Author: Sara Puotinen

june 15/RUN

2.5 miles
austin, mn
60 degrees

written a few days later

Did a quick run in Austin with Scott that ended at The Coffee Place in downtown Austin, across from the SPAM museum. Ran past: the cemetery with Scott’s mom’s grave, the mill pond (I think it’s called the mill pond), the Plantar’s Peanut Mobile parked by a chain-link fence, I-90, and a lot of other things I can’t remember. It was smoky from wildfires in the Boundary Waters and cooler than I expected.

The things I remember most about this morning were not the run, but: the reconstituted eggs (yuck!) at the hotel breakfast buffet, watching bits of a few episodes of Living Single, and the phone call from the doctor telling Scott that his dad was being released from the hospital much earlier than expected. Instant decision: instead of going home, which was our plan, we drove over to Rochester and loaded up a car with a mattress and bed frame, then drove to Scott’s dad’s new assisted living apartment in the twin cities to drop it off. Then drove back to Rochester (60 miles) and loaded the car up again. Mayo Hospital had led us to believe he wouldn’t be released until the following week. I am not a fan of Mayo (and never have been) — they may be good at curing unusual diseases but they suck at caring for actual people. Boo to arrogant doctors. Boo to prioritizing fancy buildings over the needs of community members. Boo to insurance companies that pressure hospitals into releasing patients too soon.

Wordle Challenge

note: I didn’t have time to do the wordle challenge this morning, so these words are from the next day when I didn’t run.

4 tries: flash / waxes / apron / STRAP

a flash of white
the moon grows and shrinks
waxes and wanes
all in an instant
as an apron of clouds
travels across the sky
sometimes the clouds appear as soft cover
and sometimes they seem to conceal and subdue,
each thick layer of vapor a strap
securing the moon to the sky

note: I’d like to replace one of the skies with something else — I’ll think about it some more

revision, 18 june 2023


A flash of white
grows and shrinks
waxes and wanes
all in an instant
as an apron of dark clouds
travels across.

Sometimes the clouds offer soft cover
and sometimes they conceal and subdue
each thick layer of vapor a strap
securing the moon to the sky

june 14/RUN

3 miles
2 trails
67 degrees

Ran on the dirt trail between edmund and the river road heading south, then down to the winchell trail for the way back. A good run where I mostly ran slow with a few stretches of fast.

Listened to the water dripping, the cars gently whooshing, giant mowing machines whirring on the way south and for most of the winchell trail north. Put in Lizzo for the last mile.

9 Things I Noticed

  1. the water was blue when I had a clear view and a blinding, shining white through the gaps in the trees
  2. another friendly exchange and shift from I to You when I thanked a pedestrian for moving over for me: Thank you! You’re welcome!
  3. couldn’t hear the water dripping below 42nd because of the dizz dizz dizz of a giant machine up above
  4. the same almost fallen branches, leaning over the winchell trail
  5. rowers! never saw them, but heard the coxswain prepping them on what to do in a race
  6. lots of cars steadily and gently moving north on the river road
  7. birds birds birds — didn’t see them, only heard them
  8. wet dirt on the trail — was it dew or did it rain last night?
  9. lots of bikers and walkers — less runners, no roller skiers

wordle challenge

3 tries: plaid / write / crime

3 poems:

plaid: The Plaid/ Edna St. Vincent Milay
write: How to Write a Poem/ Laura Hershey
crime: Severed Head Floating Downriver/ Alice Oswald

june 13/SWIM!!!

1 mile / 2 loops
lake nokomis open swim
85 degrees

Open swim! Open swim! A perfect night for a swim. Warm, sunny, low wind. The water was smooth and I had no problem seeing the buoys. Hooray! I swam without stopping at the shore, which made the loop much shorter. I guess 6 loops = 3 miles this year.

wordle challenge

4 tries: fiend / grunt / plunk / clunk

a fiend
a grunt
a loud ker-plunk
the clunkity-clunk of feelings sunk

june 12/RUN

5.45 miles
franklin loop
61 degrees

Cool-ish this morning. Sunny, a little wind. Good running weather. If I had gone out when Scott did, at 7, it would have been great running weather. It was in the 50s then.

As I ran north towards the franklin bridge, I suddenly wondered, have I run the franklin loop since the snow melted, when I could run on the walking path? I didn’t think so. [I was right; I looked it up and my last franklin loop run was april 6th.]

Running over franklin bridge, the river was blue with flecks of silver that I could barely see from behind the railing. Not a single rowing shell. No big paddleboats either.

