitch, a twitter, an elastic shudder in flight And serrated wings against the sky, Like a glove, a black glove thrown up at the light, And falling back.
Never swallows! Bats! The swallows are gone.
At a wavering instant the swallows gave way to bats By the Ponte Vecchio … Changing guard.
Bats, and an uneasy creeping in one’s scalp As the bats swoop overhead! Flying madly.
Pipistrello! Black piper on an infinitesimal pipe. Little lumps that fly in air and have voices indefinite, wildly vindictive;
Wings like bits of umbrella.
Bats!
Creatures that hang themselves up like an old rag, to sleep; And disgustingly upside down.
Hanging upside down like rows of disgusting old rags And grinning in their sleep. Bats!
In China the bat is symbol for happiness.
Not for me!
Today, writing this bit before my run, I’m thinking about bats and echos and echolocation. Vibrations, reverberations, sounds that haunt by continuing to ring out. Bells. But, back to the echoes. In addition to bats, I’m thinking about a stanza from a favorite Halloween poem that I posted on this day in 2020:
A ghost, though invisible, still is like a place your sight can knock on, echoing; but here within this thick black pelt, your strongest gaze will be absorbed and utterly disappear: from Black Cat/ Rainer Maria Rilke
Speaking of haunting, relentless sounds: I am sitting at my desk in the front room and city workers are paving the hole they made in the street in July or August. So loud! Beep beep beep. Rrrruuummmbbbllleee. Scrape scrape, tamp tamp. Even the visual noise echoes — a flash flash flash of the lights on the truck as it dumps the gravel or tar or whatever they’re putting in the hole. Everything is vibrating — the street, my jaw, my chair, the windows. Difficult to think or to write while this is happening!
At the end of my run, having crossed the river road to walk in the grassy, leaf covered boulevard, I was distracted by the delightful noise of fallen leaves. Then I noticed a bare tree, its still green leaves scattered around it.
44 degrees is a wonderful temperature for running. Today I wore my black shorts, a dark blue short-sleeved shirt, an orange sweatshirt, and it was great. Not too cold, not too hot.
I heard the clicks and clacks of a roller skier poles. I smelled chemicals from a treated lawn. I felt the hard, bumpy dirt and the sharp shallow asphalt cracks under my feet. Did I taste anything? I saw the shimmering surface of the river.
I greeted Dave, the Daily Walker and several other walkers. A few mornings but mostly with a smile or a wave of my hand. So many kind, friendly people out there today!
I thought about the the ancient Greeks and how they use glitter as another way to understand, describe, organize color.
Glitter effect and material — scattering and textural effects resulting from the type of surface being observed.
Today (and yesterday in my backyard), I saw a lot of the glitter effect. Glittery leaves, fluttering in the wind — both on the trees and falling to the ground. Glittering water from sun and wind. Glittering shadows on the pavement: light through leaves moved by wind.
My favorite glitter moment was when I stopped to take my sweatshirt off at the bottom of the 38th street steps. Fairly high above the water, looking down through the leaves, I could see glittering, sparkling movement. Flash Flash Flash Flash — almost silver, but not quite. Bright. Maybe to someone with normal vision the river was blue, but to me it was glitter or shimmer or sparkle. I took a short video, and I think I can see the sparkling water, but it is much less bling-y than when I experienced it in person.
3.5 miles 2 trails and a hill 69 degrees / dew point: 60
Another hot, sticky morning. Yesterday it was so warm that they cancelled the Twin Cities Marathon. Wow. It wasn’t just the temp — it got up to 91 — but the dew point and the humidity.
I’m calling this route, “2 trails and a hill,” because I did my 2 trails route (running above heading south, running below on the Winchell Trail heading north), but also kept running south to the locks and dam no. 1, then down the hill and back up it before heading north and entering the Winchell Trail.
I’m on day 10 of being sick. I’m almost over it, but still have congestion — stuffy nose, crud on my chest. Our (me, Scott, RJP who is sick now) latest theory is that this sickness is the flu. Scott’s not getting it because he got his flu shot. Makes sense to me. This sickness shares some similarities with my usual cold, but is also different. It has knocked me out more, making it harder to run. My heart rate was unusually elevated for a day. I have a swollen lymph node in my armpit. I’m ready for it to be over.
bird tryptych
one: Sitting on the deck early this morning with my coffee, I heard one goose honking, then the sound of something sharply cutting through the air. Almost like scissors — swish swish swish swish. I looked up and saw a vee of geese! Maybe a dozen, speeding by in formation, not a single honk, only the swish of their wings.
two: Running south, just past the double bridge near the 44th st parking lot, I saw movement in the trees. 2 birds — were they geese or turkeys? I couldn’t tell — they were hiding in the bushes and I was moving too fast — but I decided they must be turkeys.
three: Running back north, close to the double bridge again, I saw the birds again. Definitely turkeys. They flapped their wings a little as they moved to the side for me. Thanks friends! A few seconds later, a bike passed me. I heard the biker ringing his bell over and over to alert the turkeys. ding ding ding ding ding ding
added the next morning, a bonus bird!: Last night Scott and I walked over to Sea Salt. On our way home, on the winchell trail, we saw a turkey on the fence — or, Scott saw a turkey and kept pointing it out to me until I finally saw it too. As we neared it, it flew away and into a tree. Crash! That might be the first time I’ve ever seen a turkey fly!
