4.5 miles
minnehaha falls and back
35 degrees
5% ice / 25% big, sloppy puddles
No big snow storm here in Minneapolis, just lots of sloppy, wet trails. Wore an old pair of shoes and got them soaked in minutes. A little bit slippery, but not too bad. Lots of wind, but never in my face. It almost knocked me over, coming in from the side. The falls were rushing and gushing. When I stopped at my favorite spot to admire them, I could see the water pouring off the limestone ledge. Heard the kids on the playground at the school. Lots of laughter, one ear piercing scream. The river was a brownish-gray and open. I nervously eyed a squirrel on the path, wondering if it would double-back and trip me (it didn’t).
a ridiculous performance
Haven’t posted one of these in a while. Near the start of my run, as I ran above the oak savanna, a walker ahead of me started singing loudly (and not very well). Why? Not sure. What was she singing? I couldn’t tell.
Encountered this poem on poetsorg’s Instagram account yesterday:
Dead Stars/ Ada Limón
Out here, there’s a bowing even the trees are doing.
Winter’s icy hand at the back of all of us.
Black bark, slick yellow leaves, a kind of stillness that feels
so mute it’s almost in another year.
I am a hearth of spiders these days: a nest of trying.
We point out the stars that make Orion as we take out
the trash, the rolling containers a song of suburban thunder.
It’s almost romantic as we adjust the waxy blue
recycling bin until you say, Man, we should really learn
some new constellations.
And it’s true. We keep forgetting about Antlia, Centaurus,
Draco, Lacerta, Hydra, Lyra, Lynx.
But mostly we’re forgetting we’re dead stars too, my mouth is full
of dust and I wish to reclaim the rising—
to lean in the spotlight of streetlight with you, toward
what’s larger within us, toward how we were born.
Look, we are not unspectacular things.
We’ve come this far, survived this much. What
would happen if we decided to survive more? To love harder?
What if we stood up with our synapses and flesh and said, No.
No, to the rising tides.
Stood for the many mute mouths of the sea, of the land?
What would happen if we used our bodies to bargain
for the safety of others, for earth,
if we declared a clean night, if we stopped being terrified,
if we launched our demands into the sky, made ourselves so big
people could point to us with the arrows they make in their minds,
rolling their trash bins out, after all of this is over?