Güd wrtr

Fill in the blank:
• cat (especially about my big guy)
• flowers/tomatoes/Jan’s yard
• tree
• butterfly
• companion spirit(s)

But you get them anyway
because they show up, fly in,
even at the end of a season

of fullness, so much plenty
that I blush as its recipient
(for me?!).

“Yes,” the universe/God/
divine spirit / great whatsit
nudges. “For you who share

but also partake,” as I watch
what surely must be the final
two dozen green tomatoes

on Juliet the magnificent
ripening under October sun.
“Still here!” they beam

each time I go to water them,
like the kitty I didn’t ask for
but adore, like the butterflies

that flutter my mother by,
always, the companion spirits
hovering, if not speaking,

their quiet presence
the greatest present of all.

(for Dick Schmidt)

More than any other on the calendar,
this might be your favorite holiday,
now that I think of it,

so me and the girls salute you
by removing the booby trap,
the over-the-shoulder-boulder-holder,

the flopper stopper, the melon harness,
the hooter hammock, the cleavage commando,
the double-barrel slingshot,

because although I sometimes
take the girls for granted,
you never have, bless you.

Running vertically, splitting the night sky,
the dark seam of interstellar clouds

entwines the magic of the Milky Way,
the inky river meeting the smidgen

of galaxy our eyes can perceive.
Not a division or a disagreement

amping into argument or war,
it’s a nursery for new stars and planets,

engines of elemental creation woven
from dusty cocoons of our galactic core

that I long to lasso and drag onto
my planet of tumult and disarray.

To peer through the windows behind
which the newborns lie, swaddled, sleeping,

and say, “Aren’t they adorable?” Then look
at each other with those generous eyes

and say, believing every word,
“Just like you.”

“Live in the layers,
not on the litter.”
—Stanley Kunitz, from “The Layers”

•••

Walking the labyrinth
a week after you lead a walk there,
you do not have to go far before
you find a small stone heart.

You leave them for the walkers,
tossing them across the labyrinth
like confetti, a reminder that there
are gifts on the path, to pick them up
when they appear, perhaps taking
one or more along for the journey.

And without trying, you find one heart,
then another and another. You bend,
pick up each bit of love, set it on the brick
outlining the circular path,
and keep going.

It is not lost on you that you left
the love behind. But did you really?
Isn’t it always there on every path,
in every step, replenished in
every moment?

Our job is to confetti it around,
the labyrinth now sprinkled by
layers of leaves that some might
perceive as litter.

But you, who strive to live in the layers,
scuff through them now, thank them
for their shady lives, for the cool
comfort given by the ones
still over you, the ones that
have not yet let go.

Begins with eyeblinks and uncovering, with sitting, perhaps with dislodging the dog/cat/loved one sleeping close. It begins with rising, the first moment of being vertical, for some of us with the first blush of sun, for others, if we are fortunate, into brightness through a window. For some of us, perhaps we startle awake on a park bench or sidewalk, with footsteps and a glare of passers-by, a blare of horn.

Every day the journey begins anew, no matter how difficult the night or the day before. Yours nothing like mine—you going for coffee, me for tea. You heading to an office—me stepping outside to salute the sun, even when it hides. You nudging children awake, getting them ready for school, or freshening the diaper, or fetching spoons and cereal, tugging shoes onto small feet, then getting yourself out the door into the grownup world.

Me and others like me grateful that our office days are behind us, that our time is mostly our own, filling it in ways we could not when we were younger. Or not filling the days at all, depending on our capabilities, our need for assistance. Remembering that our journeys are not yet done and finding ways to share what we have and who we are.

Every day the journey reminds us that no matter who and what we are, I rely on you as you rely on me—guests on this planet—to walk through life companionably, to hold the door, to say thank you, to water the plants, stop at the red signs, and to pick up the bit of trash rather than step over it. To listen more than we speak and to sing more often. To open the hinges of our hearts and let in some light, as well as emanate some of our own.

To let you be you and me be me, but with a smile, a handshake, perhaps a hug, acknowledge the in-it-togetherness of these journeys that nudge up next to each other—not against. To remember that this moment might be the last with the person before us now.

We cannot say thankyouthankyouthankyou enough.

We just can’t.

