Güd wrtr

Cherishing is love with its sleeves rolled up.
—Father Greg Boyle

I circle the labyrinth on an overcast morning
the first week of fall as fifteen pilgrims make
their way along the single circuitous path,

many new to walking this singular path
to the center, though it always leads where
pilgrims need to go follow—and yes,
everything on the labyrinth is a metaphor,
and yes, there are gifts along the way.

So I walk the perimeter of the great circle,
holding space for fifteen pairs of feet in motion,
fifteen pairs of eyes looking down, their steps
slowing with the weight of what they carry—

tension and stress, anguish and grief—
which without effort often falls away
with each breath, so that when they reach
the heart of the labyrinth, they can rest, receive,
reflect before retracing their steps.

May they remember that they are cherished,
that they belong here, embodied prayer,
in this moment.

They stand, often with closed eyes,
so much dripping from them like new rain.
I feel their hearts rising, pain giving way
to what feels like a peace-full presence.
And then, heeding some unknown signal,
each begins the return, their footsteps
tracing the same path.

But, as every pilgrim discovers, it never
looks the same. No one takes the same
journey; each heart opens differently.

But they do open, and as their feet
and mine connect with the earth
that gives us life, I feel the widening
into something that could be joy.

And as they come off the path,
I am there to greet them.
Welcome back, I say, looking
into their newly softened eyes,

reminded that all of these souls,
each on their own journey,
have been holding me, too.

•••

With thanks to Christie Braziel for her excellent seminars on the labyrinth
through the Renaissance Society Sacramento.

(for Dickie)

I count aloud like a kid
learning her numbers—
one, two three, four, five

pairs of specs on his table,
not counting his shades,
which are who knows where?

I, who usually has more of
everything, own just one pair
for the everyday along with

a second pair of shades.
But he has close and middle
distance, progressives and

bifocals and single distance.
I envy him—not only his
array of eyewear, but his

actual eyes, which, since his
cataract removals, can see for
days, or at least tens of yards.

I’ll never have his kind of vision
that this still-got-it photographer
has, whose point and shoot prowess

on his phone many of us envy.
When people ask what camera
he uses, he’s been known

to respond, “It’s not the camera.”
No, it’s his perceptive eyes,
though he’d never say that.

How lucky am I, decades after
he discarded film and long lenses,
to see the world through the pixels

he produces, this fellow with
interchangeable lenses of
a different sort, a man with

extraordinary vision, one
who consistently, kindly
sees the world—and me—

in the best possible light.

We walked the local auction
grounds on weekends with
a taste of teenage freedom,
setting up shop for a fundraiser,

the high school pep band
assembled to play some rousing
’70s hits—oh, that lower brass
opening of “25 or 6 to 4,” trumpets
joining five bars in, drummers
rocking out on an improvised
trap set.

In between sets, high on hormones
and crunchy ground beef tacos
dusted with parmesan cradled
in greasy paper, we’d happily
stand in line for this dollar
culinary masterpiece

born only four years before
we were, dubbed by its creator
an American taco, which Jim sold
out of a small trailer in Lake Tahoe
where few folks in town had
heard of such a delicacy.

A half century later, in our city
23 miles from my hometown,
my fella loves him some Jimboy’s,
and on occasion I indulge—mostly
to transport myself with the first crunch
of that too-hot taco, parmesan dusting
my cheeks,

back to my beginnings as a budding
writer, the girl pep band director
fond of a song with obscure lyrics
that turned out to be about someone
writing deep into the night—

waiting for the break of day,
searching for something to say…—

a place I sometimes still find
myself, looking for words
at 25 or 26 minutes to 4 a.m.,
wondering how much I can take.
And oh, yes, should I try to do
some more?

•••

With thanks to Robert Lamm, who wrote it in 1969, and Peter Cetera, who sang it, and the band Chicago for the song’s stunning guitar riff, guitar solo and amazing horn section parts… and my Oakmont High School pep band friends playing their hearts out. Who cared if we couldn’t make head nor tail of the lyrics? We had the music and the tacos…

•••

If you’d like to hear the more seasoned version of Chicago play “25 or 6 to 4” in 2016 with the surviving members of the band when they were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, give this a look (it still rocks!).

What if, instead of imagining that
you happen to pluck a moment
out of the air, your word-thirsty
tongue snagging it like a tasty bug
and tucking it into a pocket of memory—
what if that darting insect of a flash
instead taps you on the shoulder?

Here I am, it whispers, yours to notice,
and, if you’re clever, you pause, write it,
maybe paint it, capturing in words
or watercolors the way light silvers
her hair or how his chuckle rumbles
through your ribs.

Perhaps such moments present
sweet gifts that, while fleeting,
become part of the mystery that you,
baby mystic, live every day.
Tomorrow you will be offered
another and another and another,
too quickly whizzing by, but they
snag you more often than you realize.

Floaters, you think. Glimmers.
Sparks. Exactly.

Did you imagine them to be random
accidents? What if these expansive
snippets select the unsuspecting,
wait to see if you bite?

And when you think to
commemorate them, hang them
in your museum of memory,
enlivening them with breath as you
speak of them, you make them live
again.

These ecstatic moments out of time
choose us, the little buggers
vying for our attention,
snippets of what-was-that?
winks presenting themselves
for our wide-eyed astonishment,
our hey-look-at-that! delight.

