Tag: the regulars

may 7/RUN

4 miles
trestle+ turn around
59 degrees

Today I tried the walk/run method: 9 minutes of running, 1 minute of walking. As usual, I followed this method approximately. Run 9:30/Walk 1:30, 8:30/1 — I can’t remember after that. It was good. It’s still difficult, but I’m pushing through more. I greeted 2 regulars! Dave, the Daily Walker and Daddy Long Legs. I noticed how green the floodplain forest was, only the narrowest sliver of river to see. And the view from the sliding bench? Green green green. If someone was walking below, would I even be able to see them? Ran on the grass and the dirt a lot. Thought about taking the short dirt trail that cuts behind a tree nearing the trestle, but didn’t. Next time? Admired someone’s raspberry red running shoes. I used to have shoes that color. Now they’re boring dark gray/almost black.

Ran through gnats. Most of them went in my eye, one in my throat. Also ran through cottonwood, or some white flowery thing that I thought of as cottonwood fuzz. Usually the cottonwood arrives at the beginning of June, so maybe it was something else?

No rowers, no roller skiers, no turkeys or geese or bird shadows. One fat tire. One little kid. Several runners and walkers and cars.

I don’t remember what I heard for the first half of the run, but for the second half, I listened to my windy playlist (it was windy out there!).

edges / middles / context

I started the morning thinking about surfaces and the places where things meet and textures and skin and feet. And then I remembered Emily Dickinson’s love of the circumference and the wonderful site, out of Dartmouth, all about ED in 1862. It has a blog post on ED and circumference.

I was excited to read this bit:

Laura Gribbin argues that Dickinson’s conception of Circumference rejects Emersonian expansion, revises the patriarchal conceptions of the (male) poet’s encompassing consciousness, and resists being taken over by an outside power. It does so by calling attention to “the circle’s necessary boundary or perimeter without which it has neither shape nor meaning.” In Gribbin’s reading,

“Circumference marks the borderline of symbolic and linguistic order.
This border is a highly charged point of convergence where oppositions are collapsed, boundaries are explored, and meaning originates. Circumference is also the space within a circle where life is lived, pain is felt, and death is observed.”

In what amounts to a powerful critique of Romanticism, Dickinson stands not at the center but on the periphery, at the outer limits of knowledge and language, replacing, as Gribbin notes,

“the Romantic impulse toward transcendence with an alternative concept of knowledge gained within the limits of experience.”

Instead of the Emersonian emphasis on sight and specularity, Dickinson emphasizes touch and what can be felt. Because

“Circumference delineates that region where the imagination comes into play, [it] is thus the source of poetry itself.”

White Heat: Emily Dickinson in 1862, a Weekly Blog

While reading my “on this day” posts yesterday, I encountered a discussion of middles from 6 may 2023. It’s in the middle of my summarizing of Mary Ruefle’s essay “On Beginnings”:

It’s about beginnings and how there are more beginnings in poetry than endings. The first note I jotted down in my Plague Notebook, Vol 16 was about the semicolon, which is a punctuation mark that I particularly like. Ruefle has just introduced an idea from Ezra Pound that each of us speaks only one sentence that begins when we’re born and ends when we die. When Ruefle tells this idea to another poet he responds, “That’s a lot of semicolons!” Ruefle agrees and then writes this:

the next time you use a semicolon (which, by the way, is the least-used mark of punctuation in all of poetry) you should stop and be thankful that there exists this little thing, invented by a human being–an Italian as a matter of fact–that allows us to go on and keep on connecting speech that for all apparent purposes unrelated.

then adds: a poem is a semicolon, a living semicolon, and this:

Between the first and last lines there exists–a poem–and if it were not for the poem that intervenes, the first and last lines of a poem would not speak to each other.

At some point as I read, I suddenly thought of middles. The in-betweens, after the beginning, before the end. How much attention do these get, especially if we jump right in and start with them. It reminds me of a writing prompt/experiment I came up with for my running log: Write a poem about something that happened during the middle of your run–not at the beginning or the end, but the middle (see 27 nov 2019). 

the MIDDLE

mid-motion
mid-walk, mid-run
Activity: notice and record what you notice in the midst of motion. Pull out your smart phone and speak your thoughts into it.

