5.5 miles
ford loop
48 degrees
Today, it feels like fall. Wore my running tights under my shorts.
My right knee is a bit sore. It didn’t hurt while I was running, just after, when I was walking. Now, as I write this, I’m icing it.
Windy. Hissing trees. Running across the ford bridge, the wind was blowing off of the river, making my ponytail and pink jacket flap furiously. The water had strange streaks on it — how was the wind making that happen?
Noticed some crows and lots of construction everywhere. They’re redoing all the sidewalks in the neighborhood. Heard some woodpeckers, drumming on trees. Heard a jackhammer across the river and thought about how it sounded like the woodpeckers. Greeted Mr. Walker and Mr. Morning! Overheard some women say something about listening to a podcast.
leaf watch, 2022
A few bright red trees, some yellow. Still well below peak.
Anything else? Heard the St. Thomas bells chime 10 times. Noticed my shadow above shadow falls. Enjoyed the sensation of running over the dirt — the shshsh sound and the soft slide of my feet as the lifted off the gritty ground.
Here are two poems I recently found on twitter, one about love, the other beauty:
I’ve Been Thinking about Love Again/ Vievee Francis
Those who live to have it and
those who live to give it.
Of course there are those for whom both are true,
but never in the same measure.
Those who have it to give are
like cardinals in the snow. So easy
and beautifully lit. Some
are rabbits. Hard to see
except for those who would prey upon them:
all that softness and quaking and blood.
Those who want it
cannot be satisfied. Eagle-eyed and such talons,
any furred thing will do. So easy
to rip out a heart when it is throbbing so hard.
I wander out into the winter.
I know what I am.
A page from Frank: Sonnets/ Diane Seuss
Sometimes I can’t feel it, what some call
beauty. I can see it, I swear, the conifers
and fat bees, ferns like church fans and then
the sea, its flatness as if pressed by stones
like witches were, the dark sand ridged
by tides, strewn with body parts, claws,
the stranded mesoglea of the moon jellyfish,
transparent blob, brainless, enlightened in its clarity.
I stand there, I walk the shore at low tide, the sky
fearless, not open to me, just open, there it is,
the wind, cold, surf’s boom drowning out
thought, I can photograph it, I can name it
beautiful, but feel it, I don’t know that I am
feeling it, when I drown in it, maybe then.
note: more info on mesoglea and the moon jellyfish