5.25 miles
bottom of franklin hill and back
64 degrees / drizzle
Rain today. On and off. When I started, it wasn’t raining, but in the middle of my run, drizzle. It was hard to tell because I was sweating and wearing a baseball cap. A good run. I was overdressed, with my pink jacket on. When I got to the bottom of the Franklin hill, I took it off and wrapped it around my waist.
Running down the hill I chanted,
Here I go
down the hill
Here I go
down the hill
Here I go
down the hill
Watch me fly!
Listened to all the sounds in the gorge running north, a Bruno Mars Apple Essential playlist on the return trip south.
10 Things I Noticed
- a stinky sewer smell — not near the ravine, but down in the tunnel of trees
- a tower of stacked stones on the ancient boulder
- the coxswain instructing the rowers
- a rushing sound — either the wind through the leaves or water sprinkling out of the seeps and springs and sewer pipes
- so much goldenrod this year! golden yellow flowers everywhere. I wonder if that’s what’s causing Delia the dog’s itchiness?
- the leaves are starting to turn, mostly yellow, a few streaks of red
- park workers in their orange vests, their truck parked on the path — trimming trees?
- such an intense smell of pot as I ran by the lake street bridge porta potty
- the smell of cigarette smoke below the franklin st bridge
- I think the river was more brown than blue and it was gently moving
In the fall of 2018 (thanks past Sara for writing the date in the front of the book!), I bought Tanis Rideout’s book of poems, Arguments with the Lake. Working on my latest poem, about fighting with the lake, I decided to revisit it. Here’s one of the poems:
Shirley, Midlake/ Tanis Rideout
Hearts are bred to beat one billion times in an elephant
or in a mouse — mathematically simple difference of beats
per minute. Unlucky us with two billion more, slowed
by the hibernetic slumber of escape or blessedly sped by panic,
pain, a six a.m. jog around the block turning, always turning,
clockwise. By love, by sex. By want. So simple to be a fish.
I’m always giving it away. With each stroke, flutter, catch, kick
and the surging need to inhale, inhale, inhale, like I’ve never
taken a breath before.
The lake tries to soothe and slow, creeps cold into core, slips
into the sheltered bays of lungs, the hidden rivers around the heart.
It’s a fair exchange — beats per pleasure. For pain. Each of us is allotted
the strikes of the heart. I’m using mine, arguing with the Lake.