Tag: sink

march 23/RUN

4.4 miles
minnehaha falls and back
28 degrees
99% clear biking path

Only 28 degrees this morning, but it sure felt like spring! Sun, blue sky, less snow, warmer air! Heard some black capped chickadees and robins cheering me up. Felt the grit under my feet. Noticed my shadow. Saw more walkers walking below on the Winchell Trail. The river was sparkling and beautifully blue.

Before I went for my run, I read the first (and my final) page of the Schuyler poem and thought more about my “How to Sink” poem. I was particularly interested in thinking about the different ways water might sink or fall. About a minute into my run, I heard water dripping fast down the sewer — tinkling or shimmering or sounding like glitter falling. I held onto the memory of this sound throughout the run to the falls, adding more ideas of water falling as I encountered them. Then I stopped and spoke them into my phone. Here’s a brief list:

  1. water dripping down the sewer drain, a glitter of sound, or little dots of sound cascading down
  2. the slow, steady drip
  3. the seeping in or out of the limestone
  4. the falls –a rush or gush, almost like it’s being dumped, buckets of rain — surrender as a sudden collapsing and dumping, all at once, not gradually, like the abrupt shutting down of everything in early March of 2020

The buckets of rain made me think of a poem, but I couldn’t remember which one. In the recording I said, I bet it’s in Hymn to Life. Yep. Page 9. I recall thinking about writing about the “buckets of rain,” but I guess I didn’t.

The rain comes down in buckets:
I’ve never seen that, though you often speak of it. The rain
Comes down and brings depression, too much and too often.

James Schuyler, Hymn to Life, Page 1

Yes, I’m ending with the first page. It begins with The wind rests its cheek, and ends with Didn’t keep them.

The wind rests its cheek upon the ground and feels the cool damp
And lifts its head with twigs and small dead blades of grass
Pressed into it as you might at the beach rise up and brush away
The sand.

Love it! I need to add this to my collection of lines about the wind. Maybe I should create my own Beaufort Wind Scale. What speed would this be? 2 mph?

The day is cool and says, “I’m just staying overnight.”

I like the idea of the day saying something like this, although I’m not sure I totally understand what it means.

The world is filled with music, and in between the music, silence
And varying the silence all sorts of sounds, natural and man made:
There goes a plane, some cars, geese that honk and, not here, but
Not so far away, a scream so rending that to hear it is to be
Never again the same. “Why, this is hell.”

These first two lines are wonderful. I’d like to use them as epigraph for a poem. And that scream at the end….wow. Have I ever heard a scream like that?

Out of the death breeding
Soil, here, rise emblems of innocence, snowdrops that struggle
Easily into life and hang their white enamel heads toward the dirt

Death breeding soil. To struggle easily. Snowdrops hanging their heads to the dirt instead of up to the sun. Everything flipped

And in the yellow grass are small wild crocuses from hills goats
Have cropped to barrenness. The corms come by mail, are planted.

corms = “a rounded underground storage organ present in plants such as crocuses, gladioli, and cyclamens, consisting of a swollen stem base covered with scale leaves.”

Flowers courtesy of goats and mail-order.

Then do their thing: to live! To live! So natural and so hard
Hard as it seems it must be for green spears to pierce the all but
Frozen mold and insist that they too, like mouse-eared chickweed,
Will live. The spears lengthen, the bud appears and spreads, its
Seed capsule fattens and falls, the green turns yellowish and withers
Stretched upon the ground.

To live! To live!

Tomorrow
Will begin another spring. No one gets many, one at a time, like a long
Awaited letter that one day comes. But it may not say what you hoped
Or distraction robs it of what it once would have meant.

How many people write letters anymore? I don’t because it’s very hard to write by hand with my vision, and I can hardly ever read anyone’s handwriting — not because it’s messy but because of my failing vision. If no one is writing letters anymore, does this metaphor work? How are poets using email in metaphors in compelling ways? Or text messages? Can we even imagine time/life in such slow ways as letter writing and receiving anymore?

Spring comes
And the winter weather, here, may hold. It is arbitrary, like the plan
Of Washington, D.C. Avenues and circles in asphalt web

Here in Minneapolis, the weather remains fairly reliable (reliably bad in spring, that is): a cold March, a big snow storm in April, a lingering chill in the first week of May, then suddenly 90 degrees and summer in mid-May.

and no
One gets younger: which is not, for the young, true, discovering new
Freedoms at twenty, a relief not to be a teen-ager anymore.

