Güd wrtr

As family members look on,
Henry double-dunks two balls
and declares, “bassa-bah,”

in the new basket on the brightly
colored stand a bit taller than he is,
gleefully chasing the rollers-away

to retrieve ’em and dunk ’em again
on the same day the Knicks win
their first NBA championship

in 53 years. We grownups are
oblivious to the celebrations
in New York, so focused

on the red-haired boy and his
equally red-haired little sister
chasing down bassa-bahs

indoors at home to the cheers
of their loved ones, all of us
grinning through crumbly bites

of mini chocolate cupcakes—
could anything be sweeter?—
on this hot day in June.

•••

With thanks and love to my fam who made the babies,
one generation after another, and to us lucky aunts and uncs
who get to enjoy them!

Once upon a time (because all bedtime
stories must begin that way, right?),
there was a young-old woman

with a too-big bed that no longer suited her—
too hard, unforgiving, not supportive
where it needed to be,

and the man who loved her had been saying
for years, “I’ll buy you a new bed.”
But it seemed like too much work,

and how could you know how it’d feel
after lying on it for a few minutes looking
up into a showroom’s fluorescents?

And the old bed surely must’ve been glued
to the floor by now, and who would show up
to move such a behemoth, and that old

floppy mattress would fold like a pancake,
making it hard to move, and… But finally,
the young-old woman sighed, gave in,

asked for help, got advice, and, as always
happens, helper angels appeared, saying,
“We can do that for you,” and they did.

Other helpers in sister and friend form
nudged her (“It can be returned if it’s not just
right“). And today two men showed up in a

huge truck with the new bed and adjustable
platform and remote control (for a bed?!),
and they set it up on the freshly cleaned

floor, and, as she used to spell it in her
sixth grade notebooks, “Wallah!” And even
before she put on the sheets, she had

to lie on it, looking up a ceiling that had
sheltered her for nearly four decades,
close her eyes and thank the gods

of mattresses, for helpers, for all who
seemingly moved heaven and earth
to set her floating on this cloud,

a peaceful raft inside a cool house
on a hot summer day, amen,
the end.

•••

With gratitude to my village—Dickie and Donna and Lisa
and Neil and Timi for the nudges and strategizing, and to
Marissa and Leon, the movers/taker-awayers,
Robert the mattress seller, housekeepers Gladis and Lupe,
and Jose and Juan who delivered the new bed—
and all behind-the-scenes people who made this happen.

First, what ho—rain?
In June? Here?
Whaddowe think this is—Hawaii?
Warm, friendly rain, though not much.

But enough for the descending sun
to shoot through a prism of drops
and yep‚ throw a leg of rainbow
(not the whole half) against the sky
as we drive home after dinner.

But wait—there’s more. Earlier
in the day, an indoor rainbow
aimed through the front door
peephole landed on a closet door,
maybe a once-a-year occurrence.

Same day. Two rainbows
thanks to the merest bit of rain
as clouds chugged up the hill
for afternoon showers on
mountains accustomed
to such phenomena.

But we parched valley dwellers,
well, it just gets our hopes up.
We know what’s coming.
Can’t dodge the dry heat forever.

But it gives us something
to remember, rain dashing by
on a warming summer day,
waving, promising, “I’ll be back.
I really will,” as it heads off
to vacation in cooler places,
like the luckier ones among us.

A young couple came to take away the bed today,
Clifford, the platform and drawers underneath
the old king that we moved here in 1987,

though in those days it all supported a waterbed,
which we replaced with a regular mattress,
which I replaced after you with a foam bed,

allegedly with memory. Now, I wonder, what
does it remember? The even bigger question:
What’s the floor look like underneath?

You left only enough carpet and pad for the bed
to rest upon, stripping out the rugs throughout
the house, letting the old hardwood breathe.

It’s been breathing ever since. And the good
news of the day is: The floor looks great.
New bed’s coming Friday. I swept the space

where we slept for years, grateful once
again for this house we first made home
39 summers ago. You, sadly, departed

14 years later. The old king, thankfully,
has gone. A new queen is on her way.
Long live the queen!

•••

In memory of Cliff Polland (1952–2001).

With thanks to Leon and Marissa of Handy Hauling
in Sacramento, for their efficient, super-careful dismantling
and removal of the old bed and furniture.

All the years we two little cousins
looked up to her, she was Dede,

her two initials an alliterative
nickname, one you could sing with

the same note on the piano. Which
made sense for our musical cousin,

the second daughter of our beloved
Auntie Lo, our father’s sister,

the piano and organ teacher, who
could play just about any song by ear.

Dede followed in her mother’s
musical footsteps, becoming the girl

percussionist in the high school band
who played the piano-like instruments—

xylophone, marimba, glockenspiel,
also wicked good on tympani, too.

