Author Archives: janishaag

Waiting for the hospice nurse to call back. Waiting to see if Mom can sleep more than 40 minutes.Waiting to see if the cramps ease up, the ones that feellike labor pains, she says, though she hasn’t laboredfor 64 years. … Continue reading →

Nothing gold can stay.—Robert Frost How timely that you havegoldened in fall— late fall at that—yourtiming excellent as leaf subsides to leaf,each brightening day a gift you dearly wantto unwrap. You are not wanting winter. Neitherdo we ever want the … Continue reading →

(for Mom) Let her become salt waterrushing over sand, pulling, pushing,energetic earth shaper, sculptor, and let her heart take one greatlast leap as the big ah-ha! seizes her,the I-get-it moment, she who dipped our baby feet in the sea,who held … Continue reading →

and turn againas the path windsunder high fog, under turning oaks,leaves so recently green,now goldening, some with edgestinged brown oror dark-splotched— the dark is coming—but on this first dayof advent, each step leading to new life,I stop, look up atthe … Continue reading →

Let’s not forget to make things: bread, books, friends.—Maya Stein, from “paper, scissors, glue” ••• Wha’cha makin’ over there?Flour and yeast for bread, sure. Words and words and more wordsfor poems, for stories, of course. Smiles and hugs and “wanna … Continue reading →

My life, like a poem, is small and enormous.—poet Maggie Smith Enormous in that we all contain multitudes,to paraphrase another poet, contradictions, he mentioned, too,as in living while dying, or perhaps it’s the other way around,as I walk in the … Continue reading →

(For the fam—those with us and not, living and not—with love and gratitude.) Back in the day it was my motherwho, with her trusty Kodak, shotthe family pix for every Christmas card—my sister and I posing insome location she liked—until … Continue reading →

(for Mom) When you get where you’re going—and clearly there’s no way to knowwhere that might be, or even if thereis a where—we know that you’ll lookaround and see who you might see. Maybe you’ll have landed in aneternal Sweet … Continue reading →

(Hanalei pier, Hanalei, Kauai) He stands like an old handat this, the slender whip of a rodextended off the end of the pier, a couple of weights keepingthe line taut, and, as we watch,this 10-year-old from Utah catches fish after … Continue reading →

For nearly a weekLOVE stood on our beach(the one we feel closest to), and every morning I’d walkout there and say, “Hi, LOVE!”Often I’d see people pose next to LOVE and pointtheir phones at themselves.I offered to take photos of … Continue reading →