Güd wrtr

If hope is the thing with feathers,
as Emily so quotably wrote—
dashes and all—

hope is also the thing with flowers,
a profusion of the blooming things
everywhere in my small orbit,

and I must ask the indulgence
of others who listen to my
exuberant praise after

every outing, every walk,
ogling them as though there
have never been such brilliant

colors mixed with birdsong,
such can’t-miss-it hope
bouncing off every new leaf,

every beaming blossom.

•••

And if you’d like to read Emily Dickinson’s famous poem
“hope is the thing with feathers,” you can do so here.

I drive by and sigh with longing,
as if passing a mausoleum,
which it is, in a way—

the rectangular white building
once home to booths and a lively
counter tended by teenaged servers,
ice cream scoops at the ready.

Now it’s silent, abandoned, the man
whose last name it bore long gone,
its parking lot filled with cars of
shoppers at Trader Joe’s next door.

So many of my dead loved ones
are entombed here—my beloved’s
mother who loved the fresh turkey
Jim Burr roasted daily for sandwiches,
chunky bits piled high on sourdough,
adorned with a frill of lettuce, mayo,
jellied cranberry sauce if you
wanted it, dill pickles on the side.

My best friend who’d snare
the corner booth if she arrived first
would order my favorite Jik Jak
frost, a shake-like concoction
delivered in a tall fluted glass designed
for sundaes, a scoop of the chocolate
malt-laced ice cream drooping down
the side.

So many older neighbors arrived
sometimes daily for lunch and fellowship
with others they’d known in town
for decades. All gone now.

A couple of enterprises attempted
a comeback there, but none went far.
It’s an old building. It must need
a complete redo.

I walked by yesterday on my way
to buy groceries and stopped
to peer in a spot of window to
take in the cavernous emptiness,
the counter, the booths vanished
to that place where ice cream parlors
of yore must go,

where I hope to land when I leave
my body behind, walking in to take
a seat on a swivel-y stool at the counter,
Jim himself turning from his post
at the sandwich station, nodding
and asking, as if he didn’t know,
“Jik Jak frost?”

And me giving the only possible
response: “Yes, please.”

The sweet, small, clumsy feet of April came into
the ragged meadow of my soul.
—e. e. cummings

•••

I set my rain-booted ones in April’s clumsy feet,
clomping through puddles like someone

much younger and closer to the ground,
not minding the dampening of my pants,

enjoying the squish and splash penetrating
my soul’s ragged meadow—

more parched than I had realized, far too
grown up for its own good,

reawakened by a playful soaking on
a rare rainy day in spring.

Not until later did I chuckle at what
passers-by might think of the coatless,

hatless, white-haired lady in her purple
rain boots careening through puddles

on an otherwise nondescript city sidewalk,
giggling with undisguised delight.

(Folsom Boulevard, Sacramento, California)

Walk into the foyer of the store,
and you’re hit in the floral sense
with all manner of bouquets

at reasonable prices, perfect
for spontaneous gift-giving
or, in the case of small bunches

of about-to-bloom daffodils,
for a vase at home to watch
them burst into sunshine.

But outside on the corner
of the lot several exuberant
bush roses are parked,

at the moment a riot
of soft pink, compelling me
to stop, take their photo

in the wild as, inside,
I appreciate their brethren
rounded up for those

who will take them in,
appreciate them in their
already-dying state.

Not unlike some of the
pink roses outside.
Not unlike those of us

coming in to shop for what
temporarily sustains us in
these all-too-transient bodies.

And now some of the same monks
who trekked 2,300 miles across
a good chunk of the United States

are walking through Sri Lanka
with their simple message of peace,
offering blessings to hundreds

who line roadways:
May you be happy.
May you be peaceful.

May you be well.
May you be free from suffering
and the causes of suffering.

They set out on foot each morning
despite—or perhaps because of—
the cruelties of the world,

remind us that gentleness thrives, too,
that peace and kindness resides within
so many who have strewn huge

banana leaves on the ground, to cool
hot pavement with water and petals,
to offer flowers, provide food,

a place to sleep, kind hands
to tend what’s hurting, who act
as escorts and welcome with

such open hearts strangers
in their midst who ask for nothing,
like the gentle monks who

leave love in their wake, each
step taken in the name of peace,
so that those who bow

and those who walk are one,
not others at all,
who are us.

•••

You can follow the Walk for Peace Buddhist monks on their
April 2026 journey through Sri Lanka here.