Running over the lake street bridge, I didn’t really look at the river. Instead I watched a worker in his orange and yellow vest standing by the railing. What was he doing? It took me a little time to put the scene together: the worker was standing at the railing on one side of the sidewalk. On the other side of the wall, parked on the road part of the bridge was a truck with an arm that reached above our heads and over the edge of the bridge. I assume someone was in the bucket below. My first thought: are they inspecting the bridge and is it about to collapse? As I got closer to the worker, the truck, and the arm, I saw another guy standing near the truck. He seemed to be letting the first guy know when it was clear (meaning, after I had passed by). Why write this tedious description? Partly to demonstrate how my vision works. I imagine a normally sighted person could take this entire scene in with one or two glances. I have to stare for 20 or 30 seconds at least, slowly putting together what I see. As best as I can remember, here was my thought process:

hmm….that guy up ahead has a bright orange and yellow safety vest on.

Does he work for the city, or is he some random walker being extra careful?

Is he taking a break, admiring the view, or doing something else?

He’s not peeing off the side, is he? No, of course not.

Oh, there’s an arm from a truck reaching over — they’re working on the bridge!

Can I run by, or do I need to turn around?

I’m sure many people have some of these thoughts, but if you can see “normally” they probably come all at once and are answered almost instantly. My thoughts come slowly and sometimes get stuck.

wordle challenge

3 tries: first/ drown/ wrong

the first time she almost drowned, she knew something was wrong.
First, drown the mushrooms in white wine. There’s no wrong way to do it.

When you first jump into very cold water
it might feel like you’re drowning.
A shock, a heaviness, panic. Something seems wrong.
It is.

at first, a burst
in a gown, you might drown
any song with a gong will be wrong

There was an old lady on first
whose cheesecake was always the worst
she’d bake it so long
that the texture was wrong
and all of the berries would burst

first burst worst rehearse reverse cursed
drown down frown renown found clown town crown
wrong song long bong gong along oblong elongate

There was an old lady on first
who always believed she was cursed
convinced she would drown
at the hands of a clown
she wandered the streets in a hearse

The lady on first was so cruel
she drowned all her cats in the pool
her heart, it was wrong
it sang a bad song
and tasted like boarding school gruel

Like yesterday, I could spend a lot more time with these words, trying to come up with something, but I’ll stop for now.

june 11/RUN

1 mile
edmund, south
54 degrees

A very short run with Scott. Didn’t really need to run to reach my weekly goal of 20 miles, but had to get out there to enjoy the cool, almost perfect conditions. Beautiful. At the start of the run I asked Scott about a story he had posted on facebook about a feud over a gravel road in rural northern Minnesota. It was fascinating and distracting. Did I notice anything as we ran? Not really. At the end of the mile we crossed over to the river road and walked down to the Winchell trail. The thing I remember most about the walk was the mulch — soft, soggy, ground up dead leaves — covering half the trail.

wordle challenge

3 tries: wrist/found/guard

The guard found a wrist bone buried in the courtyard of the hospital.

the twist of a wrist
a found sound
a guard in the yard

a wrist or a fist
a found pound
cards with the guards

a listless wrist
found near town
a disregarding guard

through mist, a wrist
found in the ground
a scarred guard

the wrist of a fish doesn’t exist
what’s found in a pound is of no great renown
the guard was a bard who only ate lard

cease and desist
safe and sound
hard to handle

This was fun! I could probably keep going for much longer, but I’ll stop now.

june 10/RUN

3.6 miles
marshall loop
70 degrees

Another run with sore legs. I ran all the way up the marshall hill without stopping to walk. Didn’t stop to walk until I got back to the bridge. Then I put in a playlist.

10 Things I Noticed

  1. 2 tiny dogs in a fenced-in yard a few blocks from my house barking tiny, yippy, delightful barks
  2. waveless water — no ripples or sparkles, flat and blue
  3. heading east: no rowers
  4. returning west: at least one rowing shell, far off to the south
  5. equal numbers of runners, bikers, and walkers (last week it was mostly bikers)
  6. the soft trickling of water at shadow falls
  7. voices below in the gorge, voices behind slowly approaching
  8. rounding a corner near minnehaha academy: a refreshing sprinkler/mister!
  9. at the top of the hill, near summit, a graduation party already in full swing at 8:45 am
  10. lots of birds making noise — can’t remember any one bird, just birds

No roller skiers or radios. No brightly colored running shirts (but several runners without a shirt). No honking geese or drumming woodpeckers or floating cottonwood fuzz or gnats.

Yesterday I forgot to mention that I saw someone on a unicycle! At first I thought the biker was just really tall. Nope, he was on a unicycle. Nice.

wordle challenge

5 tries — mouth/ready/blank/gnaws/again

empty, again

your mouth may be
ready but your mind
is blank. A hunger
for words gnaws at your throat.


june 8/RUN

5.85 miles
ford loop
70 degrees

A good run, but a hard run. Stopped at the overlook near ford bridge, almost 4 miles in to admire the river — blue and still. No rowers or waves or river boats. After my stop, I ran for a few minutes, walked for a few the rest of the way. By the end, my legs were sore — not like I had an injury, but like I should have drank more water or eaten more food before I left.

overheard

was this really what I heard/saw?

a walker talking to another walker: it was because she was so flat!
as she said the word flat she gestured with her hands like she was demonstrating a flat chest.

wordle challenge

june 7: 4 tries —

bread
orbit
grubs
crumb

The bread will be on the table
The moon will orbit the earth
The grubs will become beetles
The crumb will be carried away by the ant.