Not how you got there or where you’re headed, but here now in-between

the middle: Lucille Clifton’s unfenced is, Alice Oswald’s purpled sea

I like the idea of being dropped in the middle — no need to endure a beginning or an ending, but what’s lost when we’re floating in the middle? Something that grounds or frames the experience: context.

aside: writing that last bit, I recalled a few lines from Jorie Graham’s “Still Life with Window and Fish”:

The whole world outside….
I know it’s better, whole, outside, the world—whole
trees, whole groves–but I
love it in here where it blurs, and nothing starts or
ends, but all is
waving, and colorless,
and voiceless….

This morning, I came across a learning prompt on Poetry Foundation: Context.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines context as “the parts of a discourse that surround a word or passage and can throw light on its meaning.” The word itself comes from the Latin contexere, which means “to weave or join together,” which I interpret as “to make sense of” what we’re reading, particularly when we’re not familiar with the author’s background and/or work. Knowing a poem’s context can give us a sense of place, culture, politics, gender dynamics, etc., and situate us in a specific time and place using concrete references. . . .

A sense of place, a connection, an anchor, a way to ground ourselves and our understandings.

a few hours later: I just remembered Kamala Harris’ coconut tree comment, which RJP loved to quote during the campaign:

context

added the next day: As I read through this entry again the next morning, I suddenly remembered something I posted earlier this spring about how not knowing or acknowledging a person/community’s history is to de-humanize them, to turn them into an object and not a subject. I can’t find where I wrote about it or what I was referencing. After a lot of searching, I found it! It’s in an interview with Jenny Odell about her new book on time, Another Kind of Time. Instead of posting the lengthy quotation here, I’m putting it in my entry for 8 may.

ground contact time

The Apple watch has all sorts of data points, most of which don’t matter to me or are meaningless because I don’t know what to compare them too. One such data point is “ground contact time.” Mine is almost always between 235 and 240 ms. It’s cool to think about how little time my foot is on the ground — and how much time I’m flying! — but what does this number mean? I suppose the fact that it is consistent is good, but should I be spending more time or less on the ground? I found a helpful primer on GCT (ground contact time) that has a chart — and plenty of caveats about that chart — to use for evaluating your ground contact time:

  • < 210 ms: Great
  • 210 – 240 ms: Good
  • 241 – 270 ms: Room for improvement
  • 271 – 300 ms: Needs improvement
  • > 300 ms: Lots to work on

The bottom line: less time on the ground is better. It makes you a more efficient, less injury-prone, faster runner.

So, mine is good, but barely. Ways to improve it include: picking up the cadence, being lighter on your feet, dynamic hip exercises — plyometrics or hill repeats, more deliberate arm swing. Maybe I’ll try some of it; I’d like to fly more! I think I’ll start with hill repeats. I’ve been wanting to do those for some time.

All of this talk about surfaces and edges where things meet — seams — and middles and shortened time on ground is making me want to reread Wendell Berry’s “A Native Hill.” I finally have a physical copy of it. I think I’ll read it and mark it up this afternoon!

april 1/RUN

3.5 miles
2 trails
39 degrees / wind: 27 mph gusts

Windy and cold. Cold enough to bust out my black vest, but not cold enough for the purple jacket. Lots of swirling and floating leaves. Did I hear any birds? Not that I remember, but I did hear voices — kids on the playground and a squeal near longfellow flats that I think was an excited little kid but could have also been a hurt animal. Saw one roller skier twice, or 2 different roller skiers once.

My back was stiff this morning, but didn’t hurt at all while I was running. The run was relaxed — I stopped several times to look for rusty things – and felt good. The wind didn’t bother me while I was running, but now, sitting at my desk, my ears are burning.