Autumnal equinox, Sept. 22, 2025,
Northern hemisphere

Today I imagine Western monarchs
born in late summer packing their
tiny bags, preparing to head south

for Mexico or Southern California,
seeking warm spots, trusting their
spot-on radar to guide them to

just-right trees where their fellow
travelers have begun to cluster,
piling on in a massive wingéd cuddle,

not eating or mating, conserving
energy through the cold months.
I prepare for the inward turn

as both hemispheres are equally
brightened by sun today, grateful
to those harvesting the fruits of fall,

apples and pears still ripening,
the figs and late-season plums
and melons, the trees preparing

to release their canopies. But,
like the butterflies, the trees,
the hibernators, humans, too,

must move into dormancy, wait
till our star stretches its rays
and our home planet tilts

sunward again. Then we’ll
shake out our wings, make
test flights to survey how

the world has changed
before making our way back
to where we started, which,

no matter how tidy we left it,
never looks exactly as we
remember, but, with luck,

welcomes our fluttering hearts,
the place all the more beautiful
for the coming home.

Driving home in the September dark,
I see a shadow of leafy something
affixed to the windshield, but,

since it’s not impairing my vision,
I zip up the onramp for the brief
hop on the freeway to my exit,

a swift 65 for a mile, then off,
then home in a trice. Pulling into
the driveway, the porch light

catches the leafy something’s
legs moving. Legs? Pushing my own
out of my four-wheeled cocoon,

I stand and bend and peer at
the darkened glass to find a mantis
of significant size that has not only

hitched a ride but hung on at speed,
only to be relocated a few miles
from, quite possibly, its native habitat.

Horrified, I gently scoop it up,
whispering apologies, deposit it
carefully atop the crawling viney

groundcover next to the driveway.
I do not see it leave, feel only
a slight tickle on my palm as it

leapfrogs to, I pray, safety,
relieved to have preserved this
one small life, knowing that it

cannot make up for all the others
I have not, will not,
ever be able to save.

A past that’s sprinkled with the blues
A few old dreams that I can’t use
Who’ll buy my memories of things that used to be?

—Laminated into the table in Willie‘s Corner at Texas Roadhouse in Elk Grove, CA
From Willie Nelson’s song, “Who’ll buy my memories?” 1984 on “The IRS Tapes”

•••

No one wants your old stuff,
we hear again and again as we
go through our old stuff,

the stuff getting older every day,
as are we. But some memories,
depending on what they are,

or whose they belong to, they
might be worth something.
Willie’s memories must be gold

shrouded in a fragrance of good
weed, and given what he’s done
and who he is, plenty of folks’d

be pleased to buy his memories.
Which, of course, they already do,
in every song, every twang on that

beaten-up old guitar, every word
from those creased lips that you just
know have kissed more than a few

others in their time. I played Willie
nonstop for Julie in her final weeks,
shrunk to a little cocoon of ribs,

no longer singing, mostly gone, her
determined 80-something heart still
keeping time to the raspy baritone.

I held her limp hand, wishing she could
lay into “On the Road” one more time,
or better yet, “Always on My Mind,”

which she still is—one of the many
diamonds in my overfull storehouse
of memories that nobody will want,

every one a gem
that I’ll never trade or sell.

C’mon, you cute thing,
ask me to meet you
at the soda shop

where you’ll buy me
a malted that a white
paper-hatted boy

will deliver to our
booth with three straws.
You’ll give me two,

you’ll take one, and
our teeth will chill
and our brains

will freeze a bit
as we share all that
chocolate frothiness.

Sure, we’ll pretend
to study, one book
open as if we’re eager

to dive into geometry
or Spanish or history.
But the history we’re

after is what we’re
making right here,
if we’re lucky,

a snapshot we’ll
look back on someday
when we’re old

and the kids are
grown, and we’ve got
more time behind us

than ahead. I’ll say,
“Remember this, hon?”
And even if you don’t,

you’ll catch my eye
as you did on that
first date, and say,

“Sure do, babe,”
taking my small
hand in your big one,

something that will
—I promise—
still make me smile.

(for Mom)

This could be your big chance to finally meet him,
you, who swooned from his Sundance Kid days,
imagining yourself as his leading lady in every film.

And if, as you postulated, we give up these bodies,
morphing into bits of energy zinging around
the universe, then how easy it might be for you,

who got there first, to brush up next to the essence
of what used to be an actual movie-star handsome
movie star—casually, no big deal, not saying a word

(because who knows if y’all speak in the after),
but somehow welcoming what used to be him
into forever, as so many must be doing,

especially his equally blue-eyed buddy who teasingly
stole Sundance’s onscreen woman, and, despite
the song, raindrops did not fall on anyone’s head.

They played bandits and con men—we didn’t care.
Our hero carted his fame high into the mountains,
became a champion of the environment—

not that he ever wanted applause for that either.
Up there in the wherever, you might exist as
a couple of anonymous bright lights among billions.

But should you two luminaries bump into
each other, say hi for us down here, will ya?
We miss you. We really do.

August feels like a deep inhale before the year tilts toward fall.
—Carissa Potter

We feel the tilting, the planet beginning
its annual lean in this hemisphere,

the trees already letting go of their shade,
though summer has not let go of us yet

in our neck of the woods. The deep inhale,
we find, is September, the final month of heat,

which could nudge its way into October—
fire season going easy on us this year,

which we hate to say, tempting fate,
knowing how flames can race through

our world at any time. Still, we inhale
the swerve toward fall, which ignores

the calendar, having already overtaken
other places, calling for sweaters and jackets,

which those of us still sweating long for,
while others feel our lizard selves

soaking up what we can as long as we can,
storing it up against what is coming—

whether we like it or not—
what is surely headed our way.