(for Dickie)

It was an offhand, off-the-top,
unthought-out remark decades ago,
dashed off as we zoomed

toward our destination,
the oldest, still-standing hotel
in the national park,

him driving roads he knew well,
me riding shotgun. We had
to meet someone or check in

at a specific time or… neither
of us remembers the particulars.
But out of my mouth came:

“We’ll either get there or Wawona.”

And out of his mouth came one
of his loudest guffaws,
as I realized that I’d delivered

a pretty good pun to a master punster.
He’s never forgotten it, considers it
one of my best lines,

which pleases me mightily,
he being my best and favorite
audience, one who is always

quick to applaud my efforts,
even the unthinking ones
that result, he’ll tell you

(and bless him for his bias),
in pure poetry.

Someone told me that during evolution
fish scales turned into bird feathers,

which perhaps explains why birds
emerge wet from their shells,

pecking their way out of water
to breathe, and eventually fly,

in mere air. Though we are not
born with feathers, humans, too,

come into the world wet, and,
breathing, with luck and time, fly—

at least metaphorically, if not
in planes—given wings for

the journey, which, though we
cannot see them, I like to think

unfurl at our endings, when we
shake them out as butterflies do,

perhaps feeling the lift before
the newborns rise, having no idea

where they’re going, creatures
of the air, not needing to know.

•••

With thanks to Molly Fisk for the prompt
that became the first stanza.

For the second concert of the semester
I pull the red mallets out of their plastic sleeve,
hard, round balls that can strike a note

on the orchestra bells like clear,
shining silver. Which puts a little pressure
on the bells player to get it right.

With my goal of hitting two-thirds
of the notes correctly two-thirds of the time,
the red mallets feel like a bold move.

But oddly, nowadays, the pre-concert
jitters that used to consume me decades ago
have vanished like my blonde hair,

and I am oddly calm, practicing,
as I now do, several times a day
for 15 whole minutes—unlike

much-younger me who’d practice
for hours, long past the point
of accomplishment. Because,

I thought, that’s what you did
to become proficient. Now I settle
for reasonably competent because

the great joy is not just standing
at the back of the band playing
my part to perfection,

but being part of the larger ensemble,
letting the notes played by others
wash over me like, well, music,

hearing the booms and snares
of my fellow percussionists, all
almost young enough to be

my grandchildren, and catching
the director’s cue as she signals
three held notes just before

the end of the piece, when (whew!)
I nail the sixteenth-note run, grinning
all the way to the final ringing E-flat.

The story goes that when Rose’s
Great Aunt Emily and family immigrated

from Italy, Emily (who was considered
“wild” in her youth) got a tattoo

on her arm proclaiming “America.”
Emily’s niece Alma inherited the sax

and kept it, thinking that her daughter
Rose might want to play it. She did not.

But after Alma died, the sax came to Rose
anyway. “Can you find a home for this?”

she asked. I have re-homed more than
a few cats and dogs in my time, and

occasionally an instrument or two.
I knelt on the floor and gently opened

the 102-year-old Conn case to reveal
a surprisingly vivid purple lining

the strength of a full-spectrum rainbow
cradling the antique instrument,

tucked into its sarcophagus like a mummy.
Rose and I marveled at the mother-of-pearl

keys on the tarnished horn, its patina
and thin leather neck strap providing

antique evidence that it had once been
held by younger hands, likely in the Jazz Age,

played with fresh reeds and carefully
placed embouchure. “Sure,” I said.

“My mother would like that,” Rose said.
“She always hoped someone might play it.”

And when that gorgeous horn finds its way
to the right person, I’ll make sure they

hear the story about Great Aunt Emily
and her tattoo, who I envision blowing

a wicked jazz tune on her 1924 saxophone
that, with luck and a bit of clean-up,

will once again make beautiful music.

•••

Thanks to Rose Varesio for donating her
Great-Aunt Emily’s lovely Conn saxophone
to the next generation of music students.

•••

If you’re in the Sacramento area and have older
band instruments you’d like to donate, I know young
band directors who’d be happy to give the instruments
good homes!

What do you remember about that day,
forty-two years ago, when you faced each other

and promised what you could not possibly
know to promise? And yet you kept those

promises and added to them, pebble by pebble,
along the path of what became your together,

little birdies following, a trail you still follow
with new little birdies skipping and leaping,

falling and one day flying. Because you held
them and lifted them to the sky, where

they could see where they might go, you,
among their beloveds, who gave them wings.

•••

For Donna and Eric Just on the 42nd anniversary
of their wedding.