Also, sitting at my desk, looking out my window, a runner that often see is running by. This is the first time I’ve seen her at home, the other times have been near the ravine at 36th. I suppose I should include her as one of the regulars. The distinctive thing about her, the thing that makes it possible for me notice and remember her even with my bad vision, is her strange gait. She runs with a hitch in her step. I marvel at it: how can she keep running with that hitch? how does she not get injured? does she feel the hitch, or is she unaware of it? Tentatively, I’ll call her, Miss Hirple Hip because I learned last month, while looking for a word that rhymes with purple, that hirple means limp and because her limp starts in her hip.

Before the run I wrote about my chosen challenge for the month: steps (see below). I made a list of things I want to explore. After that, I briefly wrote about 2 poems that I re-memorized this morning, which brought me to color and rust. I thought about the process (the steps) of rusting — oxidation — and decided to search for rusty things while I ran. Has my plan for the month already derailed? Instead of steps, will I fixate on rust? Future Sara will find out!

10 Rusty Things

  1. the bolts on a bench at 42nd street
  2. the metal plates at the entrance to the sidewalk on the next block
  3. almost every chain link fence
  4. the sound of the st. thomas bells ringing from across the river
  5. wind chimes in a yard
  6. the bottom of a lamp post on the edge of the trail
  7. just above the wheel well of a car
  8. a metal pole that used to hold a sign but no longer does
  9. a cover for the wires stretching up from the ground to a power line pole
  10. the sound of the dead leaves as they rustle in the wind

Some general thoughts I had about rust as I ran: rust is an edge dweller / while there are lots of edges around here, there isn’t that much rust, at least where I was looking

Steps

Last month, I came up with my challenge for this month. Steps. Will I stick with it? I can’t ever be sure, but it is a very promising theme. So many things I can do with it. Here are just a few:

  1. identify and list all of the steps on the franklin/ford loop
  2. take them, describe them, count them
  3. explore the history of these steps
  4. explore the public staircases of St. Paul
  5. incorporate stair climbing into marathon/strength training
  6. explore the history of step as a concept — a measurement
  7. how are steps designed — what regulations exist around steps, best practices, etc.
  8. steps and low vision, steps and accessibility
  9. step-by-step instructions + how to manuals
  10. activities that require a certain sequence, activities that do not
  11. ladders
  12. memorable steps in literature and poetry
  13. step counters and 10,000 steps
  14. feet — it begin here: feet first, following

Refreshing My Memory

It’s been almost a year (I think?) since I checked that I can still recite the poems in my 100 list, so during April — for National Poetry Month! — I’m revisiting my poems and refreshing my memory. I’m working in reverse order:

Crumbling is not an instant’s Act — / Emily Dickinson — I decided to memorize this poem because of its description of erosion — all of it, but specifically the line, An Elemental Rust. Erosion — as evidenced by the gorge and in my dying cone cells, is a key theme for me right now. Also: rust as a process, a color. I want to add to my collection of color poems with one about rust.

Tattoo/ Wallace Stevens — I first read this poem in a dissertation about Lorine Niedecker and her nystagmus. Immediately I thought of Alice Oswald and Dante and insects that travel from your eye to the world and back again to deliver data so you can see. I love this idea and have been playing around with it in terms of color vision while I’m swimming — I imagine light as the fish in me escaping to determine the color of the water/waves, and then reporting back to me. Another mention of color — I think I should return to my color poems!

march 2/RUN

5 miles
bottom of franklin hill
26 degrees

Hooray for being outside and on the walking trail! Hooray for not much wind! Hooray for running up the Franklin hill! My back was a little tight, but not too bad. My legs felt fine.

The river was open; the only ice was on the edges. The sky was a mix of clouds and bright sun. Before the run I heard some geese — did I hear any during? I don’t think so. Also heard before the run: some kids having fun inside a house — laughing and yelling through the closed windows.

At some point, I had an idea for my monthly challenge: the run as ceremony. Inspired by Ellis’s Aster of Ceremonies, I want to return to Gary Snyder, Mount Tamalpais, and circumambulation. What sort of ceremonies can I make out of my run that brings together my blind spot and the gorge?

