Güd wrtr

(from humilis—Latin for low, of the earth)

I retrieve the thick blue foam pad
and toss it in the empty bucket
along with a sturdy trowel, my favorite
pair of clippers and the digger—
a three-pronged fork perfect for
raking small patches of stubborn dirt.

If I remember, I grab the gardening
gloves I’d rather not use but know I
should in thorny situations. Dirty hands,
soil embedded in nails, drying the skin,
is such a satisfying feeling, as it is to
sink onto the foam kneeler before
a plant, a bed, a bush that needs
attention.

Is there a more humbling act
than this? I never considered myself
a prayerful person; it took years to see
that this pose that strains muscles
I use only to do this work counts
as communion, as divine interaction,

that every whispered, OK, grow now,
is a heartfelt blessing, a devotion.
This being human is blessedly low,
of the earth—me, here, with busy hands,
happy in quietude, tranquil mind.

And when I rise, brush off dirt and plant
bits—stray roots dangling from my knees
like lace—I grin at my creaking parts
as, unbidden, the prayer sweeps through:

thankyouthankyouthankyou.

***

You can listen to Jan read this poem here.

Part 2

On an overcast Wednesday I walk
the front yard, casting like a fly fisherman
looking for the best spot. I eyeball
possibilities after yesterday’s wander
through a nursery, guessing how many
plants I need based on what survived
the drenching winter—as always,
driving home with too many.
But that, I figure, gives me options.

Which I need when, sinking to my
knees in supplication, despite my
best efforts at digging, I can’t
deepen a hole thanks to old roots
or decomposing clay pipe. The big
fellow in the gallon pot will need
a different place to land, so instead
I choose the small red-flowered
kalanchoe, a new-to-me succulent
that prompts a prayer of hope for
this little one.

As I dig, I unearth more than a few
earthworms, depositing their wiry
pink bodies in the dirt I set aside,
position the plant just so in its cradle,
then tuck the original occupants
back in with their new roommate.

I cringe when I accidentally trowel
one in half. But the two ends continue
to wriggle and, I understand, thrive,
reborn within eight days into fully
functioning worms—mouth, brain and all.

So I pray to the garden gods that
these blind and deaf creatures may
safely burrow their tubular selves into
dark soil, eating and pooing and creating
healthy space for new roots—silent
environmental helpers busily improving
their home place, which they so gracefully
share with us, too.

Part 1

Moist, dark soil, ready for new life to begin.
—Tina Davidson

We live for this all winter, the first trip to
the nursery to see the babies, to coochie-coo
under their tiny leaves, to fondle their
too-heavy heads, so hard to hold up.

We can’t wait to bring them home
and tuck them into their beds, freshly
turned dirt waiting for them, our hands
busy with implements, a little food,
a hose—whatever we think they need
to grow.

We often come home with too many,
then search for places to put them.
But we find them places where we
will check on them probably far too
often. We will enthuse over each
centimeter of height, over new leaves.

We will pluck the shedding bits, and
yes, some of them we will mourn,
gone before their time. Already in
their resting places, we may just
tuck them under a bit more, thank
them for what they brought to us
in their brief lives, remember their

perkiness when we brought them home,
full of promise, as we promised them
everything, refusing to think of
the moment they would leave us,
kneeling in supplication, dirt
under our nails,

before we turn again to the ones
still growing—the taller, bushier,
thriving ones we hope, with luck,
will outlive us.

***

To listen to Jan read this poem, click here.

for Georgann

Hey. That vine that climbed the trellis
in your Aunt Betty’s backyard, the one
with miniature pink buds that popped
out like teeny nipples each spring,

the one you said smelled like a French
whorehouse—what was that again?
Because it’s climbing over my fence.
Haven’t seen it for several years

but boom! It’s back. I’d know that smell
anywhere, but I can’t for the life of me
remember what it’s called. Some kind
of jasmine? Not the showy white star

jasmine—these are tighter, smaller
blooms—and it’s driving me crazy that
I can’t remember. More crazy that you’re
not here to remind me. Here. I’ll take

a photo, hold the phone to the sky;
maybe you can see it from where you are.
Or better yet, I’ll just go stand by those
blossoms that are like catnip to bees

(yeah, I’m mixing a metaphor—you loved
doing that),

and I’ll inhale deeply and think of you saying,
“Yep, French whorehouse,” as if you knew
firsthand, anticipating my reliable guffaw,
which is perhaps why its name escapes me,

delighting as I do in your perfumed simile.
Tell you what: I’ll park myself by the fence
for as long as it takes for you to drop the name
into my ear, just to hear your voice through

spring sunbeams, basking in the lush,
overpowering sweetness that brings you
to me—pink jasmine, BFF!—so heady I have
to sit down, breathless,

me and my grateful heart.

***

You can listen to Jan read this poem here.

noun: one who wanders in the night

I still awaken some nights
hearing the click click clicking
of his nails down the hall,
his tags jingling his arrival,

feel him making his way to
the big round bed on the floor,
softened by his aging bulk,
which means that you are

not far behind. And if I open
my eyes and rise, I’m sure
to find you together, man and
dog gone these many years,

one of you panting, both of you
smiling, four brown eyes issuing
a welcome without a word,
an invitation to sit with you,

my night guardians come to
lullabye me back to sleep, ones
I will carry into wakefulness
as I wander the world,

remembered.

