Tag: Tony Hoagland

july 4/RUN

3.2 miles
trestle turn around
71 degrees / humidity: 78%
light rain

Raining all day today. After talking to FWA about how he likes to walk in the rain, I decided to run before the rain got heavy — thunderstorms are predicted in the late afternoon. I never mind running in the rain, but I’m usually reluctant to start in it. I’m glad I went for it today. What a beautiful green: deep, rich, fresh (but not refreshing!), comforting. The rain was light enough that I barely felt it — no soaked, clinging shirt of shorts (that happened a few weeks ago).

I’m not sure if it was raining all the time or it stopped sometimes or it was a combination of light rain with dripping trees. It was fun to run under and beside the trees when the rain-soaked leaves rustled. One time I misjudged how low a branch was and ran through it instead of under it — the cool water on my face was a surprise then a relief.

Under the lake street bridge somebody had parked a lime scooter in the middle of the walking path, forcing walkers/runners to veer out into the bike path. Dangerous — bikes bomb down the hill and cut close to the edge of the path without warning. Also, I can’t always see these scooters, or I can sort of see that they’re there, but can’t properly judge my distance from them. Hard to believe I haven’t already been impaled by the handlebars of one of these scooters (or bikes)!

I was not alone on the trail. Mostly walkers, many with umbrellas — no menacing blue umbrella guy who takes over the entire path and won’t budge an inch. Some runners, one talking on a bluetooth headset. No roller skiers. Any bikers? I can’t remember.

Bright car headlights. The whooshing of wheels through the puddles on the road.

In honor of a run in the rain (more fun to say than a rain-run, or is it?), I decided to look to my friend, Emily Dickinson, for a poem. She did not disappoint!

The Skies can’t keep their secret!/ Emily Dickinson

The Skies can’t keep their secret!

They tell it to the Hills –
The Hills just tell the Orchards –
And they—the Daffodils!



A Bird – by chance – that goes that way –
Soft overhears the whole – 

If I should bribe the little Bird – 

Who knows but she would tell?



I think I won’t – however – 

It’s finer – not to know –
If Summer were an Axiom –

What sorcery had snow?



So keep your secret – Father!
I would not – if I could – 

Know what the Sapphire Fellows, do,

In your new-fashioned world!

I found this poem on a favorite site, The Prowling Bee. I love how the blog author, Susan Kornfield, describes ED’s role as a poet:

 Dickinson again chooses the naturalist’s approach to the world rather than the academic’s or theologian’s. She observes in rich detail but is quite reluctant to draw conclusions. Better, to her, the wonder than to have the Latin names and dry scientific knowledge. I suppose this is a poet’s eye, looking at each event, each bit of the world that catches the eye, afresh. Those of us who name, categorize, and systemetize, inject at least one layer between us and the actual world. This preference for questions over answers is one reason why we love our poets!

the prowling Bee

This poem reminds me of Tony Hogland poem that I memorized as part of my 50 for 50: The Social Life of Water

All water is a part of other water.
Cloud talks to lake; mist
speaks quietly to creek.

Lake says something back to cloud,
and cloud listens.
No water is lonely water.

a few hours later: No thunder storms yet (at 2:40 pm), just a steady rain, a dark sky. I’m writing in this already finished post to add an article that I read on MPR News about Minneapolis Park Workers going on strike. The article offers some powerful descriptions of the difficult labor — physically, emotionally — that many park workers do.

Lane [a park worker] says he’s been with Minneapolis parks for more than a decade, arriving at 5 a.m. daily in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, during 2020 riots that followed the murder of George Floyd and regularly, when tasked to clean up homeless encampments.

It can be a grueling job, he said. He’s frequently cleaning up broken glass, needles and feces, ensuring the public spaces are safe to enjoy. On one of his most difficult days, Lane said he watched a woman die from an overdose. But like any other day on the job, he pushed on.

“Just to see the poverty was disheartening,” he said. “It touched me, man. I cried a few times just thinking about how people are living out here.

Hundreds of Minneapolis Park Workers Poised to Strike for a Week

Wow. I often notice and appreciate the park workers, but it’s usually related to tree-trimming or road patching. I don’t think enough about this other, less visible, labor. What a difficult task to clear out encampments, especially if you disagree with the decision that they need to be cleared out. Last month, while running with Scott, I recall pointing out all of the tents and tarps and stuff propped up near a trash can on the trail just above the gorge. I wasn’t sure why it was there, but now I imagine it was the aftermath from an encampment clear out by park workers.

june 20/RUNSWIM

4.1 miles
minnehaha falls
65 degrees

Overcast this morning. Cool, but humid, sticky. Another run that wasn’t easy or effortless. Keep showing up. It will get easier or you’ll get better or it will (eventually) get cooler. I’m not too worried. Is it the lexapro, or am I just satisfied being able to get outside and move by the gorge?