10 Things

  1. bright pink graffiti on a foot of the 1-94 bridge
  2. the top of one section of the wooden fence on the edge above Longfellow Flats is missing
  3. the chain across the old stone steps has been removed
  4. the path was almost completely clear — the only bit of snow I recall seeing was under the lake street bridge: a low and narrow ridge — just remembered one other bit of snow: just past the franklin bridge
  5. a full-length mirror left by the trashcan
  6. disembodied voices — coming from inside houses, below in the gorge, far behind me on the trail
  7. sh sh sh — my feet striking the grit on the asphalt
  8. my shadow briefly appeared – not sharp but soft, faint
  9. at least 2 trios of runners, some pairs, several runners on their own
  10. my friend, the limestone slabs propped up and looking like a person sitting against the underside of Franklin, is still there. I’d like to name them and add them to my list of regulars: Lenny the limestone?

lower back pain

My lower back has been sore lately. Sore enough that I took 5 days off of running. Not sure why I’ve waiting this long, but i decided today to look up lower back stretches for runners. I found this video and its 4 helpful stretches — the video claims to have 5 stretches, but they are only 4. I wonder what the missing one was?

The stretches: pretzel, thread the needle, plank to lunge, hip sweep

I’ll see how it feels in a few hours, but right now, having just stretched, it feels good!

a purple spill from march 1

I wrote this yesterday, but didn’t have a chance to post it.

It’s March and the purple hour is over, but in true purple fashion, the color can’t be contained to one month. Always it oversteps its boundaries. Reading the poem of the day, “Fog” by Emma Lazarus, purple appeared:

Swift, snowy-breasted sandbirds twittering glance 
Through crystal air. On the horizon’s marge, 
                Like a huge purple wraith, 
                The dusky fog retreats.

wraith

1
a: the exact likeness of a living person seen usually just before death as an apparition

b: GHOST, SPECTER

2

: an insubstantial form or semblance : SHADOW

3

: a barely visible gaseous or vaporous column

f you see your own double, you’re in trouble, at least if you believe old superstitions. The belief that a ghostly twin’s appearance portends death is one common to many cultures. In German folklore, such an apparition is called a Doppelgänger (literally, “double goer”); in Scottish lore, they are wraiths. The exact origin of the word wraith is misty, however, and etymologists can only trace it back to the early 16th century—in particular to a 1513 translation of Virgil’s Aeneid by Gavin Douglas (the Scotsman used wraith to name apparitions of both the dead and the living). In current English, wraith has taken on additional, less spooky, meanings; it now often suggests a shadowy—but not necessarily scary—lack of substance.

Merriam-Webster entry

marge = margin = edge

Wraith — I like that word and what it conjures. And to make it purple? Good job, Emma! I’m not sure about the middle section where she imagines the “orient town,” but I like “Fog,” especially this:

for on the rim of the globed world 
I seem to stand and stare at nothingness. 
                But songs of unseen birds 
                And tranquil roll of waves

Bring sweet assurance of continuous life 
Beyond this silvery cloud. Fantastic dreams, 
                Of tissue subtler still 
                Than the wreathed fog, arise,

And cheat my brain with airy vanishings 
And mystic glories of the world beyond. 

Returning to the purple — I like how she imagines the lifting fog as purple. Back in November of 2022 (how has it been that long?!) when I studied gray, I devoted a day to fog and mist: 23 nov 2022. Last month, purple — especially lavender and lilac or eggplant and dark purple — replaced gray. Where I used to see gray everywhere, now I see purple, or imagine purple.

nov 19/RUN

4 miles
minnehaha falls
49 degrees
wind gusts: 25 mph

Wet. Windy. Slick leaves. Squeaks. A light gray sky. Singing pines. The usual puddles. White foam falls. Gushing sewer pipes. Brisk air. Mud.

Greeted Santa Claus (the regular runner whose long white beard reminds me of Santa Claus). Passed a man walking with one leg up in a boot on a scooter. Gave directions to 2 walkers — which way to the falls? follow the path, it’s over there.