Of course, I longed to follow in her
footsteps when it came time to choose

an instrument, plunging into the world
of mallets plinking out melody,

rolling out luscious chords. My sister
and I still adore our Dee, who dropped

the second initial long ago, who, just
for fun, has embroidered me a tea towel

with a teacup atop books surrounded
by flowers. She so gets me, our Diana Lee,

who, with her sister Pat, are the only two
people living who’ve known me since

I made my debut on the planet.
Who recently sat with so much family

in a concert hall as I sashayed back
into percussion after four decades away,

applauding her younger cousin who
remains inspired by her older one,

still carrying a melody or two or more
in her heart, always our Dede.

The courage to be brave when it matters most requires a lifetime
of small decisions that set us on a path of self-awareness,
attentiveness, and willingness to risk failure for what
we believe is right.

— Mariann Edgar Budd, Episcopal bishop of Washington

•••

Today I want to embody courage—
not only of the man who stood before
the oncoming tanks in Tiananmen Square,

or the girl who, after being shot in the head
and surviving, continues to advocate for
the education of girls,

or health care workers who faced
a killer virus in the early scary days of a
pandemic. I want to take on the mantle

of a redwood that has climbed inch by inch,
year by year into the sky, despite boring
insects and long-lasting drought and fire.

I wish to be as brave as a mother elephant
who turns herself into a pachyderm tank,
charging at bulls to protect her calf, or

salmon swimming upstream to their deaths,
possible prey to eagles and bears, determined
to reproduce in the waters where they were born.

I want to be as hardy as dandelions that push
through minute cracks in concrete, determined
to find the sun, anchored in the most unforgiving

places. Let me throw my head back and bask,
not thinking about heavy feet or tires, but living—
joyously, meaningfully, outrageously—

without thought of how the end might come.

We mourned the felling of the old walnut
tree, having no choice in the matter,

the decision of unseen higher-ups
in his condo community.

One of us took photos of the other
atop the remaining stump, and one of us

cried when she came back to find it
ground into shreds. But we were cheered

when one day someone planted what
seemed to be a skeletal shrub, without

identification. Dendrophiles that we are,
we consulted a plant lady friend

three states away who declared it
a crape myrtle. So Myrtle she became,

though apparently she’s monoecious,
with both male and female parts.

The question became: What color is she?
Not expecting blossoms her first year,

we figured we’d live in the mystery for
some time. But she has sprouted, well,

sprouts on the ends of her luscious leaves
that looked as if they might be wee buds.

And yesterday, we swear, within hours
after we checked, we got our answer:

Myrtle has baby white blossoms
popping out already. We’d hoped for

a showy deep pink, but as with any
offspring, you get what you get.

And you love them no matter what,
our precocious girl. Top of her class,

we imagine as proud foster parents, one
of us who regularly waters her, even before

sprinklers were installed, which now shower
her with silver sparkles in late afternoon

light, this new neighbor who, we hope,
will outlast us for many summers to come.

•••

• dendrophile: one who loves trees

• monoecious (muh-NEE-shus): having both male
and female reproductive organs on the same plant.

Of course, she did, seeing as how her son
had just announced he was leaving home,

heading for God knows where—God knows why—
Gonna be gone for some time, don’t know

how long, any shekels you can spare, Ma?
You’d throw the loaded pig at him, too—

not an actual pig, not kosher, not clean.
But you get the symbolism, as she must have

even in the moment of losing her cool,
which you can’t imagine her doing,

saint that she is. But you get it. She bore
him in Bethlehem, so that’s how she was

identified. Not by name. Not, certainly,
as the mother of the one who set off,

as it happened, to save the world.

•••

The headline and story that inspired the poem.

(For Dickie)

Mine is South Pacific, 1958
Yours is For Whom the Bell Tolls, 1943

South Pacific is so much more you,
filmed as it was on Kauai, your favorite
Hawaiian island, which you gave to me,
along with Mt. Makana, renamed Bali Hai
for the movie.

And while you can’t beat the combination
of Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman
as guerrilla fighters, For Whom the Bell Tolls
was not about WWII, which you were born
in the middle of, but Hemingway’s take
on the Spanish Civil War.

But it was filmed in California, our home state,
in the Sierra near Sonora Pass, the actors
and crew having to scramble around
snowy granite boulders,

Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman allegedly
engaged in an affair to remember,
which, is, of course, how we entangled
ourselves nearly five decades later.
Cooper and Bergman sparked, flamed
and burnt out quickly.

We, my dear, are still here—
creakier, crankier, the bell beginning to toll—
our days together certainly numbered,
but we’ll take the ones allotted to us,
we’ll take ’em all, happily (won’t we?)
ever after.

May we surrender all cynicism and doubt
about the state of the world to her,
she of the serene face

and gentle countenance, her leafy crown
blooming the deepest red of—
what else?—her great heart embracing

for all growing things, which certainly
includes plants and animals
great and small,

not least us two-legged ones
who marvel at her profuse array
of colors, her hardy persistence,

flourishing no matter what nature
throws at her—she, come to think of it,
the embodiment of Mother Nature

herownself.