Güd wrtr

Holiday weekend within view,
from my front yard I see that

the kid down the block has persuaded
her mom to set up an old-fashioned

swoopy sprinkler on their front lawn
because it’s 91 degrees. Here, by

Memorial Day, it’s automatically summer,
even before the solstice. And though

the first roses and azaleas and gardenias
have wilted away, their successors

are preparing their debuts any day now,
as the pollinators buzzing by can tell you.

I go dig out some fat sidewalk chalk
and walk a few pieces down the block

to the damp kid, hand it to her, saying,
“Draw me something,” and she shines

me a grin as if I just handed her a cone
topped with a whopper scoop of mint chip.

“OK,” she says, heading for the bare concrete
canvas at the edge of her lawn, and, I swear

I hear the tiny artistic gears in her head
begin to whir. She bends in half, drawing

a bright sun with petal-like rays, then
stands back, cocks her head, and says,

“It looks like a flower.” She bends again
another color in hand, adds a thick green

stem and arm-like leaves, chuckling at her
visual pun. “Sun. Flower!” she declares.

We both laugh because she’s got that right,
the artist getting herself back to work

for another minute before she runs across
the lawn to stand under the sprinkler,

arms outstretched, palms up,
a very credible sunflower herself.

Off and on all day I thought—as I
often do on your very day—perhaps
you’ll make an appearance in a way

I might recognize, and because I’m
paying attention, I won’t miss it—maybe—
because I’m sure I miss a lot of those

moments of you popping in. Though
it wasn’t until close to sunset,
watering the front yard, when I caught

the flicker of orange wings on—
appropriately—the butterfly bush,
a little monarch earnestly working

a purple, cone-shaped flower, then
flitting to another, not minding me
nearby with hose. “Hi, guy,” I said,

the monarch—appropriately—ignoring
me, though I lingered for a good few
minutes watching it work.

You know that I loved to watch you
work—though I’m not saying it was you
or a manifestation of the you I knew—

but it put you in my mind, and I quite
forgot about that visitation until a neighbor
made an unexpected one. Tea in hand,

we sat on the sofa chatting and gazing
out the big window into the falling dark.
“Hummingbird!” she pronounced,

it taking me some time to detect its
tiny form subdued by dusk, whirring
around the orange and yellow lantana

outside the window. And that’s when I
got it—two appearances of orange winged
things in spring, on your birthday.

I can hear you now: “You’re makin’ it up,
Toots.” Yeah, but if I am, I don’t care,
because with that thought, that’s at least

three times you popped in today, and,
my dearest companion spirit,
I will happily take them.

•••

For Clifford
(and with thanks to Katie O’Rourke, who also popped in
for tea)

In my part of California, spring rains end in April.
If we’re lucky. Then we usually don’t see precip

till late fall, one reason why we’re the golden state,
March’s greening going to straw by May.

Still, the breeze is redolent with millions of
nose and throat ticklers zinging around outside,

aiming for our mucus membranes. But I can’t
complain, my allergies merely annoying compared

to those of the late husband who suffered mightily,
aggravated by cats at home and tree pollens

in the greater world. Which he moved through,
fishing rod in hand, hand-tied flies piercing his vest,

never happier than when invested, wading thigh-deep
in a stream on a sunny day, nothing resembling

a raincloud overhead, which is how I imagine him
in the after—breathing easy, casting and casting

to his great heart’s content.

You awaken, knowing you should go.
You’ll feel better if you go.
You’ll have fun if you go.

Fun exercise. An oxymoron.
Such a foreign concept it seems
impossible. Ridiculous.

But you get up. You go.
And as the ladies assemble on
Amy’s deck, as Amy hangs

Shelley’s speaker from a rung
of the open umbrella,
Motown rains down on you.

Your feet cannot help but start
to move, your little endorphins
beginning to dance

as Shelley leads you and the ladies
through exercises that test you
a bit, certainly strengthen you.

And though your little heart
has been blasted open with
fresh grief, moving and

Motown help begin to put
your pieces back together,
Shelley waving her arms in

gyrations that make you laugh,
though each of you has arrived
carrying something heavy.

Each one of you beginning
to fill with fresh light and air,
all of you dancing now to

Martha and the Vandellas,
if not in the street, then
on the deck this spring

morning, full of promise and
hope and—though you thought
it had abandoned you—

utter joy.

•••

You can watch Martha and the Vandellas perform “Dancing in the Streets” here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdvITn5cAVc

Martha Reeves, Betty Kelly and Rosalind Ashford were Martha and the Vandellas
(who are all still living). The song was written in 1964 by Marvin Gaye
(who played drums on the original recording), William “Mickey” Stevenson
and Ivy Jo Hunter.

•••

(for Patricia Beach Smith)

Some of your many loved ones
gathered on a windy Monday
to watch your final journey,

lowered smoothly into the ground
next to a friend, becoming
interred neighbors—a sweet

bit of kinship since you had
helped the man’s widow
select that spot under the leafy

umbrella under which you, too,
will lie for eternity. Then life went on,
as it does. Some of us headed

to your house as we’d so often
done for gatherings of friends
you loved to host. And if we

thought you wouldn’t be there,
we were wrong. You drifted through
doorways, hovered in the scarves

and jewelry you left for friends
to choose and take with us.
But I lingered at your mini grand

piano, where, on the music shelf
above the keyboard rested
the romantic third movement

of “Scheherazade,” wishing you
were there to play it. You,
opera singer, writer, storyteller.