The creek was a steel blue and rushing to reach the limestone ledge. A kid at the main overlook was jumping in a puddle. The green gate at the top of the steps leading down to the falls was still open.

Wore shorts and a pink hooded jacket. My legs were only cold for a few minutes. Too warm for mid-November. Today is the last day of warmer air. Tomorrow, below freezing.

I started working on the section of Haunts poem that I’m titling, And. Came up with a few lines while running north. Recited them in my head until I stopped near the Folwell bench and spoke them into my phone:

Before a Victor-
ian’s great love for
ventilation, there
was water wanting
to be something and
somewhere else.

The ventilation bit is taken from an article about the origins of the Grand Rounds, and the Victorian is Horace W.S. Cleveland:

The concept of The Grand Rounds was born from Cleveland’s “preference of an extended system of boulevards, or ornamental avenues, rather than a series of detached open areas or public squares.” This was not only an aesthetic consideration: Cleveland had lost many possessions in the 1871 Chicago fire, and saw parkways as an effective firebreak in built-up urban areas. In addition, Cleveland stressed the
sanitary benefits derived from parkways. Cholera, typhus, and other diseases plagued cities in the late nineteenth century. Parkways could save land from unhealthy uses and, reflecting the Victorians’ great
love for ventilation, carry “winds . . . to the heart of the city, purified by their passage over a long stretch
of living water, and through the foliage of miles of forest.”

The History of the Grand Rounds


nov 14/RUN

4.1 miles
trestle turn around
45 degrees

Moist this morning. Wet sidewalk, wet leaves, wet air. Something was squeaking — my shoes on the leaves or the leaves on my shoes? Only one stone on the boulder, looking lonely and flat. The black stocking cap I mentioned yesterday was still there on the pole. Today I remembered that it was above the old stone steps. Greeted Dave, the Daily Walker with a good morning Dave!, greeted Daddy Long Legs with a wave. He was with his walking partner again. Smiled and gave a head nod to another walker who I think I’ve mentioned before. They always wear a long skirt with tights, and most of the year, a blue puffer jacket. They have gray hair in a long braid. I looked it up, and when I wrote about them before (26 jan 2024), I described them as wearing a dress and tentatively named them, All Dressed Up.

Anything else? I’m pretty sure I looked at the river, but I don’t remember what I saw. No fat tires or roller skiers or geese — where are all the geese? — or turkeys. More YELLOW leaves, falling fast. Some sour sewer smells, puddles, empty benches.

I listened to squeaking leaves and thudding feet as I ran north, then my Color playlist returning south: “Not Easy Bein’ Green,” “Roxanne,” “Mellow Yellow,” and “Let’s Go Crazy.” Speakig of color, I discovered this excellent color poem yesterday afternoon:

Night Comes and Passes Over Me/ Carl Phillips

There’s a rumor of light that
any dark starts off as. Plato speaks
here and there of colors, but only
once, I think, does he break them
down into black and white, red,
and a fourth color. By then they’d
reached for California high country
where, knowing none of the names for
all the things that grew there, they

began to make names up. But to have
trained an animal to come just a bit
closer because here, here’s blood,
doesn’t mean you’ve tamed it. Trans-
lations vary for what Plato calls his
fourth color: what comes closest
to a combination of (since they
aren’t the same) radiant and
bright–what shifting water does,

with light? Violence burnishes
the body, sometimes, though we
call it damage, not burnishing, more
its opposite, a kind of darkness, as if
to hide the body, so that what’s been

done to it might, too, stay hidden,
the way meaning can, for years, until
some pattern by which to trace it
at last emerges. There’s a rumor of light.

I need to give more time to this poem; there’s so much I don’t quite get. But I love the discussion of Plato and color and what shifting water does to light.

july 20/RUN

5.8 miles
bottom of franklin hill and back
69 degrees / humidity: 84%

More progress! Running a little longer before stopping to walk, then running a little longer before stopping again. Increased my distance and time on my feet too. Step by small step I’ll get there.