My son turns 20! next week. Since returning from his band trip to Spain and France, he is feeling these lines. February and March such big months of transformation for him.

One of us
Had piles, another water on the knee, a third a hernia—a strangulated
Hernia is one of life’s less pleasant bits of news—and only
One, at twenty, moved easily through all the galleries to pill
Free sleep. Oh, it’s not all that bad. The sun shines on my hand
And the myriad lines that criss-cross tell the story of nearly fifty
Years.

In 1951, Schuyler was introduced to Frank O’Hara and John Ashbery at a party in New York. The three poets would go on to share an apartment on 49th Street in Manhattan and to work closely together, often collaborating on a variety of writing projects.

Poetry Foundation

So, which one of them had the piles, which the water under the knee, and which the hernia?

Reading these lines, I was imagining an old man. But, he’s nearing 50! That’s my age. I suppose I do feel old often. I do not will not feel old for the next 30 years. Feeling old is for when I’m 80 — maybe I should chant this to myself every morning, like a spell?

So, that’s it. I read the whole poem. So much fun! Should I leave it at that, or continue exploring Schuyler for a few more days?

march 10/RUN

2.8 miles
river road trail, south/Winchell trail, south/edmund, north
44 degrees
drizzle

Decided to go out for a quick run before the rain started. I made it out the door when it was dry but by mile 2 it was raining. Starting in the rain can be miserable, but if you’re already running, it’s difficult to feel the rain. Because of the weather, I was able to run on the trail without encountering too many people. Oh, the river, looking beautifully pale blue in the gloom. When I reached 42nd st, I took the trail down to a spot right above the ravine and recorded the water rushing down the rocks as my moment of sound.

march 10, 2021

Very cool. Instead of heading back up to the road, I decided to keep running on the Winchell trail. At this point, close to the southern start of the trail, it’s steep and uneven and right on the edge. What an unanticipated delight to be this much closer to the river–nothing but air and the bluff between us. (Sitting here, writing this entry in the front room, I just heard a long, loud boom–thunder!)

Anything else I remember from the run? I noticed a lot of headlights, bright and cutting through the gray sky. Another runner also cutting through the gloom, wearing a bright yellow shirt. Saw some people walking their dogs–one guy called out a greeting to me. I think he said “Go Twins!” because I was wearing a Twins baseball cap, but I’m not sure. Heard a young kid and an adult below me in the oak savanna. Noticed all the snow collected on the trail at the foot of the mesa. Heard some kids on the playground at the lower campus of Minnehaha Academy. For the last mile of my run, I put in my headphones and listened to a playlist.

It was great to be out by the gorge in-between rain showers, hearing the rushing water and how it sometimes drips, sometimes gushes down the bluff to the river. I spent the morning working on my “How to Sink” poem and thinking about water and what it does as it travels through the soil and layers of sediment, powered by gravity. Writing this, I suddenly thought about gravity and weight and how it forces water through cracks and then I thought about the homonym for weight, wait, and patience, and how my preferred form of sinking is a slow, gradual sliding down that takes a long time. And also how the weight of gravity forces water down through the layers, but so does the persistence of time. Cool–I’d like to add that in somehow. Here’s a new draft of my poem. Still not there, but getting closer, I hope.

Try to recall when your son young
and upset turns to jelly
and oozes off
the sofa
in

surrender he’s not giving in
but giving up control a
puddle of parts
pooled at your
feet

learn to retreat like this let your
bones dissolve legs liquefy
gravity win
seep deep be-
neath

layers of loam sandstone limestone
shale drop lower and lower
and lower
fall

between cracks fit through fissures carve
out a door take it so far
in that out is
another
idea.*

Begin with 20 seconds from
a song that is not happy
birthday sing while
you scour
the

surface of your dread scrub off each
layer watch as they drip down
the drain on their
way to the
gorge.

*idea is one extra syllable, which is irritating to me, but so far, I can’t figure out a way around it.

