Güd wrtr

Driving home tonight
through cataracts of gauzy air

that have curtained themselves
all the way to the ground,

the long ago returns
in soft focus—

driving an hour home on
narrow levee roads winding

through the dark
after lying in his arms for hours,

barely able to see beyond
my headlights

for more reasons than one.

How did I ever safely make it home
to the man waiting for me?

How reckless.
How besotted by

the fog of love overtaking
all good sense and reason.

How I didn’t question it then.
How perhaps I still shouldn’t.

(In memory of Queen Lili’uokalani of Hawaii,
1838–1917, on the 133rd anniversary of
the overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom)

•••

It is not the first time that the country
I think of as mine has muscled its way
into another and bent unwilling
people to the will of outsiders.

There’s a long list of which we should
be ashamed, including the overthrow
of the last Hawaiian monarch
on this day in 1893,

a queen deposed by a group of
mostly American insurgents,
mostly for their financial gain,
altering the history of the most
isolated islands on the planet
forever.

They later put the queen on trial
in her own throne room, accusing her
of plotting against those who usurped her—
or at least knowing about the attempt—
convicting and imprisoning her on
the second floor of her palace.

Each visit to that room leaves me
in tears as I stand before the quilt
quilt where the queen’s embroidered
handwriting lives—the one she and her
companion stitched after being convicted
of treason against the country that had
forcibly taken her kingdom from her.

Nine quilt blocks, some fabricated from
the queen’s clothing, inscribed with the dates
she took the throne and abdicated it:

Her Majesty Queen Liliuokalani.
Imprisoned at Iolani Palace. January 17th 1895.
Companion Mrs Eveline Melita Kiloulani
Kaopaokalani Wilson. Released Sept 6th 1895.
We began this quilt here.

To think that my country, ’tis of thee, could
attempt the overthrow of another innocent
island—the world’s largest—ignites long-
simmering outrage I thought I’d quelled.

But here we are, and I am as deeply shamed
by the actions of would-be empire builders
as some must have been in the 1890s,
as I whisper a long-ago overthrown queen’s
motto: ʻOnipaʻa.

May those islanders, like their Hawaiian
counterparts more than a century ago,
stand firm, steadfast, immovable in purpose
as they strive to protect what is so rightfully
theirs.

I’m pretty sure the headline meant
the body, with an image of a woman
with leg in the air, actually
stretching.

But my mind went to trees lengthening
their long spines toward the light,
bending as necessary, or perhaps
by desire,

and I thought again how fortunate
I am to be able to fold at the waist,
give my own flexible backbone a break,
and—really, how simple,

rising on a long breath—to imagine
my skull opening a tiny bit, lifting
toward the light, stretching toward
what is possible,

even if I’m not quite tall enough
to perceive it. Yet.

Though some folks with a wicked
sense of humor decided to name
their stretch of Arizona desert

Nothing, and though today on someone’s
humorous calendar has been dubbed
Nothing Day, I can’t designate

even one of the increasingly fewer days
that lie before me as nothing. I hope
to have many quiet days ahead with

no particular thing pressing on me,
but let there never be a Nothing Day.
And if I imagine that there is, let me

take myself outside for a walk down
the block to witness so much Something
in the seemingly ordinary.

Like the fact that the sun is shining
on winter-bare trees busily preparing
foliage that will soon pop out,

days when I will again find myself
marveling at the cycle of things
that die as other things ready

themselves to be born, gloriously
“ta-da!”ing their way into the world,
this world, our world, right here,

regenerating without human
interference—miraculous, really—
not nothing at all.

Seven years after,
I can’t count how many
times I look at you

in a moment of fleeting
irritation, when the blue
of your eyes shimmers

just so, as it did when
they blinked open
the day I lost you,

and you returned
thanks to the help of
strangers.

And that tiny moth
of annoyance flits away,
softening me with

the simplest blessing:
Here you are.
Here we are.

No greater gift than
these extra 2,555 days
of us.

No matter how many
more lie before us,
we are here

in this eyeblink of
evaporating moment,
and I will embrace

every sparkling instant
of now
that we are given.

•••

For Dick Schmidt on the seventh anniversary of his
cardiac arrest and rebirth-a-versary, with our thanks to
all the helpers who brought him back to life and tended
him in his recovery.

•••

And, if you like, you can read more about Dick’s Great Heart Adventure in 2019 here.

There’ll be a sign. Of course, there’ll be a sign.
It’ll be subtle, but it will find you if you open

your heart and let the wind blow through.
Hope can look like winter-bare trees showing

tiny bumps of buds-to-be, or a bird beginning
to trill as you step outside. Or a kitty brushing

your calf or a doggy licking your hand. But hope
can also look like the man standing on the center

divider of the busy intersection with a sign that
simply says, Please. And you do not want to

pass up hope when a sign suddenly appears.
You think all hope is lost? That nothing can

overcome act after act of outrageous cruelty?
Let that exposed heart of yours respond

with tears, with outrage, and let that response
be a sign unto you: HOPE, it may say,

in gigantic, Second Coming type, the kind that
used to blast big news from newspapers.

