Güd wrtr

For the second concert of the semester
I pull the red mallets out of their plastic sleeve,
hard, round balls that can strike a note

on the orchestra bells like clear,
shining silver. Which puts a little pressure
on the bells player to get it right.

With my goal of hitting two-thirds
of the notes correctly two-thirds of the time,
the red mallets feel like a bold move.

But oddly, nowadays, the pre-concert
jitters that used to consume me decades ago
have vanished like my blonde hair,

and I am oddly calm, practicing,
as I now do, several times a day
for 15 whole minutes—unlike

much-younger me who’d practice
for hours, long past the point
of accomplishment. Because,

I thought, that’s what you did
to become proficient. Now I settle
for reasonably competent because

the great joy is not just standing
at the back of the band playing
my part to perfection,

but being part of the larger ensemble,
letting the notes played by others
wash over me like, well, music,

hearing the booms and snares
of my fellow percussionists, all
almost young enough to be

my grandchildren, and catching
the director’s cue as she signals
three held notes just before

the end of the piece, when (whew!)
I nail the sixteenth-note run, grinning
all the way to the final ringing E-flat.

The story goes that when Rose’s
Great Aunt Emily and family immigrated

from Italy, Emily (who was considered
“wild” in her youth) got a tattoo

on her arm proclaiming “America.”
Emily’s niece Alma inherited the sax

and kept it, thinking that her daughter
Rose might want to play it. She did not.

But after Alma died, the sax came to Rose
anyway. “Can you find a home for this?”

she asked. I have re-homed more than
a few cats and dogs in my time, and

occasionally an instrument or two.
I knelt on the floor and gently opened

the 102-year-old Conn case to reveal
a surprisingly vivid purple lining

the strength of a full-spectrum rainbow
cradling the antique instrument,

tucked into its sarcophagus like a mummy.
Rose and I marveled at the mother-of-pearl

keys on the tarnished horn, its patina
and thin leather neck strap providing

antique evidence that it had once been
held by younger hands, likely in the Jazz Age,

played with fresh reeds and carefully
placed embouchure. “Sure,” I said.

“My mother would like that,” Rose said.
“She always hoped someone might play it.”

And when that gorgeous horn finds its way
to the right person, I’ll make sure they

hear the story about Great Aunt Emily
and her tattoo, who I envision blowing

a wicked jazz tune on her 1924 saxophone
that, with luck and a bit of clean-up,

will once again make beautiful music.

•••

Thanks to Rose Varesio for donating her
Great-Aunt Emily’s lovely Conn saxophone
to the next generation of music students.

•••

If you’re in the Sacramento area and have older
band instruments you’d like to donate, I know young
band directors who’d be happy to give the instruments
good homes!

What do you remember about that day,
forty-two years ago, when you faced each other

and promised what you could not possibly
know to promise? And yet you kept those

promises and added to them, pebble by pebble,
along the path of what became your together,

little birdies following, a trail you still follow
with new little birdies skipping and leaping,

falling and one day flying. Because you held
them and lifted them to the sky, where

they could see where they might go, you,
among their beloveds, who gave them wings.

•••

For Donna and Eric Just on the 42nd anniversary
of their wedding.

(Latin: an object of wonder)

•••
And the miracles say, “We were here the whole time.
We stood right in front of you, and you stepped around us.”
—Barney Ogden, from “Confession”
•••

We put ourselves in your path all the time,
sure, sometimes disguised as late roses
unpetaling themselves at the end.

Or rocks—we love to see if you’ll stop
and peer at us, maybe pick us up like
kittens and cuddle us in your palms.

Whether you decide to take us home
and put us in a special spot, or put us
back where you found us is up to you.

Doesn’t matter to us. If we really want
to get your attention, we bring out
the flash and the sizzle—

the full-spectrum rainbow that makes
most of you stop and stare, or the fleeting
shooting star that makes you wonder

if you really saw it or not. (Hint: You did.)
Sometimes we present ourselves as
obstacles, literal and metaphorical.

Nothing like a giant boulder or tree
in your way that makes you pause, decide
how to negotiate. Miracles, baby.

It’s all in learning how to see us—
not with your mind’s eye, but with
softened gaze, maybe even closed lids,

letting the wonder of healing overcome
you, the blessing of the unexpected
appearance of a loved one (here or gone)

delight you, the phenomenon of a little
one’s grin or a dog lick or a glimpse
of a sliver of moon to remind you

that we’re here presenting you—
look! there’s one now!—
with marvels every moment

of your miraculous existence.

•••

(With thanks to Spencer’s person Felicia Tracy and in memory
of their beloved Dick Tracy—yep, that was his real name!—
garden detective, journalist, raconteur and dear friend.)

This is me, every fall,
when summer has not yet
given up,

and neither have I,
oblivious to the complaints
of folks eager for the cool,

the leaf fall, the smoky
dusks of autumn. Me,
I’m cheering for these

balmy nights when I
still tiptoe into the pool
without a shiver,

grateful for the warmth
that is, like a done-with-me
lover on its way out the door

as I’m begging it to stay,
tugging on its shirt, never
wanting this to end.

But it does. It does.
I don’t have to like it,
but when I actually

have to don socks and
sweatshirts, I’ll sigh
and accept it, consoling

myself by scuffing
through leaf art arrayed
on sidewalks,

remembering warmer days
behind us and (not too far
away) ahead of us, too.