10 Things

  1. the crater with the tube sock/Florida outline is gone, filled in yesterday
  2. a gnat flew in my eye — a fullness, than a small sharpness, then a watery eye, finally gone!
  3. a motorized scooter on the bike path — hey, you’re supposed to be on the road! (thought, not said)
  4. today’s color palette; green and gray
  5. dark mud, not gooey but slick
  6. laughing kids on a playground
  7. the surreys, all lined up at the falls, one being readied for a family as I ran by
  8. rushing falls, roaring creek, gushing sewer pipe near 42nd
  9. some loud rustling in the bushes
  10. passing a walker, a whiff of subdued perfume — fresh, floral / passing a biker, a sniff of cologne — fresh, earthy

At some point, looking up at the green trees, remembering green water, I thought about Alice Oswald and the connection between water and grief. Then I recalled Tony Hoagland’s poem about swimming and cancer and thought about water and relief.

a few hours later: It’s raining — a soft, light rain — right now (2:30 pm). I’m hoping that open swim will still happen at 5:30. Tomorrow it probably won’t: thunderstorms all day. Anyway, I’m continuing to listen to and think about Alice Oswald’s “Interview with Water.” Very cool! Here’s the next little bit:

Find yourself in the silence underneath an overhanging wave that or thereabouts is the color of a bluish violet ultramarine gown so the great poet sang, “But Odysseus taking his bluish gown in his big hands drew it over his head and hid his face ashamed to let the Phaeacians see his tears.” The gown goes over the head like a wave, the human sits under its sea color with salt water pouring from his eyes. It is one of those places where the form of the poem hurries us forward, the form of the language pulls us back. Porfurion is a word with water inside it like a bucket down in the middle of a line. Already if you look hard at the word you can see the widow’s simile underneath it but Homer is not yet ready to make that gift. With magnificent theatricality, he draws a blue gown across the mind and we, like the Phaeacians, are left looking at it, waiting.

Homer is the foremost poet of the visible. Homer delights in surfaces, but the surface of water is complicated by transparency, and its transparency is complicated by refraction. Water is never the same as itself. Rivers can only exist as similarities, lakes reflect more than their own volume, and what’s more, when you look at water, it allows you to exist twice but more darkly. When you look at it again it evaporates as if moving in and out of existence — it simply requires a bit of sunlight then it reappears as frost. Perfectly symmetrical as if discovering pre-drawn diagrams in thin air. Then it reappears as tears so that any attempt to describe the surface of water tells you to hide your face and inspect your innermost thoughts. All these waverings are part of the word porfurion. The physics or nature of water is metaphysical meaning that its surface expresses more than itself.

Interview with Water

All of AO’s mention of surfaces makes me want to think about surfaces during my swim. I swim on the surface, wanting to stay with my head just below as long as possible. What does the surface look like or feel like when I’m breathing every five (or more) strokes? What if I tried every 2 or 3? What is the color of the surface — from above or below?

swim: 2 loops
lake nokomis open swim
68 degrees

Wow, what a perfect swimming night! The water was warmer than the air temperature. The sky was white and heavy. Everything calm, quiet. I felt fast and strong cutting through the water, breathing every 5 strokes with the occasional 3, at least once, after 2. I tried to give attention to the surface. Just under the water, I watched my hands stretch out in front of me, covered in bubbles. The water was a beautiful deep (but not dark) green, with the feeling of deep blue and gray. I could see the sediment swirling. Above the water, the surface was silver, still.


june 18/RUN

3.1 miles
trestle turn around
76 degrees / feels like 82
dew point: 71

Ugh! I knew it was going to be tough when I felt too hot even before I started running. More rain last night — enough to cancel our final community band concert — and more thick, sticky air this morning.

Greeted Mr. Morning! and Mr. Holiday. Saw Dave the Daily Walker but he was too far away to greet. Counted the stacked stones on the ancient boulder: 4. Heard some strange creaks below the trestle — what were people doing down there? Also heard the rowers on the river. Felt the sweat pooling on my face, my shorts sticking to my legs.

When the dew point temperature and air temperature are equal, the air is said to be saturated.

Observed Dew Point Temperature

Almost saturated — temp = 76, dew point = 71.

Looking through the trees somewhere near the trestle, I could see the river burning bright white — even the water looked hot!

Oh, this beautiful poem by Tony Hoagland! He died in 2018 (at the age of 64) from pancreatic cancer. My mom died from pancreatic cancer. It’s terrible. This poem was published in 2007.

Barton Springs/ Tony Hoagland

Oh life, how I loved your cold spring mornings
of putting my stuff in the green gym-bag
and crossing wet grass to the southeast gate
to push my crumpled dollar through the slot.

When I get my allotted case of cancer,
let me swim ten more times at Barton Springs,
in the outdoor pool at 6AM, in the cold water
with the geezers and the jocks.

With my head bald from radiation
and my chemotherapeutic weight loss
I will be sleek as a cheetah
—and I will not complain about life’s

pedestrian hypocrisies,
I will not consider death a contractual violation.
Let my cancer be the slow-growing kind
so I will have all the time I need

to backstroke over the rocks and little fishes,
looking upwards through my bronze-tinted goggles
into the vaults and rafters of the oaks,
as the crows exchange their morning gossip

in the pale mutations of early light.
It was worth death to see you through these optic nerves,
to feel breeze through the fur on my arms
to be chilled and stirred in your mortal martini.

In documents elsewhere I have already recorded
my complaints in some painstaking detail.
Now, because all things are joyful near water,
there just might be time to catch up on praise.