Güd wrtr

Learn how to:
• Skateboard
• Dance
• Scuba dive
• Sail a sizable craft
• Play guitar and sing
• Speak at least four languages

Most important:
• Be born into human form again,
some time, some place.
Doesn’t matter where or when,
but preferably to kind people
who adore me.

Like the man I saw ambling
down the sidewalk
the day after Christmas,
a small boy with tousled hair
the color of Yukon gold potatoes

riding tall on the shoulders,
I imagine, of the one who
made him a boy, who contributed
the chromosome dubbed y,

which begs the question:
Why do this? In this lifetime
(please, let there be more)
or any other?

And there’s the answer:
strolling just to stroll, carrying
someone you love so they can
see the world,

someone who one day might
do the same for you—
offer you a new vantage point,
ferry you with great devotion
where you need or want to go,

singing in a language you have
come to know by heart.

On Boxing Day, the hub and the bub
having subsided, life resuming its
normal ebb and flow,

I errand around my ‘hood, deciding
that yes, I will tackle the traditional
post-Christmas chicken lasagna

that Dick and I have come to love,
so I stop at two stores and from
memory (a risky thing)

gather ingredients, pleased with
myself for recalling them all, when,
outside Trader Joe’s,

I walk past the surprise of someone’s
stray purple spectacles on the path
to the parking lot.

I stop and peer through my own lenses,
thinking of my mother and her
lost specs yesterday,

on Christmas, me fetching her readers,
not the bifocals, not where they
she thought they were.

I think of the poor woman whose
purple frames must have fallen
from pocket or purse—

a stylish woman, given the snazzy specs,
who perhaps this very moment is frantically
looking for them.

I pick them up, searching for someone
blinking in optical confusion.
Seeing no one,

I settle for a store employee who says,
after I ask, that yes, they have
a lost and found,

and I hand him the glasses,
hoping they find their way back
to their owner, as I was finally able

to do for my mother, after she recalled
where she’d last seen them. She
put the beaded chain

around her neck, her eyeglasses
restored to their proper position
on chest or bridge of nose,

the gift of sight one that we lens
wearers do not take for granted,
sighing in relief

when the world comes blessedly
into focus.

It’s been 33 Christmases since we’ve had
a baby boy to fuss over, and that one’s
grown up to be a band director,

and his sister, the high school photography
teacher, and her husband have thoughtfully
brought the best gift to the party—

their firstborn, a son, all of seven months
old, who provides all the entertainment
nine grownups could want. He’s better

than “White Christmas” on the big TV.
My sister and I don’t even sing along
when Rosemary Clooney and Vera Ellen

go into their “Sisters” number with their
gorgeous aqua dresses and feathered fans.
We are focused on The Baby, who is

Henry, and we take turns holding him,
jostling him, feeding him, soothing him,
not least my sister and brother-in-law,

the delighted grandparents who babysit
weekdays. He is a gem in every way, of
course, sweet and easily amused,

incredibly tolerant of all the holiday
hub-bub, tired but fighting it, not
wanting to miss the goings-on.

Next year we’re eager to see his
bigger version tearing into pretty paper
to see what surprises hide there.

Henry will be past this baby stage,
well into toddler-hood, and we
will, as humans do, miss this

drooling, bright-eyed boy with his
close cap of barely there red hair.
It’s all going so fast, his mama

will say, and we who remember her
and her brother at this age will
nod and smile, marveling at how

far they’ve traveled in these human
journeys, all of which come and go
so much faster than any of us

would like.

Christmas is coming. (future tense)
Christmas is upon us. (present tense)
Christmas joy spreads throughout the land.
There is no Christmas like snow Christmas.

Santa Claus is coming to town. (hopeful tense)
He sees us when we’re sleeping;
he knows when we’re awake
he knows when we’ve been bad or good—
the old stalker. (creepy tense)

O, Christmas tree, O, Christmas tree,
how lovely are your branches
(see the kitty, very much in present tense,
ready to leap into them).

For unto you is born this day a savior,
which is Christ the Lord. (present tense)
And this shall be a sign unto you; (future tense)
you shall find the babe wrapped
in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

That’s what Christmas is all about,
Charlie Brown. (Linus tense)

This Christmas. Present tense.
The gift of all of us together.
We are love incarnate, like the babe.
Breathe in the love molecules,
invisible bubbles floating
around us.

Future tense:
Tomorrow, go outside.
Exhale them into the world.

Rejoice.

Searching for the app on my computer,
I stumble across a photo of you that I
took seven years and eleven days ago

at Burr’s, you having polished off
a turkey sandwich, you in town for
a visit, you upright, on your feet,

the perennial cancer patient, you
called yourself, doing reasonably
well. And you are FaceTiming

with Emma in Washington so she
can say hi to me—the grownup
girl who, as a baby, cried for a solid

month after you brought her into
your life. (Rescued is not too strong
a word.) I’d come to your house

and walk the floor with Emma,
wailing through all manner of young
trauma, so you could go to the store.

That day, years later, we joyfully
reunited, even if you did have to nap
on my couch for a while, and big old

dumb boy cat Diego draped his lanky
orange self along your side as you
slept. I am brought back to the now

as Terri and I try to puzzle
through long-distance connection
gone wonky, not unlike you and Burr’s,

both vanished into mystery. If we
keep at it, we can connect through
one means or another, the living,

the non-living and those in between,
the how-can-this-still-be
of enduring love everpresent,

if we pause long enough to let
our ravaged hearts settle, practice
patience as grace searches

then finds us just where we are,
we thirsty beings, holding out
our nearly empty cups,

ready for love to fill them
to the brim.

