Category: Journal

The RunHaiku project, ie: daily running poems, is currently wintering. I will continue posting occasional poems, while also working on other projects involving other words and pictures. Head over to brentmanke.com to continue following along.

On Thursday evening, Aug 4, 2022, a few of us took on the Peace Trail, a 48km proposed trail linking The Mennonite Landing on the Red River near Niverville, MB, via Tourond Creek and Blind Creek, to the Mennonite Heritage Village in Steinbach.

Here is an 8-page zine in haibun format documenting the adventure.

After the performance, another student who went on to a career as a professional opera singer in Vienna came up to me and said, Linford, what was that? It was like the whole room changed. Did you feel it? I could feel the music on my skin.

I wasn’t sure what to do with that feedback at the time, but I thanked him. And yes, I have come to believe that when you put certain musicians together there can be a chemistry — a sort of chemical reaction — that people can feel on their skin. Music can make the body begin to change in real time.

Linford Detweiler, Over the Rhine #

I heard it on my skin, the time you began to play your piano, head down, nobody but a crowd milling about the room. My friend turned, his tingling skin lighting up his eyes with water. Where did the music come from, a well so deep we could feel it in our toes and rising.

A quiet pool
Reflection of
Music on the skin

Every two hours. Up at the smallest whimper indicating unrest. Slipping into a hoodie and crocs to watch in the dark a dog the colour of night relieving her discomfort.

I watch the stars in their orbit. At 2am orion is rising in the southeast, 4am he’s shifted his weight to the south.

But then, out of the corner of my sleep-ridden eyelids, a dancing light. In the north. The aurora, ever elusive, appearing only when most soundly sleep, appearing from behind the neighbour’s willows, dancing up and across the sky.

Quickly rapping the bedroom window, I wake my sleeping wife to the spectacle. Even as the pup pads through the darkness around our feet, we watch, breathless, the dancing lights.

On Sunday morning, July 3, 2022, I visited each of the 22 “pocket Park” in Steinbach, MB. I wrote a poem at each, and recorded them in a pocket notebook.

Most of Steinbach’s pocket parks have been generously donated by families in memory of loved ones, including many founding pioneers of the city.

In preparation for the project, I made a 24-page notebook to record the poems. I also printed a map provided by the City of Steinbach (more below). What I failed to consult was the weather, which would make things interesting. I didn’t have a specific theme in mind, trying to see what I could see, experiencing the town from a different perspective.

A beautiful sunrise created me at the first park at 6:o6AM, at Giesbrecht and Hwy 52. As I moved east and south, roughly down Main St, checking off parks on my map, the clouds grew darker. By 7:10AM it had started raining. The park closest the post office had no coverage, so I moved quickly, and missed the plaque entirely, which stood on the other side of the bushes from the bench where I’d stopped. The next park between Earl’s and RBC offered plenty of tree cover, but curiously no plaque. I took my time to try to let the rain pass.

After moving quickly through the more “urban” pocket parks on Main, I noted the peaceful change in conditions at the Kroeker (& Elmdale) park. The KR Barkman park, equally peaceful, turned out to be more than a pocket park, but maybe held a place on my map because of the historic plaque.

From there I ran my furthest jaunt over to the Meadows, with a park commemorating a young person, and finished at the pocket park within a larger park at LA Barkman park (Abe’s Hill).

Over the entire route I covered 9.08km and wrote 22 poems over a total time of 2:29.

The City of Steinbach provided this map, which I followed for my route. This resource details many as well, and includes the newest pocket park (on the path nearest Grandview Dr), which was likely not included in the map I followed because the plague has not yet been installed. I ran past this one, but did not stop. Next time.

Drinking coffee from a
baby food jar which held
washing detergent, which
was poured into a clear
bag, which held clothes pins, which
now lie scattered at the
bottom of my camp bin.

This is the kind of
innovation it takes to
camp luxuriously.

This old mokka pot is
out of brewing practice
and I didn’t bring cream.

I lift the steaming jar
up to my nervous lips
anticipating the
black and burning liquid.
This camping chair, melting
snow dripping from the roof
The wind blows through the pines.

And behold, it tastes good.

To Know the Dark is a poem by Wendell Berry.