Maybe I could add the weight/wait bit in after the line about falling? Also, I like having the washing your hands at the end of the poem, as the start of this need to sink/retreat/shelter inside (because of the pandemic), but I think I might need a little more transition to it. Is it too jarring, coming right after the bit about out being another idea?

Today’s Emily Dickinson poem:

Crumbling is not an instant’s Act (1010)/ EMILY DICKINSON

Crumbling is not an instant’s Act
A fundamental pause
Dilapidation’s processes
Are organized Decays —

‘Tis first a Cobweb on the Soul
A Cuticle of Dust
A Borer in the Axis
An Elemental Rust —

Ruin is formal — Devil’s work
Consecutive and slow —
Fail in an instant, no man did
Slipping — is Crashe’s law —

I really like this poem–it fits well with all of my thinking today about erosion and water dripping down. Gradual decay, a slow repeated slipping. I love the rhyme of a cuticle of Dust with an elemental Rust. A Borer in the Axis is strange to me. A mechanical (metal?) axis combined with a worm that bores into wood? I like bore as a verb–it might fit in my poem.

march 9/RUN

3.25 miles
turkey hollow!
54 degrees

Today I was able to run in shorts and above the gorge and on the snow-less walking trail and all the way down to turkey hollow. Hooray! It was windy and there were people all around, but I kept my distance and believed that if I was running directly into the wind on the way there, it would help me along on the way back. It did. Lots of birds singing. I recall hearing several robins but no black capped-chickadees. No woodpeckers. I know I glanced down at the river and I remember hoping I’d see some rowers, but I don’t remember what the river looked like. Was it blue or gray or brown? The river road was filled with a steady stream of cars.

I recited the first two stanzas of the Emily Dickinson poem I’m studying for today. I’m not memorizing every poem I read, but I decided these two stanzas would be fun to chant as I ran. They were.

A Bird, came down the Walk (359)/ Emily Dickinson

A Bird, came down the Walk –
He did not know I saw –
He bit an Angle Worm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw,

And then, he drank a Dew
From a convenient Grass –
And then hopped sidewise to the Wall
To let a Beetle pass –

He glanced with rapid eyes,
That hurried all abroad –
They looked like frightened Beads, I thought,
He stirred his Velvet Head. – 

Like one in danger, Cautious,
I offered him a Crumb,
And he unrolled his feathers, 
And rowed him softer Home –

Than Oars divide the Ocean,
Too silver for a seam,
Or Butterflies, off Banks of Noon, 
Leap, plashless as they swim. 

A delightful poem. I enjoyed reading the prowling Bee’s analysis and thinking about the imagery, especially the bird flying through the sky as water:

The watching poet then offers him a bit of bread but this is too much. The bird flies away. Except that this isn’t the end of the poem as Dickinson sees it. In one of those reversals of sky and sea (for example, “This—is the land—the sunset washes” – F297), the bird “unrolled his feathers” as if he were changing from an earthbound thing to a heavenly creature, and then “rowed” himself more softly “Home” than the act of rowing on the ocean. The oars’ action, like the bird’s wing, are so small and “silver” in the expanse of water and sky, that they don’t even leave a “seam” behind to show they once moved through that space.

I love the idea of sky as water and imagine it often as I look up at the sky by the river or the lake. As I was chanting this poem mid-run, and enjoying being with the little bird, the worm, and the beetle, I thought about how wonderful poetry is. You can enjoy it many different levels: how it sounds, the worlds it conjures up, the meanings behind its images. You can spend time closely scrutinizing what the beetle or the worm means, how ED might be inserting herself in the poem, and what she’s suggesting about her world, but you don’t have to to find meaning and delight. Much more accessible than other forms of writing. One more thing: I discovered that plashless is a word and that it basically means without a splash or splash-less. Maybe I’ll use it on Scott and when he tries to correct me I can smugly say, “No, I mean plashless. It’s word too.”

How to Sink

Earlier this morning, I worked some more on revising my poem. I’ve decided to use a modified cinquain form. In my “how to float” poem I used Adelaide Crapsey’s 2-4-6-8-2 pattern to evoke floating and lifting. In “how to sink,” I’ll use almost the same number of total syllables for each cinquain (23 instead of 22), but switch them around to mimic falling and narrowing, sinking: 8-7-4-3-1. Here’s what I have so far:

Begin with 20 seconds from
a song that is not happy
birthday sing while
you scour
the

surface of your dread scrub off each
layer watch as they drip down
the drain on their
way to the
gorge.

