Sculling faceup in the pool,
the increasing moon climbing
heavily into the sky,
I float under dozens anchored
high in the trees, like a flock
of white doves stilled by sleep,
not a coo from any of them,
guardians observing my slow
laps. Or are they petaled angels,
ones I fail to notice during the day,
silently gleaming, brilliant in pool
light, a heavenly host of helpers
keeping watch by night?
I awaken with a headache—
not unusual as the pressure rises—
when the H on the weather maps
means high, which we all feel,
including the cats, who, despite all
that fur, morph into feline lizards,
typically flopping onto too-hot cement,
sponging up sun.
But today, they are inside by choice,
because, it turns out, they are smarter
than they look, and even 80 degrees
inside feels cool on this first day
of this month when, near the end,
I become officially senior, someone
of advanced years, all of 65, which,
as so many report, feels not all that old.
Here I am, demonstrating a lack
of common sense, outdoors watering,
though I know the day will suck up
moisture almost as soon as it leaves
the hose.
Here I am, sprinkling the tops of my feet,
as I did on long-ago summer days
walking a high school pool deck—
flip-flopped, red bikini’d, shades on,
red hatted and nose zinc oxided—
mornings teaching little kids how to
push off the side, glide, stroke, breathe,
do it again,
afternoons on the tall lifeguard chair,
whistle around my neck, scanning the pool
like a raptor watching for the vulnerable,
unlike the Mulligan brothers gyrating off
the high dive almost 10 feet up,
climbing out, climbing up,
doing it again,
evenings coaching the synchro team,
girls with ballet legs extended long into
the dusk, droplets glistening on their calves,
sculling to keep themselves at the surface,
not showing effort in their calm faces,
cool in the water, despite the air temp,
which, we always hoped, would
sink with the sun, blesséd rest,
before rising again, all of us,
to swim another day.
In memory of Ruth Rita Nelson
Every year you’d send me a card
aimed to arrive on the 30th of June,
rosy with floral sentiment and your
familiar signature, Love, Mom II,
because you took it upon yourself
to mother the new girl reporter
on the local paper who’d suffered
one too many beestings on assignment
with your son, the photographer.
He brought me home; you tucked my
puffed-up face into the guest bed with tea
and Benadryl, quietly coming in to check
on one who imagined herself a bona fide
grownup instead of one who needed
tending in a tender way that day.
And for decades after, your cards
often arrived a month ahead of my
actual day—no one in your family
got the day right—but I didn’t care.
I still have those cards celebrating
the anniversary of my arrival on
the planet a bit early, and now,
when I come across them, I smile,
remembering your strong nurse’s
hands placing cool cloths on my
stung forehead, taking me into
your heart long before I realized
I’d landed there.
for RDS
On the same day I’m given a dummy typewriter—
tin, hollow inside, perhaps a movie prop—
from a long-ago student who has never
forgotten my affection for old-fashioned
typing machines,
you and I head for the fancy computer store
named for a fruit to pick up a lighter-than-air
laptop to replace my old workhorse that,
bless its little hard drivin’ RAM, is ready
to spend its days
in the electronic equivalent of a grassy pasture.
And so we bring home a shiny new model
that I approach as gingerly as a new cat,
trying to let it gradually warm up to me,
remaining patient when it sends
testy messages like invalid access code,
when it really wants me to withdraw my
excited fingertips, leave it alone so it can
breathe a bit, close its electronic eyes, begin
to feel at home in this strange environment.
I get it.
Whether century-old technology or
the newest of the new, four-footed or
no-footed, sometimes you just need to curl
up in a soft place and shut down for a while.
And when you awaken,
blinking and bright-screened, you have
more patience as your new person learns
more about you, getting to know you,
what to say and how to touch you in that
just-right way.
This lust hits me every year about this time,
as the temperature soars toward the century
mark, as kids unwrap from school and take
to their bikes to freewheel their way wherever
they want to go.
Though I don’t recall asking for a pink two-wheeler,
it’s what I tooled around on in my youth. Sissy
pink girlie bike that embarrassed my budding
feminist self. But now, my heart annually yearns
for such a bike, a fat-tired cruiser,
and when I saw one in a store today—
shopping for cat food, not transportation—
I felt the familiar swoon of the unattainable.
Wobbly for years, strongly advised to
avoid wheels and heels, I have walked away
from such temptation again and again.
Today I paused next to a blushing bike,
complete with perky basket and a swooping V
angling up to its cushy wide seat, practically
begging me to swing a leg over and take it
for a spin, zipping through all seven speeds,
and oh, yes, thumbing the lever on that
creamy bell.
And for the rest of the day I am twelve again,
hopping on my pink two-wheeler to catch up
with my best friend and my sister, calling to
each other as we pedal wherever we want to go:
This way! Over here! It’s summer, girls,
and we have the whole day ahead of us.
Let’s go see what we can see.
