Author Archives: janishaag

Even the most ordinary, doe-brownversions discarded by Canada geeseas common in this park as leaves. My walking buddy does not ask whyI bend to pluck them from the path,nor what I will do with the feathers, which I appreciate, because, … Continue reading →

This face has the countenanceof every crone I have known,the one I am becoming— not the malicious, disagreeable,sinister old woman, but onewho embodies wisdom, inner knowing, intuition,as all the crones I have everknown have done for me, guiding my younger … Continue reading →

On Memorial Daythe Artist in a Van parks her VW buson the sidewalk by McKinley Parkbetween the rose gardenand the tennis courts, she and her mama setting up campchairs on the shady lawn,the daisy-stickered van with itscargo door wide open … Continue reading →

May turns the home territory yellow,spring green grasses giving way todrying weeds the color of straw, ournearly perennial state in thisgolden state. By mid-month only the poppiescontinue to show off their brightfaces as the first wildflowers havesped through their swift … Continue reading →

I get the garage cleaned out and keep it that way,not load it up with boxes that delivered stuffimportant in the moment to my door? If Iget the back bedroom tidy of its full boxesand bags of gifts and books … Continue reading →

…poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes,they are sleeping… What we have to dois live in a way that lets us find them. —Naomi Shihab Nye from “A Valentine for Ernest Mann” ••• If I take off my shoesand … Continue reading →

The last time we made our waythrough the airport to visit the spotwhere he fell, his heart seizing ina kind of arrest he’d never imagined, we found it glassed-in and utterlydevoid of human life. The day hecollapsed, we stood, boarding … Continue reading →

I could not get warm. Or comfortableon the pullout chair that passed for a bed.But I got to be there—they didn’t send meaway, so far from home, him in the bed,resurrected on an airport floor afterthe cardiac arrest killed him. … Continue reading →

Not all of us are presentthe last time we exercisewith Marilyn on her frontlawn— our energetic leader away,others otherwise engaged—and nothing is spokenabout this moment as Amy leads us throughleg lifts and bicep curls,toe rises and all mannerof stretches. But … Continue reading →

I will always love youin the shelter of my mindon the edges of a meadowwhere the sun shines all the time —”Meadow: from The Book of Rounds,”Emil Adler and Ryan Heller with The Austin Chamber Ensemble ••• There you are,on … Continue reading →