Recall when your son young upset
turned to jelly and oozed off
the sofa in
surrender
a

puddle of body parts pooled at
your feet learn to retreat like
this feel your bones
dissolve your
legs

liquefy gravity win reach
ground seep deep through layers of
loam sandstone shale
drop

lower and lower and lower
fall between cracks carve out ways
in follow them
so far in
out

is another idea

How to Float has 10 cinquains. I want to mirror that in this poem. So far, I am just starting the 7th. Lots of meaning of sink: 1. sink as a place to wash your hands and an early symbol of the pandemic, 2. as a place where water collects (puddle of body parts), 3. as drain, sewer pipe (the dread dripping down to the gorge), 4. being swallowed up, lost (seeping deep), 5. falling down. Time to look up more definitions.

a moment of sound

8 am from the deck: the persistent hum of the city and the birds chatter

march 9, 2021

march 7/RUN

3.2 miles
2 school loop
39 degrees
wind: 12 mph/21 mph gusts

Ran a little earlier today, starting at 8:20. Still too crowded on the river road trail: bikes, dogs, people. I stayed on Edmund with the birds. I kept hearing a bird call that reminds me a little of the loon sound they play at twins games. What is this bird? (I’ve just been searching and listening to clips for the past few minutes; no luck yet.) Also heard some drumming woodpeckers, a metallic robin song, crows, geese, various warblers. The sun was out and I think I noticed my shadow a few times–or was that on my run 2 days ago? There was still some slick spots on the sidewalk; I watched as a walker slid across the concrete at the corner. I did that same thing yesterday on my long walk with Scott and Delia. We, me yesterday and this walker today, were both okay. Didn’t get to see the river this morning, but I admired it yesterday as we walked under the railroad trestle. There was a group of rowers out on the water! That’s a sure sign of spring. Maybe someday I’ll be one of those rowers? I’ve always wanted to try.

I’m revising a poem I wrote early on in the pandemic: How to Sink. Thinking about the idea of sinking down through the layers of the gorge, carving out a new way in, retreating. Not giving up but letting go, surrendering control. Is surrender too negative of a word? I don’t see sinking as bad or unwanted, but a welcome break, an opportunity to return to the source, regroup. I need to read up more on sinking and think about the different ways it works. Sinking is not falling, but something else. Settling? Seeping. Finding shelter. I remember now that I wrote some notes about sinking in my notebook and maybe in a log entry. I’ll have to find them (here’s a few: sink)

Today’s Dickinson Poem: After great pain, a formal feeling comes – (372)

After great pain, a formal feeling comes –
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs –
The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’
And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’?

The Feet, mechanical, go round –
A Wooden way
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought –
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone –

This is the Hour of Lead –
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow –
First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –

Wow. After reading this poem a few times, I read The Prowling Bee’s analysis of it, which was helpful. Such powerful descriptions of 3 phases of grief: the chill/shock where nerves are still; then the daze/stupor of heavy, shuffling aimless feet; and then the letting go. And great words: the Hour of Lead. Tombs. Stiff. Wooden. Quartz contentment. Stone. Freezing.

a moment of sound: dogs

march 7, 2021

When a dog walks by, through the alley, the neighborhood dogs get excited. I am not bothered by their barking, probably because it only comes in random bursts. In fact, I love frantic dog barking. I find it delightful; sometimes I even encourage it, making sure to walk with Delia by the houses with the biggest, wildest barkers. You can also hear the scare rod–the metal spinning flashing rod our neighbors have hung to scare off woodpeckers–spinning in the wind. Unlike barking dogs, this noise irritates me. I am trying to get over myself because it’s a minor irritation and it seems to be working and I don’t want woodpeckers pecking at our neighbor’s house. Also, near the end of the recording, Delia growls at someone walking through the alley and the wind howls, tossing the tall pine tree on the next block to and fro.

march 6 recap

I took my first break from running in a month yesterday, but I still did my moment of sound and my Dickinson poem.

a moment of sound

Taking a long walk parallel to the river, I heard lots of wonderful things, including these wind chimes in a yard across from the Birchwood Cafe.

march 6, 2021

I’m Nobody! Who are you? (260)/Emily Dickinson – 1830-1886

I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!

