tonic

This evening I listened to Mary Oliver's interview from the On Being podcast while I made a batch of my breakfast "bread" (a.k.a. almond honey cake/bread thing that is hard to classify but is amazing with coffee). What an incredible person she is. I've started about 5 sentences and trashed them all because I can't capture the way the podcast made me feel. The closest I can get is that feeling I associate with the resolving note of a song, the tonic or "home note," as it's often referred to. It's the one that feels round and whole and like you've finally collapsed into your chair after an exhausting run up and down the stairs. She made so many seemingly simple but incredibly powerful observations. Knowing very little about her other than the weight of her name, I'm excited to learn that the natural world plays such a major role in Oliver's work. A quick google search reveals that me not knowing about her naturalism is sort of like not knowing that Oprah had a talk show. Oh well, at least I'm here now. And here are today's not-very-related haikus about running on a day when it feels harder than I want it to:

I imagine each
person having their best run
to get through my own

//

the cascade of leaves
glinted in the sun as I
hoped for it to end*

*more about this conflict in a future post

picture: a rangy tree at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, May 2012 (?), film, Canon Tlb