Güd wrtr

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.

It’s my fault. I left it outside,
and she must’ve decided

it was a good place to hunker
down and start lacing a net

with her delicate long legs,
hinged needles that look

so vulnerable, easily broken.
But that’s why, instead of

bringing it inside where
it usually lives, ready

to water indoor plants,
I’m leaving her new abode

outside, letting her get on
with her task in a place

she feels safe. Or maybe,
like me, she’s simply a gal

with a fondness for purple.

(for Lisa Morgan and the Oakmont High School class of 1976)

As if we needed proof in mimeographed
form, on printed programs with only
a small stain testifying to the decades,

the summation of our high school lives
lies on your mother’s kitchen counter,
our names wafting up like 1970s incense,

evidence of the girls we were. And the boys,
too, your mom’s tidy cursive inked on
the program of scholarship winners.

Two days later—fifty years ago today—
we commenced on the quad, you and I
hatted and gowned, rising from our places

in the band to take our spots in line
for diplomas with our classmates,
our parents and teachers looking on,

I imagine, with relief. Then we raced
back to the band to Pomp and Circumstance
one last time before we all vanished

into the ether, to whatever we
might make of our budding lives.
You, the yearbook editor,

me, the newspaper editor,
two girls good with words who divided
our hearts between the band room

and Room 206, where so many
publications were born. As were we,
though I doubt we knew it then.

We study the vintage documents now
like the historical artifacts they are—
our mothers peering over our shoulders,

our fathers nearby, too, all of them gone,
but not—unable to quite conjure
the particulars of who we were.

But there we are, on paper, all 204
graduates marching into the country’s
bicentennial, with, as they used to say,

our whole lives ahead of us, we two
artifacts ourselves, stunned by
the where-did-it-all-go-ness

of an all-too-quick half a century
embodied in your brilliantly
prophetic yearbook theme

that neither of us has forgotten:
So sad, so strange,
the days that are no more.

Even when you think it’s just a gray day,
it’s a day, after all. And you awoke,

if a bit creakily, moved the sore bits,
but you awoke. You moved. You rose,

with or without assistance (there’s always
assistance from those seen and unseen),

and you made your way into the gray day,
which, you well know, has brightness

above it, our chandelier of sun hanging
high, as it does, every day. You rely,

as we all do, on that movement of dark
into light and back again. Perhaps,

on this one, you find yourself in the dark
all day. Perhaps, on this one, you find

yourself in perpetual light. Rhyming light.
Not because of latitude, but because of attitude

mixed with gratitude, aware that shade and
sun amble hand in hand across the heavens,

as they always have. As they always will.

•••

(With thanks to Molly Fisk for the prompt.)

We are rooted in fertile ground,
and our roots go deep and our love abounds.

—from the song “Fertile Ground” by Amanda Udis-Kessler

•••

This spring in my garden
every day is a flower communion
as I walk among the blooming

that surprise me with their radiance.
On Sunday the first red hibiscus unfurls,
while at church everyone receives

an alstroemeria or sunflower or dianthus
to offer to someone else, saying,
“May you blossom here.”

And so we do in a community of folks
who, on our surface, seem more different
than alike. Together, we sing, we’re

“a dazzling bouquet of every kind
of flower. Jump in the vase
’cause we’ve got space for more.”

•••

The song “Dazzling Bouquet” was written by Bret Hesla.
You can listen to it here.