I actually agreed with something Coach DI said at practice this morning. That's rare enough that I thought I'd better make a note of it. He had us row in two eights today, one men's and one women's. I was initially disappointed not to row the four, but he told us he wants us to become more used to set boats, and that not rowing together was the reason we didn't win more races on Saturday. He wants the men and women each to have a steady eight thatcan be broken up into four fours, so we will practice in both configurations. Makes sense to me.
Then he topped off this unusual run of logic by letting practice go too long and getting everyone (else) to work late.
I keep thinking there are a couple of poems in me, about the events of September 11, and about rowing, and how smooth and easy it looks while all the time you're working furiously, and how much of life is like that. Like a duck swimming. But every time I try to put the ideas into words, nothing comes out, Or I get a few lines but then no more:
This morning my desert's cerulean sky
Was shrouded grey and sullen, a rare thing.
How long will it take before gray billows in the sky
Cease reminding me of smoke over twinned towers?
See what I mean? I think the problem is that both ideas are to big for me. If I have a strength at all, it may be lapidary detail, like the reflections in my namesake bits of glass.
Also, I've been reading bits of Wallace Stevens and Yeats, who seem to be the two modern poets who have the most influence on current writers, with Frost a close third. A humbling, if educational experience.