Güd wrtr

It is no small thing to be
granted this time, to walk

into a long-ago classroom alive
in your mind, slide onto a hard

wooden chair attached to
a round-bottomed desk, open

the Formica’d lid, and pull out
a nearly full notebook of

swollen sheets brimming
with your words.

When it is full, you give it
to a classmate—not necessarily

one who understands how much
you live your life on the page—

but to someone who might
happily receive whatever they

find in your stuttering cursive,
which, decades later, you,

perennial student, wish you
could again hold in your hands,

run your fingers over loopy ink
poured from a young heart

onto paper, this slender
volume of you.

Everything—

every breath, every molecule
of sunshine, the deluge that caught you
yesterday, the morsel of gladness
in sharing a smile with a dear one,
that sharp taste of sweetness
down to the unfathomable weight
of yet another sorrow—

none of it will come again.

Not like this. The moment that just
vanished. That one. And the next.

That’s what memory is for, you say.
But memory is a leaky valve, dripping
away what we wish we could store
forever in our heartspace.

You vow to enshrine this instant
or that breath, tucking them
like smooth pebbles into your pockets,
as if you could preserve them.

But you can’t keep what is passing
through—this sigh, that line, this word
down to the last comma, always,
always heading to the full stop
of a period.

So pull the pebbles from your pocket,
the pretty and the ugly, each impossibly
precious. Thank them for coming.

Open your fingers and, one by one,
let them fall gently, returning to
the good earth from whence they came,

and let them go.

(For R.D. Schmidt, in memory of C.W. Schmidt)

You cannot take the measure of a man
from his ruler, the one that rested
in the dark of a slender desk drawer
until it was called into service,

then brought into squinty office light
by the hands of an accountant who
set the straight edge to paper
and drew a confident line

from there to there. Thousands
of feet of line, maybe miles of line,
penciled along the top ridge of that
18-inch artifact now treasured

by his beloved son—himself now
eight decades into a life made,
in no small part, by the hands
of the man who measured and

cared for the tools of his trade,
who had no idea what a treasure
this simple device would become.

(for birthday gal Shelley Burns)

It’s over 60 degrees on the 23rd day
of this new year as freezing friends
in the east express envy and a little

disbelief about Northern California
springlike conditions after (for us)
too many gray days and whomping rain.

As Shelley puts us through our paces
outdoors, we oldies in both song
and soul step lively to her music,

peel off layers, while our nearest star
plays hide-and-seek with scampering
woolly clouds. It’s not over, this winter

of our lives—we know there’s more
to come. But for now, we do what we
can as Sir Elton sings of the sun rolling

high through the sapphire sky. We feel
our backs warming, delighted to be
T-shirted and tennis-shoed in this

moment of possibility, evolving from
winter-bound creatures to ones
who can see their way into spring,

sending our dear ones in the cold
cozy blessings from our little
circle of life on this humble corner

of the only planet we’ll ever call
home.

Sometimes the gods of auto-correct
are your friend, like today,
as my fingers attempt to type—

in case you haven’t heard—

instead, before my fuzzy eyes
the editors behind the scenes
recast it as—

in case you haven’t heart—

which, of course, causes a jackpot
of lines to tumble down the
electronic page—

which you’re reading now—

unbidden by consciousness,
just plunking out of fingers
onto keys—

and I want to assure you—

that, of course, you have heart,
not only the blood-pumping
organ in your animate self—

but no small amount of moxie,
not to mention pluck and purpose,
in the core of your being—

that my own vascular engine
reaches for yours via paltry
words on this ephemeral page—

with great affection for the essence
of you, the nitty-gritty fortitude
and kindliness—

that you extend to so many others—

not least—thank you very much—
lucky, lucky me.

Lately my father has been riding in the backseat
on Momdays as I chauffeur my mother in her car.

He is, of course, belted in—the man who installed
seatbelts in our 1965 turquoise Rambler,

long before any law required them. He grins as
he listens to my mother chatter, something he did

for 47 years before he vanished into mystery.
His voice, garbled and unintelligible, still

answers the phone—my mother reluctant
to change the old message:

Hello, you have reached the Haag residence…

He’s been gone almost 20 years, and he catches
my eye in the rearview, winks now and then,

though I can’t tell if he’s commenting on Mother’s
running monologue, or if he’s giving me a version

of his “atta girl” whacks on the shoulder that
could leave the faintest purple splotch.

“Don’t hit the girls!” Mom would yell, that being
her job when she thought we needed it. But,

in truth, I loved feeling his amiable punch,
his you-can-do-this vote of confidence.

I catch his eye in the mirror as her monologue
washes over us like gentle rain, my hair nearly    

the same as his snowy shade in later years,
as mine when I’d sit tiny and trusting on his lap,

my small hand wrapped around his finger, each
of us delighted to be in the other’s presence.

Jeez, dude next door—
I heard all your (yes, I’m using
this word) ejaculations,

such repeated hollering that
only one thing, I imagine,
could warrant such an outcry.

But an hour later into my
news feed comes the headline,
and I remember what

a football fan you are—
in which case I think, if
watching someone make

a touchdown on TV does
that for you, I hope never
to hear you roar in ecstasy

should the other thing
take place in Apartment 1
two yardlines outside

my living room window…
Or wait. For your sake,
maybe I do.

The days aren’t all gray now,
though they can start that way—
dove gray, glove gray, elephant gray,
cloudy gray—

the color of coins or pencil lead,
pewter or the faintest gray of full moon
seen from a far-away perch from
this humble planet.

Some days in this first month of a new year
shimmer in blues from azure to cornflower,
from the color of arctic ice to the aquamarine
of tropical seas.

But true blue—a dye from Coventry
famous for not washing out, the color
of constancy, of unswerving loyalty,
of the steadfastly faithful—

is what I see when I look in your eyes,
even if what your baby blue irises lack
in melanin, they more than make up
in devotion.

how do you know it’s not the last straw,
that the ship has sailed,
that you have not made matters worse?

your guess is as good as mine
as we live and learn,
bite off more than we can chew
once in a blue moon.

easy does it, my friend,
full steam ahead,
you’ve got this,
you with bigger fish to fry—

it takes one to know one,
both of us joined at the hip,
right here on the same page,
come what may.

My mother cannot see my face
as I stand in the family room

five feet from her—you’re all shadow,
she says—sending a shudder through me

not only because her vision has been
dimming for years, but also because

I, too, now nightly deposit the same
brand of wishful drops in my eyes

that she has used for decades,
hoping to slow the unshakeable stride

of glaucoma. Perhaps her devoted
application has delayed what seems

inevitable, though she has long complained
that many restaurants are too dark—

and I agree—or that someone needs to turn
on more lights. And she understandably

balked when the ophthalmologist told
her that she could no longer drive safely.

I am one of her drivers now, as are my sister
and a few other women who chauffeur her

through her busy life. People look at photos
of the two of us, saying how much I look

like my mother. And though we do not see
the resemblance, I know that I carry her

hazel eyes, her DNA, her fierce independence.
I pray that somehow, behind my irises,

cosmic forces conspire on my behalf to—
please, eye gods—keep me seeing clearly.

Neither of us is ready to give up the light.