•••

(for Terri Wolf, with thanks and love,
and for the late BFF Georgann Turner,
likewise)

•••

In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing. We lived at the junction of great trout rivers in western Montana, and our father was a Presbyterian minister and a fly fisherman who tied his own flies and taught others. He told us about Christ’s disciples being fishermen, and we were left to assume, as my brother and I did, that all first-class fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fishermen and that John, the favorite, was a dry-fly fisherman.

—Norman Maclean (Dec. 23, 1902–Aug. 2, 1990)
from his novella, A River Runs Through It

•••

We know so little of John—
that he fished with his father,
Zebedee, and his brothers, one
of them James—so the story says,

that they became some of the first
fishers of men, and that John
was perhaps the “beloved disciple”
who sat near the foot of the cross,
who ran to the empty tomb to see
his dead friend and teacher
resurrected.

But I imagine fisherman John
not on that great sea with a net
but with rod and reel and creel,
one of seven men who miraculously
caught 153 fish after Jesus
urged them to keep trying.

And even more miraculous,
when I happen upon a river
where fishers ply the water,
I see the apostle—not unlike
the fly fisherman who loved me—
tall and bearded, strong armed,

standing in the shallows
waving the long, supple rod
high overhead on a 10-2 count
before loosing the filament
with its dry caddis fly to glide
lightly upon the water—

later walked upon by his
beloved master, who
multiplied the fish
and fed the 5,000—

he, the light of the world,
the prince of peace,
whose birth we herald
this blesséd season.

for the Together We Heal writing group
on the winter solstice, 2023

•••

Heads bowed, bodies stilled,
it looks as if we’re doing nothing,
when, actually, so much courses
through us like snowmelt over
rocks, making its way down,
down, down.

Not wanting to go there, we
find ourselves amid rapids,
a little fearful of what we might
find, not wanting to tumble over
the rough bits, to scrape paper-thin
skin on unseen rocks, to dredge up
what we’ve so carefully buried.

But in the depths there’s more
than dark, more than sorrow
and loss and great gulps of pain—
the scariest things with no names.

Together we write; the page
can take it all—the hurt, the rage,
the ugly parts we’ve worked
hard to keep hidden.

As the letters form on the page,
the worst of the worst begins
to melt, to run downstream
away from us, whispering
as it goes:

Even on the longest night,
so much good lies ahead.
You are safe. You are held.
Tomorrow you will see
more light.

I am one who sits with you
under the mystery of stars,

whether by day or night,
always present, visible or in-,

long fascinated by the universe
that both creates and holds us.

You, too, comprise part of
the greater One, the Is,

and we often rise and dance
together, knowingly or un-,

even on this, the year’s
longest night, under a waxing

gibbous moon that will set
just before sunrise.

And when you breathe into
mystery—in awe, in grief,

in joy—you extend the cosmic
hand of divine love back into

creation, on a single breath,
right back to me.

(In memory of Julia Ellen Cook)

Her voice still ricochets around in my head
when I’m chewing on a problem or in grief—

Honey… in Julie’s nasally twang—though I have
no idea where she picked that up, not having

grown up in a place where folks twanged
their vowels. I met her when I rented her

studio next to the garage on Serenity Hills
Drive. Out my window I could hear the

neighbors’ two horses and a goat munching
sweet grass in season and where I learned

that a cut-up apple or chunks of carrot
could make you a friend in short order.

Julie’s Honey… came out as kindness, not
condescension, always accompanied by

a heartful smile of affection. In my twenties
then, I wondered how old you had to be

to carry off such an endearment without
sounding patronizing or, well, old. And I’d

never have her twang. Years later when I
found myself standing in front of roomsful

of college students, some of whom appeared
at my office door in tears, I heard myself

Honey… a young woman who reached for my
hand and squeezed hard. I squeezed back.

I found that if I delivered the sentiment
(or maybe an occasional Sweetie…)

with the right smile and honest compassion,
it could convey a gentleness and the kind

of sympathy that feels like a just-right hug.
Now that I live in the land of older ladies,

I hear myself Honey… people—hoping
they feel the verbal embrace, a kind of

holding that says I’m sorry, I’m with you,
How can I help? Which we all need more of,

that sweetness, that tenderness, that mercy.

Singin’ and swingin’ and gettin’ merry like Christmas.
—Maya Angelou

They are makin’ merry, those ladies harmonizing
in the California statehouse, singin’ and swingin’,

jingle bell rockin’, winter wonderlanding and
hearing the angels sing for twenty-five years

in the rotunda to let their voices float high
into the dome—my mama in the front row,

this year rockin’ a zippy walker-with-seat.
Not that she needs it, mind you, but it does

make things easier, she’ll allow, walking from
the parking garage across L Street, into

the north entrance to the Capitol, then
standing for a good hour in silver and red

sequins, gettin’ listeners into the spirit
of the season—not least me, humming along,

capturing this sweet moment of my mama
so happy, makin’ music with her friends,

ho, ho, ho, hallelujah, and to all a good night.