Almost 9 am on Saturday morning. As I warmed up with a walk, it was quiet, calm. No cars or kids or other adults around. Just birds and my footsteps on the sidewalk. Ah, I love summer mornings!

During the run: hot, humid, lots of sweat. Greeted the Welcoming Oaks. Passed a group of runners in the tunnel of trees — good morning! Noticed an orange water station set up at the top of lake street, above the rowing club. Chanted triple berries — strawberry/raspberry/blueberry. Someone running up the hill turn around in front of me and descended again — hill repeats? Some bikers bombed down the franklin hill, others crawled up it. No rowers. The surface of the river seemed to have an oily skin on it. No foam or waves. Two runners passed me, one of them talking about his sister’s upcoming wedding. Waved at a regular runner, the white-bearded Mr. Santa Claus. At the bottom of the hill, two men fished in the river. Did they catch anything?

image: an older man running in BRIGHT blue shorts and matching long socks. As blue as a cloudless sky.

For the first half of the run, I listened to the quiet. Walking up the hill, I put in some music: Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter” and then the movie soundtrack to “The Wiz.”

july 13/RUN

3 miles
neighborhood
80 degrees / dew point: 71

So hot and humid this morning! Decided to go for a run before the storm arrived. Ran around the neighborhood just in case it started pouring or thundering. It didn’t and still hasn’t even though the forecast said there was 100% chance. Strange weather this summer. So many expected storms not happening, so many unexpected storms happening.

Greeted Mr. Holiday, a regular — good morning! He replied, Morning! It’s so humid out here! I agreed. Noticed the street one block over closed for tree work then saw a very tall crane halfway down the street. No tree dangling from its claw yet. Heard water gushing at the ravine. Did it rain overnight? Felt relaxed and strong and not too warm at first. A little overheated later.

Earlier this morning, watched Courtney Dauwalter win the ultramarathon, Hardrock 100. She’s amazing. Also saw one of my favorite cyclists, Lotte Kopecky gain 2 more seconds in the Giro D’Italia. She’s only 1 second behind Longo Bourghini heading into tomorrow’s final stage!

wildlife update: It’s been a busy summer in our yard. Distraught sparrows, wild turkeys on the fence, dead bunnies, bats hiding in umbrellas, and now a big ass wasp nest perched on one of the highest branches of our crab apple tree. Yikes! RJP noticed it yesterday. Time to call in the experts!

I’m still reading Heidi Julavits, The Folded Clock. I love her sense of humor and enjoyed her thoughts on being afraid to swim alone because of sharks:

I am scared to swim alone not because I might drown but because I might be attacked by a shark. Mine is an unwarranted phobia (shared by basically every person in my generation, i.e., those of us who grew up with Jaws); companionship is an illogical cure. To date, there have been no shark attacks in our harbor. Should a shark, against all statistics, appear, a friend (unless he or she is swimming with a machine gun) will be unable to save me from it. But I feel safe in knowing—before I am pulled underwater to my death by an animal, I can share a final what the fuck? moment with a sympathetic human.

The Folded Clock / Heidi Julavits (247)

may 5/RUN

3.1 miles
turkey hollow loop
60 degrees

Late morning felt hot today. Bright sun, not much shade. The river road was closed off for the annual Walk MS charity event so I ran on the dirt/mud trail between it and edmund. Listened to my “I’m Shadowing You” playlist for the whole run:

(skipped Shadow Song/Screaming Trees, Shadows and Light/ Joni Mitchell)
Silver Shadow/ Atlantic Starr
Total Eclipse of the Heart/ Bonnie Tyler
Help Me Make It Through the Night/ Kris Kristofferson
Sunshine in the Shade/ The Fixx
The Shadow of Your Smile/ Astrud Gilberto
Evening/ The Moody Blues
White Room/ Cream

I wondered what a silver shadow might look like, then I wanted to see one. The silver outline of the sun behind the clouds? My shadow on the blue-white snow? I know — it’s Eamon Grennan’s birdsong in his poem, Lark-Luster:

. . . when summer happens, you’d almost see the long silver ribbons of song the bird braids as if binding lit air to earth that is all shadows, to keep us (as we walk our grounded passages down here) alive to what is over our heads—song and silence—and the lot of us leaning up: mind-defeated again, just harking to it.