When you are absorbed in an online lecture
by a famous poet, and your own poem starts coming?
The famous poet is talking about the voice of a poem,
and here’s the interrupting voice of one that wants to be.

And you say to your poem, “Can you just put this
on pause for now? I need to get back to you later.”

And the poem says, “OK, but I can’t promise you
I’ll still be here, carried as I am by the winds
of your mind, perhaps drifting into another poet’s poem.”

So you sigh, and right there, in the same document
where you’re taking down the famous poet’s words,
you say to the poem, “OK, go ahead. Spill.”

And it does. It does not matter if it’s good or not,
the poem is showing up, its little head crowning,
wanting to be alive on the page. And you’ve had
enough of these babies to know that it’s serious.
It will find someone else if you ignore it.

“Fine,” you say aloud. There will be a recording
of the famous poet. You can listen to her later.

And the poem, liquid and slippery,
appearing as if by magic, as so many do,
grins at you, happy for the attention,

and
waterfalls
itself
down
the
page.

•••

For master poet Ellen Bass, whom the poem interrupted.
You can get more information about her wonderful
Living Room Craft Talks series (she’s currently doing her
seventh and final series) here.

Thank you, Ellen. I will listen to the recording to the parts
of your fine lecture on voice that the poem interrupted.
I promise.

The once-upon-a-time, the long-ago-but-not-forgotten.
The one who taught me how to kiss and sing harmony to his melody
as he played the guitar. The one who really taught me how to kiss
and quite a bit more, and whose young man muskiness lingered
in his sheets, the ones I couldn’t wait to return to. The one who
taught me to juggle because he had to learn as a theater major
before he ran away with a circus. The ones who taught me
to process film and print photos in a red-tinged darkroom.
(And a bit more in the dark rooms, too.) The one who taught me
how to catch a softball, which my father tried to do, but could not—
though he did teach me how to jack up a car and change a tire.
The one who loved me on an inflatable raft in a river.
The one who taught me never to leave a clear glass in the sink
when your boyfriend is visually impaired, and to always, always,
replace the cap on the toothpaste. The one who married me.
The one who takes me to Hawaii and the California coast
because he knows how much I love ocean, and buys me
my favorite socks and feeds my cats when I ask, and
feeds me, feeds me, feeds me, all of which are ways
Guys Say They Love You. And oh, the one who, in third grade,
was not a proper boyfriend but was the first boy I fell in love with
after he pointed out the stain on the back of my dress
and gave me his cardigan, saying, “Maybe you could
tie this around you,” so the stain wouldn’t show.
The ones whom I have not properly thanked. Until now.
Thank you, my dear, good men. Amene.

•••

For National Boyfriend Day, an older poem because, well, boyfriends.

Not what you’d call light reading,
but gorgeous, weighty, late 1800s
leather volumes, on a shelf
in the guest bath where the tub
used to be.

Balzac’s complete works on one side,
Bulwer-Lytton’s novels on the other,
with stacks of old magazines
on a bottom shelf,

prominent among them
(and easily seen from the throne)
one headline trumpeting
“The Death of King George V,”
which puts that in 1936,
when the future queen was 10,
eventually becoming the longest-
reigning British monarch.

And you realize,
from your humble position,
how much history reigns
in this venerable ranch house
embedded in this rural California
acreage, how much literature and art
lives in this family whose
lives centered around horses
and riding and jumping,

the legacy that this queen,
who also lost her dear king,
is working to preserve—
her family’s magnum opus
not unlike Balzac’s, a record
of their time on the planet,
in the worlds of the two-legged
and the four- ,

and who still are.

•••

For Felicia Schaps Tracy and her family
of Emigrant Springs Ranch, Grass Valley,
California.

As I’m filling out the information online
for the return of a blouse I have apparently
purchased twice,

of course, having no memory of doing so,
you’re at my shoulder: “Jan, can you
return this for me?”

You were forever buying things online—
often cute shoes—that turned out to be
cheap knockoffs from China

that didn’t fit or pinched or were somehow
not right. Not that they were outrageously
turquoise or too blingy

(no such thing to your dimming eyes),
but they needed to go back. Invariably,
no paperwork had arrived with

the whatevers that indicated wherever
they could be returned, much less
an order number,

though you’d produce what you’d saved
from your online interaction. Twice,
when I sent things to the “return” address

on the pouches, paying the postage,
they both returned as “undeliverable.”
And though Donna and I reminded you

not to buy from questionable sites
(“but it was on Facebook,” you’d protest),
you did. In the end, I’d donate

the unwanted to our favorite thrift stores,
frequent beneficiaries. It wasn’t about
getting your money back so much as

wanting to do the right thing—to send it
back from whence it came. Which, in the end,
is what we, your girls, hoped happened for you.

Return to sender, to that place of mystery
to which none of us living has the address,
where, we pray, you drifted when it was time,

no postage due.

When I reach deep into the bag
I carry every day, the one my mother

would have called a purse
and my grandmother a “pockabook,”

my fingers touch the round, flat, cold
of dimes and pennies and nickels, with

the occasional quarter, fallen from my wallet.
And, as if I didn’t know where that money

came from, my little self—who always wonders
if she will have enough—giggles,

delighted to find myself richer than expected,
as if I truly know where any of this comes from,

as if I’ve never felt that kind of support,
as if I didn’t know that you and I, my dear—

in fact, all beings everywhere—
have always been, always shall be, held.