(Story and illustrations by Janis Haag, age 7)
•••
This treasure was stored in a box in the rafters of my parents’ garage—along with many other writings by a budding author—recently found by my sister and brother-in-law clearing that area.
There were more stories in the box from this young author (soon to celebrate her 68th birthday), some of which you may see here in the coming weeks.
Light will move
through broken places
soften the edges
of empty spaces
—Julie Flanders
•••
Ma, I’m glad you’re not here to see
your baby car partially unclothed,
its innards exposed in a fenced
parking lot on a city alley.
It was, I thought, a small boo-boo,
but the car body gods have
deemed it a total loss, though
it doesn’t seem so to me.
We’re never a total loss, are we?
Confessing this into the air feels
like I’ve failed you, who gave me
your baby car when you could no
longer see well enough to drive it,
though you insisted otherwise.
“I can see the light,” you said
again and again, and we believed you,
we did, but from then on we drove
you places, me chauffeuring Mondays,
Donna on Thursdays, with drivers
you hired for other days. How odd
that I boo-boo’d the car, not you,
who drove tipsy more times than
we could count, though you always
insisted that you were “just fine.”
“Apparently you were,” I murmur
through blurry eyes, as I remove
what is mine from the baby car,
which I still think of as yours.
And in the rental, driving home,
what should pop up in the shuffle
of music magically beaming from
my phone through car speakers
but a song about light—
you who signed cards
Love and Light,
Mom—
There it is, moving through
the broken places, reassuring
your baby girl with a shh-shh,
softening edges of empty spaces,
“a moment embracing what time
is erasing, the light.”
•••
Quoted lyrics from “Light,”
a song from “The Book of Rounds” by October Project
Words: Julie Flanders / Music: Emil Adler
Listen, there’s no reason at all. Ask anyone.
No one reads poetry. Who can understand it?
And rich. Ha! Likely won’t earn you a dime.
You’re writing for an audience of one: You.
Which turns out is exactly what’s meant to be.
The writing. Not the publishing or wished-for
admiration. The soul work of writing enlarges you,
lasers in the ordinary to see it as extra- ,
might flash that light in someone else’s direction
who might think, “Huh. I never thought of that.”
But you’ll likely never know that it resonated
in them, not like a sonorous church bell,
but softly, like breeze tickling slender wind chimes.
Which, if you’re lucky, is how it will echo in you.
•••
After Joy Sullivan’s “Why read poetry if it won’t make you rich?”
which I highly recommend from her terrific collection,
“Directions for Traveling West” © 2024, Penguin Random House
•••
Thanks to poet Julia Fehrenbacher for the prompt! Her
latest lovely collection, “This, Too: Words to Walk You Home,”
is available, signed by the poet, on etsy.com.
Sundae, July 19, 2026
Another reason to love July,
though I don’t need one, given
that it’s my favorite month,
the one I looked forward to all year—
summer vacation, no school,
pool time, water skiing on the lake
in the state park next door,
my birthday. What more could
a kid want?
Ice cream! (You scream, etc.)
And so, I learn, decades after I
inherited the family inclination
toward ice cream, that we celebrate
today, on Sundae. Though some of us
do so every day. Not every one?
It’s the best conversation opener
(far better than, “How old are you?”
or “What do you do in the world?”):
What’s your favorite ice cream?
I’ll make a list. One by one,
let’s try them all.
•••
Thanks to the Malekian/Thompson/Gonzalez/Swenson/Schmidt
group for a fun outing on National Ice Cream Day Eve at
Leatherby’s in Elk Grove, California.
Really, I just wanted flowers, but as I
cruised the nursery—my antenna picking
up not-so-subtle messages from my
long-gone, veggie-growing husband—
I felt compelled to adopt one small tomato
plant and a leafy, wanna-be cucumber,
neither showing signs of food to come.
“What do I need to grow these well?”
I asked an aproned woman watering
a vast table of future veggies, she with
enough dirt under her nails to qualify
as an expert in my book.
She squinted at me. “Cage for tomato,”
she said, aiming the hose in their
direction. “Marigold for cucumber.”
“Marigolds?” For color contrast?
Bright orange to set off the greens?
“For bug,” she said, setting down
the hose and beckoning me to
the long table where flat after flat
of the ’golds little heads popped up,
goldening.
Bad bugs? I wondered. Good bugs?
Turns out it’s both, I later learned,
their scent deterring pests and
sending come-hither messages to
pollinators.
Weeks ago I plunked cukes and ’golds
near each other in the bed next
to the garage with, I hoped, enough
compost and kind words to encourage
the youngsters.
Ever since, the cuke leaves have grown
and grown, sporting cute little yellow
flowers that the bees seem to like,
but nothing resembling a vegetable.
Day after day, hose in hand, I tuned
into the buzzing transmissions:
Keep watering, Toots. You never know.