Then I got distracted by mud and people and the sun and didn’t give close attention to the lyrics for the next three songs, only briefly registering that Bonnie Tyler was singing to someone whose love is like a shadow on her, keeping her in the dark; Kris Kristofferson was comparing someone’s hair “laying soft upon his skin” to the shadows on the wall; and The Fixx were declaring that they were the sunshine in the shade of life.

Off the grass, back on the road, I thought about Astrud Gilberto’s affection for the shadow of a smile — was the shadow cast by a very bright smile? Looking at the lyrics now, I understand the shadow to be the wonderful (but haunted?) memory of a love that didn’t last.

I am really digging The Moody Blues, “Evening.” That flute! Shadows on the ground/never make a sound/fading away in the sunset/Night has now become/Day for everyone

I thought about the white curtains in Marie Howe’s dark room instead of Cream’s black curtains in a white room. where the shadows run from themselves.

This is fun! I like thinking about silver shadows as birdsong, and shadows softly caressing the wall, and what it would be like to see shadows running from themselves.

Near the end of “Shadow of Your Smile,” I saw something ahead of me, in the middle of the road. A big black dog? No — it’s that menacing turkey again! The one I wrote about on april 30th and april 11th. Just standing there in the middle of the road, his feather fanned out. This time I didn’t turn around, but walked by him, at a safe distance. I also took a picture:

RJP has named this big turkey Jon.

Zooming in, I see a brave person on the sidewalk, nearing Jon.

Recounting the story to Scott when I returned home, I decided that I wanted to imagine this turkey as a friend, not an enemy — or a frenemy? I also began to believe that he’s trying to tell me something: write about ME! And I will. Well, I already wrote one poem:

Unsettled

by noise

I stop to
witness

a dark shape
draw near

too big for

a squirrel

too small for
a bear.

The moment
suspends

unresolved
until

the shape turns —
pale beak

red wattle
framed by

tail feathers.
This Tom

wants trouble.

What if this turkey is my shadow-self? Will he be around for my next run? I guess it’s the spring of the turkey — maybe the summer, too? I will add Jon — I might name him myself if he appear again — to my list of Regulars!

Inspired by another turkey sighting, and deciding that I will embrace these visits, here’s another amazing poem from Diane Seuss’s Sill Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl:

Still Life with Turkey/ Diane Seuss

The turkey’s strung up by one pronged foot,

the cord binding it just below the stiff trinity

of toes, each with its cold bent claw. My eyes

are in love with it as they are in love with all

dead things that cannot escape being looked at.

It is there to be seen if I want to see it, as my

father was there in his black casket and could not

elude your gaze. I was a child so they asked
if I wanted to see him. “Do you want to see him?”

someone asked. Was it my mother?
Grandmother? 
Some poor woman was stuck with the job. 

“He doesn’t look like himself,” whoever-it-was

added. “They did something strange with his mouth.”

As I write this, a large moth flutters against

the window. It presses its fat thorax to the glass.

“No,” I said, “I don’t want to see him.” I don’t recall

if I secretly wanted them to open the box for me

but thought that “no” was the correct response,

or if I believed I should want to see him but was

too afraid of what they’d done with his mouth.
I think I assumed that my seeing him would

make things worse for my mother, and she was all

I had. Now I can’t get enough of seeing, as if I’m paying

a sort of penance for not seeing then, and so

this turkey, hanged, its small, raw-looking head, 

which reminds me of the first fully naked man

I ever saw, when I was a candy striper

at a sort of nursing home, he was a war veteran,

young, burbling crazily, his face and body red
as something scalded. I didn’t want to see,

and yet I saw. But the turkey, I am in love with it, 

its saggy neck folds, the rippling, variegated

feathers, the crook of its unbound foot,

and the glorious wings, archangelic, spread

as if it could take flight, but down, 
down
ward, into the earth.

jan 26/RUN

2.1 miles
river road, north/dorman/loons coffee
37 degrees / humidity: 90%

Ran with Scott up the river road and over to a coffee place. The air was so thick with moisture, which made it harder to breathe. Otherwise a good run. We talked about The Muppet Movie, which we watched last night, and how it didn’t dumb down (or try to purify) the characters or their relationships. Then I rambled on for a few minutes about what a rich, messy character Miss Piggy was and how there was such a variety of representations of love within the movie.