10 Things
nearing the entrance to the Winchell trail: the water was almost white and very bright from the sun
at the bottom of the hill, looking ahead at the ford bridge: the curve of the bridge was reflected in the water, almost, but not quite, looking like a smile
more glimpses of the river, white and glittery, through the trees
a biker on the hill, climbing it, then looping around to descend and climb again
the sound of water steadily dropping from the sewer pipe at 42nd
the buzz of crickets
the croak of a few frogs
car after car after car heading north on the river road — difficult to cross
all around, rustling sounds — dry, brittle leaves being disturbed by critters moving through the brush
beep beep beep beep beep — a truck backing up on edmund, trying not to hit the dumpster parked on the street
When I approached the “edge of the world,” I decided to stop and take a picture of it:
at the edge of the world / 2 oct 2023
When I finished my run, a mile and half later, I stopped at the 35th overlook to admire the view. When I saw my shadow, I decided to take her picture:
1.5 loops lake nokomis main beach 79 degrees windy choppy
So glad I wore my wetsuit! Also glad that I’m an excellent swimmer who doesn’t panic easily. That was a tough swim. And that was some rough water. Normally in an open swim, even one where I’ve picked up the pace or am swimming for more than an hour, my heart rate stays between 120 and 130. In today’s swim, my heart rate was 158. Wow.
10 Things
seagulls, part 1: more than a dozen, floating in the water
seagulls, part 2: flying furiously, stirred up by a little kid chasing them from shore
before my swim: an almost empty beach, the sand had been tamped down by a park vehicle’s wheels
after my swim: 3 sunbathers and one guy in jammers (men’s swim shorts that look like bike shorts) about to swim
whitecaps
swam over a few ghost vines reaching up from the bottom
the giant swans are still in the water, tethered together by a dock
only one sailboat with a white sail out in the water
cloudy, murky water, impossible to even see my hand in front of me below the surface
before the swim: a motorcycle pulling into the parking lot, blasting “Love Shack” — you’re what? tin roof … rusted
an unexpected ramble about libraries and unfamiliar places and my vision struggles
Picked up my first physical (non ebook) at the library yesterday. Last time I’ve been inside the library was sometime in early 2020, before the pandemic, and before the library suffered heavy fire damage during the George Floyd uprising, when white supremacists tried to burn it down.
There are lots of reasons I haven’t made it back to the library since then — I mostly read ebooks which you check out online because the light from the screen is always bright enough for me, while I often have to read physical books outside in direct sun to see the words. During and after the pandemic, I’ve been less willing to go into public spaces. I can’t drive anymore and the library is too close for a bus, but too far for an easy/quick walk.
Maybe the biggest reason: I’ve been scared. Walking into a building, I can’t read the signs that tell me where to go or notify me of something, like a new policy. What if I can’t find where to go? What if they’ve changed how to pick up holds, where to check them out? Of course, I could ask and I have been willing to do so, but it’s hard. Even if I ask, first I have to endure that moment of unknowing and confusion, when I enter a building and can’t see people’s faces, read signs, orient myself quickly.* This is Emily Dickinson’s moment in “We Grow Accustomed to the Dark” — A Moment — We uncertain step/For newness of the night –. Also, even though I’ve been working on it, it’s still hard to ask for help — to take the time, to bother someone, to not know how to do something. I’m hoping asking will get easier and I’ll care less and less about having to do it. For now, I have a different solution: Scott (or my kids or a friend) can come with me to a new place the first time, to help with any confusion I might have. Once I know how it works, I can come back on my own.
* To add to this: it’s not just that I’m uncertain, confused. Sometimes, my brain makes very bad guesses — often the exact opposite of what is actually there — and I overconfidently act on them. The more wrong I am, the more likely I am to boldly act. This is embarrassing — I look stupid or sound crazy/ridiculous, but it is also dangerous. Scott has witnessed this enough times to verify my assessment. I believe this is related to my failing vision, but I don’t know how. So strange and frustrating because I don’t seem to have any control over it, and I like to have control.
Gary Snyder’s Riprap
The book I had requested and picked up is one I’ve wanted to read for several years now: Gary Snyder’s Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems. I read/skimmed through it yesterday afternoon, and there are several poems that I’d like to read closely and study. I think they might help me with my series of Haunts poems. I like his sparse, matter-of-fact approach. I also like his love for walking/hiking. I think that I’ll devote the second half of September to his work! I just requested a few more books from the library.
