nov 8, 2021 / 6 miles / 50 degrees
Often in November, after the leaves have fallen from the trees and I can see the river again, I think about veils and views and why seeing to the other side matters so much to me. Here’s one explanation, along with an image I like to see at this time of year: a car parked on the other side of the gorge, seen through the trees, shining in the sun:
One of the reasons I love late fall, after the leaves have fallen and before the snow comes, is because it is when I have the best view of the river, the gorge, the other side. The veil of leaves and excessive greenery has temporarily lifted. For a few years, I’ve been trying to understand why I like it so much, especially when it seems to be a time of sadness and loss and dread for so many other people. I think this lifting of the veil is a useful way for me to think about it: a better view, more space, a chance to breathe and stretch and connect with things usually hidden, covered, concealed. I like the idea of lifting much better than renting/rending. This lifting is not violent or destructive.
One (boring?) thing I’ve been noticing that I never see when the trees are choked with leaves: cars parked at parking lots on the other side of the river. Today I noticed a white car, glimmering in the sunlight, positioned amongst a line of bare tree trunks. Why do I find this interesting? Maybe because it helps to orient me in relation to the other side or because it’s evidence that more than trees are over there (usually a view of the other side seems the same: tree after tree after tree, and nothing else).
nov 8, 2022 / swim
On November 8, 2022, I posted a draft of a poem that was later streamlined and reshaped and will be published in a journal next month. I like my discussion of the eraser smudge as face and would like to return to this in another poem, or as a beginning to the soon-to-be published poem:
the motions of the dipping birds/ sara lynne puotinen
My daughter sits on a couch near the window and tells me a story.
I listen to her words, watch her small hands rise and fall,
dart and flick, sweep the air. Each shift in movement
the difference between excitement anger exasperation disdain.
When I look up, the space where a face should be is not
a face but a smudge, as if someone took a dried out eraser
from the end of an old pencil and tried to remove the lines
but failed. Each attempt has darkened the page until
what remains is a mess of almosts — a space almost filled,
lines almost legible, a face almost there. My eyes move
to her shoulder to find her features in my periphery.
I look again at her center and almost see an eye, a nose, her mouth.
My gaze returns to her hands. I listen to her words
and marvel at the soft feathers of her fingers.