Author Archives: janishaag

My hands are powerful healing toolsThey know exactly where to applytheir healing energy. I handle my lifewith love. —affirmation on the bulletin board inmy mother’s home treatment room ••• Again and again, on sheets of paperI find in her handwriting—notes … Continue reading →

Dewy, Dewy, Dewy, do you love me?Dewy, Dewy, Dewy, do you care?Dewy, Dewy, are you thinking of me?Dewy, Dewy, will you still be there?—1970s pop song And he is there—Dewy remembers me,who visited him last year—comingto drape his long, lanky … Continue reading →

(after Nikita Gill) Well, first, it should be “fewer,” as I told way too manycollege students who truly couldn’t care less. Butshort is the point. Love short. Trying to write shorter.A lifelong task.

(for Terri Wolf) I step into the warm indoor poolas, outside, the desert dawnbegins to bloom. I’m 500 miles from my rainy-cold home, staying insteadwith my friend who jogs down Lane #3 every winter morning at 6.Though I am a … Continue reading →

Wrapped in the arms of ancestorslong gone, the younger generations criss-cross their way up the trunk,living their lives, dying their deaths, becoming stairsteps for the newestdescendants at the top, shaggy green, reaching for the high blue.We all grow from such … Continue reading →

Anything can be a poem.Even typing the number for my to-goairport burrito into a note on my phone,which would in itself be a fine start,if not remarkable in any way, if not for the fact that, as I waited,I watched … Continue reading →

(for Ashley Just and Kevin Just) The kids are really putting their backsinto it—my nephew, who, with his wife,are working hard to make the old house theirs, clearing a half-century’s worth of overgrownfront yard and remaking it anew with slenderbender … Continue reading →

In other words, it seems like love has left youbecause, perhaps, someone has. Because it feels as if: (choose your metaphor):—you’re alone at the bottom of the cold, dark sea, or—a great bird has just slammed into your chest and … Continue reading →

He was the proverbial stick—or the rear right wheel of his car was—the rainy night of his 82nd birthdaywhen he drove out to my late mother’shouse by the lake to haul bags of herclothes 20 miles to the thrift store … Continue reading →

(for Dick) Some burst like pale pink fireworks so early,and I pull the car over to walk up a newly greening slope and admire them up close,tiny gems bobbing against a gray sky. The first blossoms surprise me every year. … Continue reading →