If you’d return for 1,001 nights,
staving off death like the young bride
telling tales to her sultan husband,

I’d sit with you on the bench as you
played, every note a blessing,
preserving the illusion of forever.

We thought it was just on the coast
where winds gusted so fiercely that

we were pushed over a bit by them—
a gentle shove, not like that of a bully,

but of someone wanting to get our
attention. But as we drove inland

from the seaside to our valley home
town, we saw trees shimmying

and rock’n’rolling to tunes we
could not hear. And when we

spilled out into our yards
littered with downed sycamore

branches separated too early
in the season from their hosts,

leaves still green and growing, we
felt ourselves stop and again mourn

the too-soon gone. Who may have
departed on a timetable arranged

before they were born. Who may
have understood that theirs was

a limited-time-only offer. Who may,
unlike us, feel fine with the way

things ended, snapped off in a mighty
gust, sailing through the blustery,

landing in a soft green grass heap,
perhaps with others like them, thinking,

“Wow, what a ride! What a
marvelous adventure that was!”

(for Dickie)

And why not count every precious day,
even if it adds up to an oh-my-god,
how-can-this-be number?

Why not celebrate the walk down
the trail to the little waterfall’d spot
we call Coup de Grace,

as we have done dozens of times
over the past four decades?
Because the path will be laced

with the particular green of
spring-ripened sword and lady ferns,
along with the wild rhodies

dangling from massive
bushes like tutu’d fairies
dancing in the breeze.

Because we have received
notice this week as we linger
by the sea of two beloveds’

unexpected departures,
making me evermore grateful
for your slower, lurching

self ahead of me on the path,
stopping here and there
to decide whether to take

a photo or six. “Use the film,”
we joke as we position our
phones. “Burn the pixels.”

Because we’re here—you with your
83 years, 3 months and 3 days,
me with my 67 years, 8 months

and 16 days. We may never
pass this way again, as the
old pop song goes.

Did you get a picture?
Excellent. Take another
while we still have the light.

The tall, wind-pummeled giants
line up parallel to the sea,

lean benevolently over the always-cool
pathway serenaded by birds,

lulled by waves, some extending
long limbs graceful as ballerinas

low to the ground, which
also turn out to be roots,

interlacing with the next tree
and the next one after that,

weaving a wood wide web
underground, sinking their

anchors deep, stabilizing
the fabric of their existence,

sharing nutrients and water with
shaded and struggling relatives.

As a two-legged guest, I walk
this corridor of greatness

reminded how gentle and quiet
cooperation can be,

eavesdropping on conversations
I can’t possibly understand,

inhaling what is exhaled by
this community of brethren

assembled for the benefit of all,
the living and the dying,

remembering what has passed,
wind and birds singing them on.

•••

Monterey cypress groves, of which there are many on the California coast, are physically linked by vast mycorrhizal networks—underground systems that share nutrients and send chemical signals that allow the whole network to, among other things, activate defense mechanisms against disease.

When one of us

shuffles off this mortal coil,
gives up the ghost,
crosses over,

breathes one’s last,
heads for the last roundup,
joins the choir invisible,

it startles the rest of us,
forces us to pause as
mourning sets in.

Nothing to be done
but remember,
to hold, if we can,

other beloveds close,
because they, too,
we, too,

will similarly slip away
one day, though we
cannot imagine

existence without
the ones who make us
us.

In the meantime,
behold the transitory
flowers, the bush lupine

overlooking the sea,
the wild iris unfurled
and purpled,

the lush pink rhodies,
their frilly skirts already
drooping.

Doesn’t make them
any less lovely
in their momentary

existence. In fact,
we realize with each
passing season,

it makes them
all the more
exquisite.

My favorite editor at the big newspaper
sidled up to me one day as my

rumpled, nondescript khakis and I
confronted the huge computer screen

blinking its green insistence.
She set before me what became

my favorite ice cream soda:
a Jik Jak frost from Vic’s—

chocolate malt ice cream with
nuts in bubbly water. She’d been

in town maybe three months
and knew more about my city

than I did, this woman with an
explorer’s heart, who loved to talk

to everyone. She drank conversation
like water, lived for repeatable

anecdotes. And she appreciated me
in a way that no other editor did

at that paper, affirming my still-
young self while gently teaching

me how to write well about
home interiors because, she said,

our job as journalists was to validate
people more than their surroundings

or job titles. “People,” she liked to say,
“matter more than anything.”

She loved opera and theater, food
and art, flowers and travel. She loved

so many people who loved her, too.
She loved me, partly, I think, because

I shared her younger sister’s name,
and my boss became my champion.

One day as I arrived in our office
wearing, unusually, a floral dress

with a wide skirt that swirled
when I turned, she smiled,

saying, “You look like Monet’s
garden,” a compliment, I knew,

from one who’d been there more
than once. She cocked an eyebrow

and waggled a forefinger at me.
“No beige,” she said.

I’ve never worn the color since.

•••

In memory of Patricia Beach Smith,
Sacramento Bee editor and arts reviewer,
Aug. 23, 1943–May 13, 2026