Today I peeked under the swath of green
umbrellas prettily arrayed on the ground,
where, I swear, practically overnight,
a trio of cukes has magically appeared,
fattening like well-fed calves,
the companion ’golds apparently having
done their job well, the silent bodyguards
beaming their bright selves like lighthouses
over the soil, encouraging the ones
in their care that all they need to do
is what they were born to do:
Grow, grow, grow.
After lunch with a friend,
walking home solo on what promises
to be a 100-degree day, you pause under
a Chinese pistache shading the sidewalk
and look up.
Under the sign restricting parking
towers a bit of all-caps encouragement:
BEGIN
It does not matter what needs to be started,
but clearly, something does.
As you move slowly back into the afternoon
of your life, stop here and there to watch
a bee, low to the ground, searching,
whether for pollen or water you can’t tell,
as the beacon resonates through
your buzzing brain:
You begin anew every moment,
with every footfall.
No matter how mobile,
no matter how limited,
one foot, then the other,
even if you hobble, even
if you cannot walk at all.
you begin again and again and again,
and so reminded,
you do.
Yeah, you two!
I don’t care if he’s your brother—
you can’t shove him into the pool.
No, you can’t shove anyone
into the pool.
No, you can’t dunk him and
hold him under either.
I don’t care that he ate your
cookie.
No, you can’t blow my whistle.
Because it’s a lifeguard whistle,
and you’re not the lifeguard.
Yeah, you can wear my hat.
For a minute. I need it back.
To keep me from getting
sunburned.
Yes, I see your sunburn.
It’s a doozy.
Yes, yours is a doozy, too.
What are your names?
And you’re how old?
I’m 18. Yes, I coach one
of the swim teams.
You want to be on the swim team?
Well, let me watch you swim.
Yes, your brother, too.
Can you put your face in the water?
Blow bubbles? Turn your head
to the side and breathe?
Yeah, like that. Good.
Nice handstands.
No, we don’t do handstands
on the swim team. But it’s
great that you can do them.
Let’s see how fast you can swim.
Sure, I’ll blow my whistle.
Ready? On your mark,
get set, go!
•••
Thanks to photographer/poet Genaro Molina of the Los Angeles Times
for the inspiration and his excellent photo.
Dick Schmidt
(guest poet)
It’s always the right temperature
when you want to take a nap.
(In honor of Brother David Steindel-Rast’s 100th birthday)
To swim, you must trust,
said a wise man who has
now achieved 100 years
on the planet.
“You can learn as much as
you want about swimming
from books,” he said. “You
can stand in the water
and move your arms.
But unless you really let
yourself down into it,
you’ll never swim.”
You don’t trust the water,
which will hold you, if
you allow it; you must
trust yourself, he says,
a bigger challenge.
Learning to swim then,
means learning to trust
the unknowable,
the unseeable,
what some call God,
as well as the physics
of bodies in water.
If we allow ourselves
to relax and float—
a lesson we practice again
and again—we build
trust in our fragile,
undependable, often
get-it-wrong selves,
coming to see that we,
quirky and oddly made,
truly are our own best
gifts.
•••
Brother David Steindel-Rast is an author, scholar
and Benedictine monk, known throughout the world
for his philosophy that gratefulness is the true source
of lasting happiness.
Widely considered the “grandfather of gratitude,”
Br. David has been a source of inspiration and spiritual
friendship to countless leaders and luminaries as well as
one of the most important figures in the modern interfaith
dialogue movement.
You can learn more about Br. David at the Grateful Living
website, where you can also see His TED talk,
“Want To Be Happy? Be Grateful,” which has been
viewed almost 10 million times.
Two summers ago she came to help
me sort through stuff in the garage,
taking careful inventory of decades-
old plastic bottles of bubbles,
testing them, one bottle at a time,
sitting on my deck, blowing bubbles.
On hot days, I still see her there.
Now a reporter in Texas, she moseys
back to her hometown to touch base,
see her people, reconnect with those
who mean much to her. I am one
of those, she kindly tells me each
time she sees me, this stellar former
student of mine, one of my last,
dealt some rough hands—among
them being a student journalist in
the early months of the pandemic,
the world locked down, learning
to report remotely. Good training,
she says now, covering business
and agriculture in San Antonio.
Though I watched so many students
fumble through their early days
as writers, poets, photographers,
journalists, designers, editors,
now they circulate through me
in a sweet blur, their faces
popping up now and then,
the particulars long gone
of what they did or didn’t do,
how well they succeeded or
didn’t. And then one shows up
full of gratitude and generosity,
along with mint-green tea,
and we sit in the back yard
on a sultry July afternoon
as I quiz her, fascinated, saying,
“Tell me what it’s like on your
newspaper these days. Tell me
what it is to be you.”
And she does.
Güd wrtr 