10+ Things

  1. encountered and greeted a woman in a bright red jacket, almost the same color as Scott’s
  2. passed a woman in a blue jacket — she’s a Regular that I should name. I see her often. The thing I remember most is that she’s always wearing a long skirt or dress. In the winter, she also wears a ski jacket and tights, in the summer just the dress. I’m not sure what to call her — all dressed up?
  3. near the tunnel of trees the river is still white
  4. everyone else the river is open — a deep dark gray
  5. heard some cardinals, at least one black-capped chickadee
  6. the ghost bike — June’s bike — at the trestle was wreathed in dried flowers
  7. the ravine, between the 35th and 36th street parking lots had an open view and was only half covered in snow
  8. 4 stones stacked on the ancient boulder
  9. bright orange striped barrel blocking the way down the old stone steps
  10. a lone black glove, looking forlorn on the biking path
  11. a SUV honking unnecessarily and repeatedly at a pedestrian near Minnehaha Academy

Here’s a poem I don’t want to forget by Jane Hirshfield:

To Opinion: An Assay/ Jane Hirshfield

Many capacities have been thought to define the human— yet finches and wasps use tools; speech comes into this world in many forms. Perhaps it is you, Opinion.

Though I cannot know for certain,
I doubt the singing dolphins have opinions.

This thought of course, is you.

A mosquito’s estimation of her meal, however subtle,
is not an opinion. That’s my opinion, too.

To think about you is to step into
your arms? a thicket? pitfall?

When you come rising strongly in me, I feel myself grow separate
and more lonely.
Even when others share you, this is so.

Darwin said no fact or description that fails to support an argument can serve.

Myoe wrote: Bright, bright, bright, bright, the moon.

Last night there were whole minutes when you released me.
Ocean ocean ocean was the sound the sand made of the moonlit waves
breaking on it.

I felt no argument with any part of my life.

Not even with you, Opinion, who drifted in salt waters with the bullwhip kelp
and phosphorescent plankton,
nibbling my legs and ribcage to remind me where Others end and I begin.

Good joke, I agreed with you, companion Opinion.

sept 12/RUN

2.25 miles
dogwood run
61 degrees / 71% humidity

Cool. Wore my pink jacket this morning. Thick air. Fall is here. The Welcoming Oaks are starting to turn golden. Everywhere, the feeling of soft yellow. We ran north on the river road trail. I was on the outside and was nearly hit a few times by bikers speeding by without warning. Oh well. I’ll try to remember the kind bikers I encountered on Saturday and forget today’s jerks.

Saw one of my running regulars, Santa Claus! Also, as we ran through the tunnel of trees, I recounted to Scott the time I noticed some guy silently sitting in a tree. What was he doing? added an hour later: I just realized that this strange tree sitting happened on september 11, 2019. I can’t remember what we talked about, and I forgot to look down at the river.

10 Things

  1. several stacked stones on the ancient boulder
  2. the port-a-potty is back near the overlook
  3. slippery trail, a few squeaking leaves
  4. burnt toast or burnt coffee bean smell near the Lake Street bridge
  5. passing a fast walker on the inside near the trestle
  6. encountering a runner almost sprinting on the greenway
  7. a duet of chainsaws in the gorge below, probably cutting up the giant tree that we noticed on the ground last Sunday on our hike
  8. yellow vests at Brackett Park — park workers mowing the lawn?
  9. clashing colors: a pale green bench next to a pale blue church
  10. after finishing, walking to Dogwood, passing a welcome mat with thick stripes of black and white