5.5 miles
franklin loop
29 degrees
puddles + a few icy spots
Early this morning, or late last night, it snowed/sleeted. Only a little, but enough to make me wonder if I should run in the basement instead of outside by the gorge. Decided it would be fine, and went outside. Excellent decision. It was wet, occasionally slick, and great conditions for a run — at least for my run. Overcast, not too cold, uncrowded.
The river is no longer white but a few different shades of gray. I thought it was completely open/iced out, but running across the franklin bridge, I noticed a thin skin of gray ice. In a few spots, where the skin had split, it was dark. Later, as I approached the lake street bridge from the east side, the water opened up. As I ran across the lake street bridge, I noticed little ripples in the water from the wind.
The sky was mostly white-ish gray with a hint of blue. This light/color really messes with my vision and lack of cone cells. Looking up, the sky was almost pixelated, or maybe it was more like static? Not total static, like when tv stations would end programming for the night, but static sprinkled into the image, making everything dance or bounce or just barely move. All of this movement is so slight that I wonder if I’m imagining it, or making too big of a deal out of it, or if this isn’t just the “normal” way that most people see.
the delight of the day
Running on the east side of the river, lost in thought, or the absence of thought, I suddenly heard a loud noise. It sounded like a turkey gobble. I stopped and looked behind me. On the other side of the road, maybe 25 yards back, there was a small group of very big turkeys chilling out on someone’s lawn. I stood still and watched them for a minute, delighted and grateful that the turkeys reminded me to notice them. I imagined what the gobbling turkey had been thinking as I passed by, oblivious to its awesomeness: “Oh hell no, girl! Notice me now!” And I did, and now my day has been made. So often, it’s the wild turkeys that get me through the tough times.
Wild turkeys are probably my favorite. I also like woodpeckers, black-capped chickadees, and geese. Crows are okay, so are cardinals. Today I heard all of these birds by the gorge — and more that I couldn’t identify. Because of my vision, and the fact that I’m in motion, I rarely see these birds. Instead, I hear them.
Some poetry people posted about a new tool that removes everything but the questions from a text. Here’s an article by the creator of the tool. Very cool. Hooray for questions!
Randomly opened up Arthur Sze’s collection, The Glass Constellation, to this beautiful, bewildering poem:
Unfolding Center/ Arthur Sze
1
Tea leaves in a black bowl:
green snail spring waiting to unfurl.
Nostrils flared, I inhale:
expectancy’s a seed—
we planted two rows
of sunflowers then drove to Colorado—
no one could alter the arrival
of the ambulance,
the bulged artery; I had never
seen one hundred crows
gathered at the river,
vultures circling overhead;
I saw no carcass, smelled no rot;
the angers radiating from him
like knives in sunlight; I sit
at a river branching off a river:
three vultures on cottonwood branches
track my movement;
surrounded by weeds, I cut
two large large sunflower heads off
six-footed stalks, Apache plume
blossoms near the gate; we wake
and embrace, embace and wake,
my fingers meshed
with your fingers. Nostrils flared,
I inhale: time, time
courses through the bowl of my hands.