I’m delighted to report that I’ve been writing and posting daily poems for six months now (since Nov. 1, 2022), and it’s truly become a nourishing daily practice. The words and images show up fairly easily most days, and, when they don’t, I find that I’m the one getting in the way. Then the practice becomes to breathe, maybe take a walk and get out of the way so they can show up.

They’re not perfect, and I’m reminded daily to post them anyway and not be attached to how many people like them or comment on them… or don’t. But when they do, I have to say, my heart soars.

So thank you, if you’ve been reading and liking them… whether you hit that button on not. You can also sign up (in the little box on the right side of the home page) to get an email about my daily posts at my website, https://janishaag.com/ , (and you can see the poems there with nifty things like italics, which I can’t do reliably on FB).

I’m grateful to folks who post their art and/or words daily online like James Crews, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Joe Chan, Kathy Keatley Garvey, haikuandy (aka Andy Dugas) and so many more. You don’t have to post your creative work daily to allow it to make someone’s day… you just have to share it in some way.

Mahalo nui loa on this gorgeous Lei Day, which it is in Hawaii!

For two weeks the plants
overwintering on the front porch
have waved at me each time
I come or go, their gentle signal
that it’s time to move back to the back,

to the deck under the big sycamore
for far more fresh air and sunshine
than they see all winter. But they’re
safer from frost tucked up close
to the old stucco house, even if
the two tall ficus lose more than
half their leaves between fall
and spring.

The poor withered aloe plant looks
pathetic—it always does—but
it’ll perk up in a few weeks, along
with the leggy begonias, with some
fresh light.

Somehow the bright-eyed
Johnny Jump-Ups remain perky,
the little tri-color violas reseeding
with no help from me.

Year after year the patio/porch pots
prove to be the most forgiving plant
friends. Even the round bowl of
heat-seeking succulents has thrived,
even as these lizard plants and I are
jonesing for spring sun, craving
heat to thaw our roots.

And as I carefully walk each one
down the driveway like a bride
en route to the altar, I whisper,

Happy spring! Welcome back to
soaking up the long-light days,
basking in sprinkler showers,
sprouting and growing, truly,
finally, warm at last.

***

If you’d like to listen to Jan read this poem, click here.

Walking the labyrinth,
clocking its distance because
someone asked, on the way

in I come upon a small
oblong black bug heading
the same way I am,

and I pause, bend to
look closely, its little
legs chugging it from

shade into sun ever
so slowly, taking its time,
walking its own walk

as we all must do,
and I step over it to
continue on the path

to center (.2 miles, it
turns out, one way),
and later, on the return,

I pause to look for my
my walking companion,
but it has disappeared,

at least from my view,
though I smile knowing
that the wee presence—

or perhaps a large one
in a tiny form—is still
around somewhere,

even if I can’t see it.

Make sure you’re not too prolific. You could be taking words and punctuation away
from someone more needy.

—Duchess Goldblatt on Twitter, April 21, 2023

Because, after all, there are only
so many words to go around—
and there, in only two lines, I’ve used
a dozen of them—though more than

a dozen years ago researchers estimated
that there’s somewhere north of a million
words, and that’s just in English. And while
most English speakers know upward of

40,000 words, most of us use half that
many, which is good because that leaves
more for others. And that’s not even
considering all the commas, perhaps

the most deceptively simple but tricky-to-use
punctuation mark, and the equally
mystifying-to-many apostrophe, as well
as double quotations Americans use around

spoken words, the single quotes much
of the rest of the English-speaking world
employs. Not to mention my beloved
em dash—the width of a lowercase “m”—

the granddaddy of dashes, longer than
the en dash– (the width of a lowercase “n”),
and longer still than the trusty hyphen-
that lovely mark that both divides and joins.

Oh, it goes on and on. I realize now
how selfish I’ve been, wantonly using
oodles of words (many of them the same,
so does that count?) over so many years,

not rationing my commas, delighting in
the occasional exclamation point, and,
of course, halting a thought with a full stop.
Perhaps I can donate some rarely used gems

like facetious and henceforth, some
precious semi-colons and colons to those
who have so few. Here: Take them. Use them;
treasure them as the gems they are.

I’ve happily employed more than my fair
share in this lifetime, though, truth be told—
dear word gods, let this be so—
I pray that I’m not done yet.

***

You can listen to Jan read this poem here.

(or Why I love exercising with Shelley)

Because the music, magically channeled
from her phone to the small turquoise speaker,

is so good, gets us moving, and her
delightfully peppy self makes moving fun

(to paraphrase Fleetwood Mac), and she
can’t help but belt out R-E-S-P-E-C-T

when Aretha does. And because I fall into
high harmony with Artie on “Mrs. Robinson,”

I’m not noticing the slightly annoying pull
in my upper right leg, and most of all

because when the Isley Brothers swing into
“Twist and Shout,” Shelley’s hips move

accordingly, and so do those of her oldie
students, each of us with one leg bent,

up on toes, twisting on one side, then the other,
and because if this is exercise, singing

and dancing the body parts, I’ll happily take it—
Well, shake it up, baby, now

Twist and shout…