Güd wrtr

Doorbell rings while I’m still in robe
and slippers, working through
the in-box’s overnight accumulations.

Sighing, I rise and pad to the front door
to find a chipper, orange-vested
young man from the utility company,
the descendant of guys who annually
appear, once upon a time bearing
clipboard and pen and paper—now
with small electronic tablet in hand.

“Ah, tree time,” I think, even before
Micah introduces himself as the arborist.
“Wonderful!” I say to this tree guy
who has come to inspect the leafy growth
swaddling the trapeze-like lines that swoop
from tall poles to my house.

Walking to the back yard, we chat,
we two dendrophiles, delighted
by each other’s enthusiasm for trees.

“Sure,” he says, “we can remove that
volunteer fig. You want those ficus out?”

Yes, I do. And then Micah offers
a professional assessment that makes
me beam like a proud parent:

“Your sycamore is in great shape.”

As if I’ve had much to do with this
towering sentinel that’s watched over
this house for close to a century.

“I’ve had it trimmed regularly,
and I water it through summer,”
I say to Micah’s approving nods.
“Any other suggestions?”

He shakes his head.
“She looks good,” he says.

And, as we both walk to the driveway,
I decide that I will take that compliment
on behalf of the sycamore and myself,
delighted by the conversation with
the young tree guy

who, whether out of kindness
or professional obligation, chatted up
an old robe-and-slipper’d gal about
trees on a sparkling May morning
just because we love them.

Open-hearted, we say.
Big-hearted, we think,
of those who are kind,

who seem to have naturally
warm hearts, kind hearts,
and yes, soft hearts,

which is, when we
think about it,
all of us, really,

calling up our most
compassionate selves,
our charitable selves.

Even those who appear
the most hard-hearted,
who seem unresponsive

to the needs of others,
who look unforgiving, unkind,
with hearts of stone,

if we pause and open
our own wounded hearts,
we might find in them

a softness like an
ephemeral sky heart
wandering lonely as

a cloud, as the poem
says. Fleeting, perhaps,
but there, waiting

to be admired like
“a host, of golden daffodils”
by the tender-hearted,

who, even in the face
of one devoid of warmth,
take a breath, choose

to respond with love.

•••

The golden daffodils are William Wordsworth’s from his best known
poem published in 1807, “I wandered lonely as a Cloud.”

My photographer’s text said,
accompanying his photo of
sheep-fluffy clouds rendered

in black and white, as Ansel
often did, finessing the swells
of whites and grays and blacks,

deftly rendering the sky in an
intermediate shade so that
a viewer doesn’t miss the color.

Isn’t that the way of it? We often
linger in the gray undersides,
forgetting that just above

lies the light, that if we step
back a bit, the sorrow that
threatens to rain down on us

billows bright around the edges.
Mr. Adams knew this well,
and we see his genius

not only in his iconic photos
but also in the buoyant pillows
drifting over us today,

taking on all manner of shapes,
periodically shading the sun.
We have only to look up and

see a heart in the cotton ball
cumulus floating overhead —
a little ragged, like ours,

such extraordinary light
refracting into the sweetest
delight.

•••

In memory of Ansel Adams
and in honor of Dick Schmidt,
the photographer who holds my heart.

The wicked smart, clever niece
born on my 29th birthday married

a mechanically brilliant man, and
they gave us Henry and Rosie.

And the sister who is their grandma,
and the brother-in-law who is their grandpa

spend weekdays with these two little ones,
inviting Aunt Jan to visit just for this:

to watch Grandpa Eric toss soon-to-be-3
Henry on the sofa again and again

to the boy’s delighted giggles, and see
Grandma Donna with Rosie, who has

just turned 1 and recently taken to walking,
as she stands and shimmies, then squats

like a long-time yogi, then effortlessly rise
again and again with a big smile.

When I boop Rosie on the nose, her grin
contains a universe’s worth of delight.

And I think, as I often do, of my grandpa,
who liked to say about my sister and me,

“Every generation improves the breed.”
When we look (even with our biased eyes)

at these two, three generations after him,
we know that he was so, so right.

•••

For my peeps with love from Great Aunt Jan:
Donna, Eric, Lauren, Gerald, and, of course,
Henry and Rosie

The garden goddess brought me
a daphne—perfect, I thought,
thinking of the nymph,

who, unhappily pursued by
a man she didn’t want, transformed
herself into a laurel tree.

This newcomer to my garden
has not yet flowered—again,
perfect for the virgin

who chose to remain so,
today planted firmly in good soil
by my garden goddess friend,

herself an independent woman
who chose her love carefully,
who nurtures it mindfully,

as she is teaching me to do
with the plants. None of them,
like us, is immortal—some may

not flourish where they’ve
been planted—but we admire
them for who they are,

living and growing in the world
at their own pace, for as long as
they can, whether or not

they perform as we wish,
whether or not they look or act
like others around them.

•••

(or How Guys Say They Lava You #378)

Be careful when you sit
and begin to unroll

because you never know
when someone has inked

a sweet message into
what you’d usually apply

elsewhere. Not gonna do it.
Not when there’s TP love

right there, a tissue
billboard in the round.

Which means you’ve
gotta find another

means of cleanup. Which
means you sit for a bit,

chuckling, soaking up
the adoration beaming up

at you, thinking for
the who-knows-how-many

thousandth time how
stunningly lucky you are.

Dude.
Chill, will ya?
You’ve been cat napping,
as you do,
pretty much all day,
rising now and then
to stretchhhhhhh
and scratch a little.

You are a study in repose,
belly up, somehow balancing
on your keel of a spine,
bow to the sky,
stern splayed,
well, to the sky, too.
a vessel ready
to launch.

Let your sleeping cat-self lie,
float your pea-green boat,
dream pussycat dreams,
then return and tell me
what you saw—

perhaps an owl with whom
you paddled away
for a year and a day,
then, hand in hand,
on the edge of the sand,
you danced by the light
of the moon.

•••

Lines in the last stanza borrowed from “The Owl and the Pussy-cat”
(1871) by Edward Lear.

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 them 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 most 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.