If bread is to butter
as orbit is to center
and grubs are to beetles
to whom does the crumb belong?

Each face in the street is a slice of bread (W.S. Merwin)
a previously undiscovered moon orbiting a planet (dear, beloved/ sumita chakraborty)
grubs without a voice (millennium, six songs/ marilyn chin)
the crumbs of shadow (Sylvia Plath), the crumbling of elemental rust (Emily Dickinson

june 8: 5 tries

reach
waist
pansy
salsa
balsa

To reach
my waist
the pansy
will need to grow
taller than this salsa bowl
made from balsa wood

as I reach the edge of the garden
my waist brushes against the tall grass
as a yellow pansy stares with its sad purple eyes.
Through the kitchen window, I see my sister cutting jalapenos for a salsa
my mom improvising popsicle sticks from leftover balsa wood

june 7/RUN

4.3 miles
minnehaha falls and back
68 degrees

A few degrees cooler this morning, but still warm.

I’m listening to a very (too?) long audio book right now and I’m trying to finish it before it’s due back at the library in 7 days — The Covenant of Water, 31 hours. I decided to listen to it for the first half of my run. Sometimes I like listening to audio books while I run, not so much today. My mind kept wandering and I had trouble paying attention to the story. Plus, because I had headphones on, I felt disconnected from the gorge and the trail.

Even in my distracted state I still managed to notice a few things:

10 Things I Noticed

  1. Mr. Walker Sitter was perched on his walker just above 42nd street ravine
  2. the falls roaring gushing rushing down the limestone
  3. more bikers than walkers or runners on the trail
  4. the surreys lined up, ready to take over the trails
  5. an older woman, biking, calling back to some other bikers, did I miss the turn-off? Oh, here it is!
  6. a sprinkler watering the flowers near the fountain which no longer works and the low limestone wall with “Song of Hiawatha” etched on its top
  7. the dirt trail leading into the small wood on the hill up to ford parkway, looking both inviting and buggy
  8. approaching a guy who had been running when I saw him far ahead of me, but now was walking. Right before I reached him, he started running again
  9. a big black something on the ground — an oversized glove? a hat? a knee brace? I couldn’t tell
  10. most of the dirt on the trail between edmund and the river road was tightly packed, but a few stretches where loose and sandy

Wordle Challenge

5 tries: tough/wheat/haste/hated/hater

Nap-Hater

Middle-aged, it’s tough to watch
wheat gently waving in the wind
without haste and not want to slow down yourself
but as a kid I hated anything slow —
snails, sermons, that quiet time right after lunch
when you were supposed to be still on your cot.
Wedged between other writhing bodies
all of us desperate to be done with this dark room
we felt the dripping of each second
and despised it.

Today’s Water: Water Sign :: Cancer

In comes and goes in waves, but today I’m not worried that I have cancer. This irrational and rational fear took hold of me a few years ago and it’s been hard to shake, especially as I witness family and friends struggle with and die from it. Yesterday I read about a friend’s ovarian cancer and the terrible life-extending drugs she has to keep taking post-chemo to prevent the cancer from coming back. They cost $24,000 a month. Her insurance covers it, but what if it didn’t? What would she do? Would my shitty insurance cover these costs, if I had cancer?

Ode to Money, or Patient Appealing Health Insurance for Denial of Coverage/ Katie Farris

I don’t know what money is. Moss? The mink’s crescent
teeth? Or maybe money is
the morning I woke
at dawn to wander
past the orange
blossoms, a smell with four
dimensions, touching me through
time. Is that

                    currency?

My uncle, Christopher Marlowe,
mad, drank the visions until he died.
You bury
treasure.

To determine a family’s net
value, make a list of assets, then subtract
liabilities. Asset: Geraldine Fox’s 1948 degree in
chemistry. Liability: William Marlowe’s propensity
for hurting his daughter. Am I doing this right? Is this

       the gold standard?

Asset: seeing light that isn’t there,
like a ship passing through the narrow harbors
of my eyes, scraping—
is burying treasure a cash
transaction?

I once buried a half-
decayed skunk I fished from my Uncle Christopher’s
garbage can, covered in bees. X marks the spot.

In sum: perhaps the moon’s an insurance adjuster.

America’s optimistic to dye its money
green. Leaves are green
because of chlorophyll, which is the machine
that turns sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide into leaf, stem, and root. All
the little blades of grass left behind by the lawn mower like Civil
War soldiers. Same as cash.

                      A heavy-bodied moth

caught between glass and screen casts its shadow down
into the palm of my hand: one dark coin.

I’ve been thinking about buying and reading Katie Farris’s collection about her breast cancer, Standing in the Forest of Being Alive, even before it came out in April. Maybe I should get it and read it this summer?