3.15 miles
marshall loop (short)
65 degrees
Ran a shorter version of the Marshall loop with Scott. We ran for 10 minutes, then walked for 1 minute, 3 times. I liked it as a way to keep everything more relaxed. My heart rate stayed lower too. No rowers on the river, no waffle smells coming out of Black. What else do I remember? Looked for the eagle perched on the dead tree below the lake street bridge. Nothing. Felt the soft salty sand on the edge of the sidewalk on the bridge. Got scratched by some dead branches poking out of a hedge.
Wound is the Origin of Wonder/ Maya C. Popa
A cross-breeze between this life
and the imagined one.
I am stuck in an almost life,
in an almost time. If I could say,
but I cannot, and so on. Sunlight
dizzies through the barren trees,
the skyline, a blue fog against
a yellow light, and on the highway
every Westward car blinds me.
Every surface reflects
that quiet understanding: decisions
have been made, irreversible decisions
to upend beauty for something
approximate—the airport hotel,
its Eiffel Tower on the roof,
a playground near the public storage.
Beyond, bridges like monuments
to fracture, and a sign for Pain Law:
not metaphor, but litigation.
Who would not, given acreage
in another’s mind, lie there
for a while to watch the sky be sky?
I was drawn to this poem because of its discussion of the almost. I need to spend more time with it to understand, but I feel like Popa thinks of the almost life as a negative, as preventing access to the real (sky as sky). I think of the almost in more positive ways.
Also: Beyond, bridges like monuments
to fracture, and a sign for Pain Law:
not metaphor, but litigation.
What does that mean — not metaphor, but litigation?