This is the first poem of Dickinson’s that I ever remember encountering. I think it was in junior high, way back in 1986 or 1987. I didn’t get the poem, but I liked the strangeness of it all. For decades, I have found myself randomly saying in my head, “I’m Nobody! Who are you?” sometimes I add: “Are you — Nobody — too?” And then an image of frog pops into my head. I agree with this idea: “How dreary — to be — Somebody!”

april 16/BIKERUN

bike: 20 minutes, bike stand
run: 1.45 miles, treadmill
Deaths from COVID-19: 94 (MN)/ 31,628 (US)

It’s not too cold or windy outside today but I decided to workout in the basement anyway. Watched more of the Agatha Christie movie on Netflix. I’m really enjoying it so far. Then ran for about 10 minutes on the treadmill while I listened to a playlist.

Right now I’m working on a poem tentatively titled, “How to Sink.” It’s inspired by all the sinking and keeping and dripping I’ve noticed running beside the gorge and by the current need to retreat/withdraw/go deep inside.

How to Sink/ Sara Lynne Puotinen (draft 1)

Think
of that time
when your young son
was so mad all he
could do was turn to goo

and
slowly ooze
down the couch in
surrender to the
floor. Not giving in
but giving up control,

a
puddle of
body parts pooled
at your feet. Go to the

gorge.
Let your bones
dissolve, your legs
liquefy, submit
to gravity sliding

down
reaching ground
seeping deeper
through layers of loam,
sandstone, limestone, shale.

Drop
lower and
lower burrow
through cracks and fissures
carve out a way in

and
follow it
further inside
so far that outside is
another idea.

note: “follow it further inside so far that outside is another idea” is taken from a Paul Tran poem, The Cave.

Read it to Scott and he mentioned that “goo” stood out too much. I’m having trouble thinking of another word that fits the idea and the syllable count of the line so I’m keeping it in for now.

april 13/RUN

3.5 miles
river road, south/edmund, north/33rd st, west/43rd ave, south
32 degrees/ 5% snow-covered
Deaths from COVID-19: 70 (MN)/ 22,935 (US)

Snowed 5.1 inches yesterday. Still a lot of snow on the grass, but almost all of it is melted off the roads, the paths, the sidewalk. A beautiful, bright sun. Hardly anyone on the trail. I don’t remember looking at the river even once. I bet it was glowing. Noticed the Winchell Trail below me, clear and dry. Wanted to listen to dripping, but I don’t remember hearing any by the gorge. I don’t remember much of the run. Don’t remember hearing any woodpeckers or geese or cardinals. I do remember hearing the grit under my feet on the road. Much harder to run up the hill on slippery sand.

How to Sink, some ideas

For at least 6 months now, I’ve wanted to write a companion poem to How to Float about sinking. Back in August and September of last year, I imagined this sink poem to be only about the gorge and erosion and the idea of becoming grounded/rooted/settled in a space. Now, during this time of social distancing, I’m thinking of it in terms of sinking deep inside–holing up, hiding out, hunkering down, trying to wait patiently. I’m playing around with my own version of a cinquain (inspired by Adelaide Crapsey): 5 line groupings with 1 syllable/3/4/5/6. Here’s something I have so far

Be
a boulder
not a stone too
big to be stacked too
much trouble to be moved.

And here’s a beautiful poem I found on twitter. Dorianne Laux is wonderful. I really enjoyed listening to a poetry foundation podcast with her a few weeks ago. This poem is amazing. Love the idea of remembering only the flavor like a fine powder. I keep thinking about that fine powder–the hint of something but never quite fully the thing–as all that we have access to. Can we ever open the window? Are we ever not too tired?

Dust/ Dorianne Laux

Someone spoke to me last night,
told me the truth. Just a few words,
but I recognized it.
I knew I should make myself get up,
write it down, but it was late,
and I was exhausted from working
all day in the garden, moving rocks.
now, I remember only the favor—
not like food, sweet or sharp.
More like a fine powder, like dust.
And I wasn’t elated or frightened,
but simply rapt, aware.
That’s how it is sometimes—
God comes to your window,
all bright light and black wings,
and you’re just too tired to open it.