These flowers are like the pleasures of the world.
—William Shakespeare, from “Cymbeline”

•••

It’s possible that Shakespeare came into the world
and left it on the same day 52 years later, though

no one knows for sure. Both are commemorated
on April 23, so on this day, some 410 years

after his death, pleased to see the first blooms
of cosmos standing tall in my front yard,

from the sidewalk I offer a small bouquet
of Will’s words to the newly blossomed—

“Now, my fair’st friend,
I would I had some flowers o’ the spring that might
Become your time of day; and yours, and yours”—

grateful for those that come now, for those that
will soon be gone, and for all the rest to come.

•••

The Shakespeare lines are from “The Winter’s Tale.”

The little patch of earth I steward
today opened its mouth to gratefully
receive what might well be the last
precipitation of the season,

living, as I do, in the land of little rain,
which makes me thankful, too,
for what humans do to collect it
and protect it,

makes me think of the finally
free-flowing Klamath River
far north of my home turf,
wrangled into submission

by the water-hungry occupiers
more than a century ago,
dammed in more ways than one,
at last set free, now recovering

as its indigenous defenders
have wanted for a hundred years,
salmon swimming ever farther
upstream to spawn,

the baby salmon now starting
their journey to the ocean in
water that those who know
it best once called putrid.

Now, they’ll tell you,
the river, at long last,
smells sweet.

•••

I’m grateful to have heard this story featuring Amy Bowers Cordalis
of the Yurok Tribe and the author of “The Water Remembers”
describing the recovery of the Klamath River since the last
of its four dams was removed in October 2024.

Every step is part of the journey.
—Brother David Steindl-Rast

•••

Begin, the good brother advises,
with a pause and a deep breath.
Then ask the question:

What am I carrying into this moment?

Every step becomes a pilgrimage,
a journey to a sacred center,
one that transforms,

even if we do not feel the shift.
Intentional step after intentional
step keeps us on our path,

though mine is likely not the same
walkway as yours. What you carry
is not what I carry into this moment.

Yet we both take one step at a time
toward what all beings want: love,
self-compassion, courage

and understanding. We ground
with each step; we unfold. May we
remember to set down what

is not ours to carry. Lighter,
then, may our wings carry us
wherever we need to go.

You know that thing that happens
when you think you’ve got
the thing down—

you’ve been practicing the thing
ad nauseum bit by bit
here and there for weeks—

and you go to do the thing,
confident that you can do
the thing—because you had it,

you really had it, during all
that practice—and then it
becomes abundantly clear

that you don’t have the thing
down when it really matters,
making you wonder what

all that practice was for,
which sends you right back
to practicing, your jaw now

set in its most determined
posture, because you are
going to get that thing down

if it’s the last thing you do,
which is when that little voice
of… well, who knows who…

nudges you with its ethereal
elbow and says, “Honey, relax.
You’re bound up like a rubber

band ball. It’ll happen if you
just relax.” And you sigh, letting
your jaw soften into its naturally

jowly state, and you think of
whoever it was in the long ago who
made you laugh when he said,

“We’re having fun, dammit!”
And you remember it was the one
you called Father, sitting out there

in the dark, applauding his girl
up there in the band, playing her
little heart out. She didn’t have

that thing down perfectly either.
She still doesn’t. But she is having
fun, dammit. She really is.

(for Cliff)

I plant a single tomato plant in your memory,
a slender sprig about a foot tall that will,
if she follows the directions on her little stake,
produce small, torpedo-shaped orbs
perfect for plucking and popping
in the mouth.

Her name, according to her little plastic
license plate, is Juliet.

This is another act of faith, which I am
inspired to propagate because of the massive
number of annual and perennials I have tucked
into soil this spring, nudged by my garden
godmother friend.

You annually stuck springs of tomatoes-to-be
by the back fence, the sunniest place in the yard.
But since the sycamore tree has been trimmed
several times since your departure, more sun
falls on the little bed by the garage.

And since that is the spot where a mural
of brightly growing greenery now lives,
I hope it might inspire the little plants
looking up at it.

Following the advice of the nursery plant
counselor, I trundle home a wire cage not
unlike a hoop skirt to cradle the seedling.
Loosening its roots, nestling it in place,
transports me to long-ago summers here
when wooden half-tubs that formerly aged
wine sprouted cages and tomatoes—
a solution after our poaching dog developed
a fondness for the fire-engine red fruit.

That was another thing I learned from you:
Tomatoes are botanically fruit, though we think
of them as vegetable, because, of course, we can
be more than one thing at a time—like Juliet,
flesh and spirit growing out of the good earth,
lingering in the air.