We finished clearing the last Section of trail by noon, High on the ridge-side Two thousand feet above the creek Reached the pass, went on Beyond the white pine groves, Granite shoulders, to a small Green meadow watered by the snow, Edged with Aspen—sun Straight high and blazing But the air was cool. Ate a cold fried trout in the Trembling shadows. I spied A glitter, and found a flake black volcanic glass—obsidian— By a flower. Hands and knees Pushing the Bear grass, thousands Of arrowhead leavings over a Hundred yards. Not one good Head, just razor flakes On a hill snowed all but summer deer, They came to camp. On their Own trails. I followed my own Trail here. Picked up the cold-drill, Pick, singlejack, and sack Of dynamite Ten thousand years.
I want to spend more time with this. After the 3rd or 4th reading: love the line breaks and how they keep it moving. Also how some of the lines have new meaning when read alone:
4.35 miles to longfellow garden and back 61 degrees
Beautiful! Sunny, not too warm, calm. Ran past the falls to Longfellow Gardens. Stopped to check out the beautiful flowers — wow! — then started running back, past the barely trickling falls and to the Winchell Trail. I listened to cars driving by, acorns falling, kids yelling at the playground, an accordion player at the falls.
My left leg felt fine on the way to the gardens, a little stiff and sore on the way back. I’ve decided that part of the problem might be that my left glute isn’t firing. Listening to so many podcasts with professional runners and their injuries I’ve learned that this can happen and that it’s important to make sure your glute is actually working. Time to google some “glute firing exercises.” Found something! How to Get the Glues to Fire in Running
before the run
This weekend I was looking through Julia B. Levine’s collection, Ordinary Psalms. Here’s another poem about losing your vision that resonates for me and that I read before heading out for my run:
Beneath our grapevines at dusk, I will tell him that the world is falling in on me,
a blurred unseaming of each from each into a great sameness.
My husband reaches into the trellis, cuts a cluster with his knife
and lays the red grapes on a plate before us. I already know science is a religion too,
with its pantheon of evidence steadying terror. Believe me, I’m grateful for any anchor.
Though here at the edge of autumn, doesn’t it seem that the mythic breaks down
into that battered couch we once saw in Rome floating down the Tiber
like a boat broken free of its mooring, except this time, one of the five white gulls
shining at rest on its pillows will not rise into the air again.
Please don’t try to make it better. For now, there is a hunger in my lips, my hands,
as if I’d been called late to wander, to feel by way of edges and texture
around lintels and doors, hallways of shadow broken open by stairs.
There are too many choices and ultimately none.
Don’t tell me a station of light will remain like a lit house at midnight
in the fields rumbled through and groaning under the evening train.
There’s a lot I could think/write about with this poem. This morning, the phrase “edge of autumn” stuck with me and I decided to try and think about what the edge of autumn looks/feels like outside, above the gorge.
during the run
This theme of the edge of autumn kept returning and leaving. I started thinking about the edge as on the brink of/nearing/almost here and then looking, listening, feeling for evidence of its impending arrival. Then my thoughts shifted and I thought about what it means to be on the edge and where the edges were on my route.
10 Edges
(edge = almost, nearing) a soft golden light from the changing trees
(edge = almost, nearing) over-rehearsed flowers — an excessive of past-their-prime blooms
(edge = almost, nearing) school starting again, running past Dowling Elementary, watching cars line-up in the drop-off zone
(edge = location) a garden worker kneeling at the edge of the flowerbeds, removing dead bulbs, weeds
(edge = location) walking around the outside of the garden path, staying out of the way of a photographer taking pictures of the vibrant yellows, reds, oranges, purples
(edge = location) running the stretch of the Winchell Trail that I’ve named “the edge of the world” because you’re running up a hill on the edge of the bluff that has a curve that if you miss taking would lead to falling off and into the river below. In late fall through early spring, when the leaves are all off and there’s nothing blocking your view of the empty air, it really looks the edge of the world
(edge = location) encountering a walker, I moved to the very edge of the trail. No problem for me to navigate, but one wrong step and you could fall down the very steep hill — no railings here!
off the edge: water trickling over minnehaha falls, through the sewer pipe at 42nd and down the limestone rocks to the river
edges dissolving: listening to someone playing the accordion near the steps down to the bottom of the falls mixed with my footsteps mixed with the fast, steady rhythm of sprinklers. Difficult to tell which sound was the accordion, which my feet, which the sprinklers
at the bottom of the steps, a choice: go up the stairs and run on the upper trail or go past the stairs and take the dirt trail through the oak savanna (I took the steps)
A few days I wrote about the kindness of 2 bikers on the bridge. Today it was a woman on the Winchell Trail:
As I approached a woman walking ahead of me on the narrow Winchell Trail, she moved over. me: Thank you! her: Have a great run! me: Thanks! Have a great walk!
Another woman walking with a dog, stopped and moved over to the side, keeping her dog close and calm as I ran by. Thank you!