Stop wherever you are. Look around. Extend
a kind hand to a stranger along with the rest

of your tender self. When you feel another’s
hand in yours, squeeze some lovingkindness

into it. Smile the tiniest bit of mutual hope into
each other’s eyes. Watch it burst into blossom.

(for Dick Schmidt, aka Uncle Duck,
in honor of National Rubber Ducky Day)

When, as little kids, your niece and nephew
christened you Uncle Duck, giggling over
the clever wordplay, you were stuck.

Forever after, ducks appeared for birthdays
and Christmases, many of them designed
for bathtubs that you did not use—

ducks sporting a variety of headwear—
baseball caps and police helmets,
ducks as pilots and nurses, pirates

and hard hatted workers. I acquired
some, too, by virtue of being your
duckly consort—Queen Elizaduck I

with her red hair and ruff is a favorite.
(I have passed on presidential ducks
and a gruesome zombie duck with its

eyeball hanging out.) But it is clear to
those who know you as The Duck that
you are unique among webbed ones,

one who, every spring, flies to his
neighborhood pond looking for those
of a feather who have flown in

seasonally, some of whom lay eggs
and produce ducklings that bob
down the waterways just like

the rubber versions of their kind,
un-hatted, fluffy balls with little
fast-paddling feet. You take their

photos, Uncle Duck, chronicling
the newest generation of waterfowl
that may not yet recognize you

as one of them, as one of us,
our favorite bird.

It never had a formal name
scripted across its stern.
It was just “the boat,”
or, since his demise,
“Dad’s boat,”

though it was Mom’s color,
turquoise across the broad
bow and interior with white
undercarriage,

late ’60s Silverline Rambler—
which shared the garage
with the turquoise Rambler
station wagon—

inboard/outboard engine
that moved all four of us
effortlessly over the lake
in the park across the road.

It’s still there in the garage,
now turned over, along with
the house, to the next generation.
And oh, how my breath

caught when my sister and I
walked in after the renovation
to see, hanging on the old brick
fireplace, a large art piece

created by the new woman
of the house—the boat
on the lake under stormy
skies, sun gleaming its sides

as bright and clean as the day
our parents trailered it home.
I stood, gobsmacked,
oh-oh-oh-ing, one hand

crossing my chest as if ready
to recite a pledge, feeling him
and her in that room with two
generations of family they made,

all their mutual unhappiness
washed away, just the love
shining on the old boat
rendered anew,

as if it had been there all
this time, just waiting
for my eyes to refocus
enough to see it.

•••

For Ashley Redfield Just, who created this marvelous rendering
of the boat, and Kevin Just, now caring for it in his grandfather’s stead,
with deep appreciation from the Haag sisters.

In memory of our father, Roger Haag, and our mother,
Dorothy/Darlene Haag, and the trusty Silverline Rambler,
still in the garage.

And for my sister Donna and her husband Eric, who grew this family to perfection!

Doesn’t have to be much,
just a few lines,

I often tell people trying
to write one.

Or in the words of a poet
I greatly admire, It doesn’t have

to be good—
it just has to be true.

So we set down the truest thing
we can say in this moment

on a page, watch it wriggle
and decide whether

to stay put or climb to its little feet
and leave. It’s not so much

up to us, as it is up to the words.
Nope, gonna get going,

or, I think I like it here. Gonna stay.
And when the latter happens,

we call it inspiration,
imagining that the poem flew in

on a whoosh, and we cleverly
grabbed it and set it down, when

really, it’s beyond our control.
Which, come to think of it,

might be the best definition
after all.

•••

• With thanks to poet Esther Cohen for the title borrowed from “Another Laundromat Poem”
https://overheardec.substack.com/p/another-laundromat-poem

• In this case (because I have many), the “poet I greatly admire” is Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, who publishes her daily poems here:
https://ahundredfallingveils.com/

As Jupiter reaches opposition—
when the giant of this solar system
lies between our blue marble and the sun—

I will look up at nightfall and track
its progress across the winter sky,
closer than ever to Earth,

bright as a star. And should I have
a telescope handy, as Galileo did,
I might be able to see the four

Galilean moons, named for
the Italian astronomer who
realized in 1610 that they orbit

Jupiter, not our planet, providing
solid evidence that, contrary to opinion,
everything is not Earth-centered.

That a narrow vision of control,
creating opposition where it
doesn’t need to exist,

is a human-centered fixation like
post-baptism bibles … plucked from
street corners from the meaty hands

of zealots, as a young poet wrote
six years ago, before her blood was
spilled on American pavement,

when she wondered if science
can coexist with faith and wonder.
As I continue to wonder and look

for evidence of what can and cannot
be easily seen on Earth
as it is in the heavens.

•••

(In memory of Renée Nicole Macklin Good, Oct. 7, 1980 – Jan. 7, 2026.
The words in italics are from her award-winning poem,
“On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs,” which can be read here.)