The path that is new to you
is familiar to others, clearly worn by feet
walking it minutes, days, decades,
centuries before you.
You know this, of course, but walking
with a friend — who used to regularly tread
this path with her beloved — it feels new,
as it did the last time you were here,
which was the first time,
or was it?
Three grand oaks lean over the path
at the same angle, as if by agreement,
shaggier now, canopied with dark leaves
against the heat, which is coming,
as it does.
Both of you pause in the shade,
listen to the swift river running high and green
masked by thick foliage, remember others
with whom you walked paths like this,
ones seemingly vanished into mystery.
Rest in the moment, admiring
the poetry of storied trunks and reaching branches,
before walking a bit more, moving back
into the light, and going on.
I want to be fully here. Tonight I will sleep
between two streams of water, under stars that move
from what I don’t know to what I don’t know.
—Pat Schneider from “If I Were God” in “The Patience of Ordinary Things”
•••
Every night the stars shift overhead,
or, if we think like astronomers,
this blue marble we call home
revolves slowly amid a sea
of pure black, dotted with pinpoints
of stars light years away. How can
we be anywhere else but here?
This is the only here we have.
But then, sleeping as I do
between two streams of water
that surround my city like blood-
carrying veins, my dreams
turn me into a cosmic fish, riding
the blast of supernovas whose
light will not reach this planet
for eons, swimming through
the I-don’t-know-what of space
time, a finning set of particles
of recycled energy that cannot
be destroyed. I swim with
the light, into the light, until,
traveling in waves, I am light,
the only form of energy visible
to the human eye, which
you might see as I rise
to catch a breath, then dive,
fully here—wherever that
might be.
for Lauren and Gerald, now joined by Henry
He should have arrived with
a list clutched in his tiny fist,
an instruction manual for this
new human, specifically tailored
for his particular self.
But no. They don’t send them
with one. I don’t know why.
Like it would be so much skin
off God’s nose to send a how-to
pamphlet (OK, maybe a set of
encyclopedias) called:
How to Be in the World
So, like every other parent,
you’re gonna have to guess.
Make your own list. What does
this kid need to know on his
road to becoming a fully
formed human?
One of you will likely want
to make sure he knows his way
around an engine, have him
peering into one when he’s
a toddler. The other one will
pass on her love of good movies,
how to gently pat the doggie
and kitties, and tie his shoes.
Both of you will read to him
endlessly, thinking, this book again?!
and then one day you will miss
those snuggly moments when
he reads on his own.
You will teach him to scramble
an egg and make toast, to brush
his teeth and hair, to aim first,
flush after, to pick up after himself
(some times more successful than
others), to ask for help and say
thank you, two of the best prayers,
how to be a good friend, and
to cultivate awe, as he will when
he becomes captivated by fire engines
and big trucks, by butterflies and
flowers that smell good.
You will, of course, both
steady him as he sets off on
his own two feet—something,
I’m told, good parents do
all the days of their lives, you
already excellent teachers, you.
Lucky him. Lucky you, setting
off on this great adventure
together. So much fun. Some tears.
Lots of laughter. It all adds up
to a life well lived.
Go do that.
LavaUmuchly,
Great Aunt Jan
First, you can’t.
You can try. But you can’t.
They have to want to return,
and if they have lost the gleam in the eye,
the impetus to continue, the breath,
you have to know that all the urging,
the pleading, the desperation
will not help.
Here’s what might:
While they can still move, breathe,
smile, speak, whether they can still
walk the dog or feed the cat,
or not,
when they can still hug you
with their arms or their eyes,
when they can speak to you,
with words or their eyes,
whether they can wag a tail
or brush against your leg for a pat,
at every opportunity,
in silence,
let your heart wrap them with
each corpuscle of love coursing
through you, let your vertebrae
hold them upright, feel their cells
embed in yours, and think:
You are everything to me—
you cherished human/husband/
wife/son/daughter/beloved friend.
Stay as long as you can.
And when you can’t, I have
tucked you, a constituent of
matter and light, inside my
marrow,
your microscopic photons
ping-ponging through me—
you, there, for as long as I am,
which, with luck, equals
eternity.
I say to Poki, when she begins
to eat again after a week of languishing,
when I wondered daily if she was
on her way out,
watching, because if she was
truly dying, she didn’t seem to be
in pain—just wanted to sleep,
tolerated occasional gentle pats,
which is what we all want in times
of The Great Tired. And when she
nibbled cat treats, just a couple,
on Day 6, I wanted not to scare
her by shouting, Atta girl! So I
whispered it to her as she chewed
delicately, and then again the next
day when she ate some dry food
and the next when she ate her
usual wet food. And I find myself
murmuring it as I perform
the most mundane chores,
when I complete a task—
especially one I’m not fond of.
Atta girl, I whisper. Good girl.
You got that job done.
Güd wrtr 