Güd wrtr

The tiniest thing can make a poem,
I say, when people ask where they
come from—

like the grasshopper who inadvertently
hitched a ride on my windshield
on the drive home after a massage,

stiffening my shoulders with concern
for its welfare. Should I pull over
and find it a grassy spot to live

out the rest of its days, which,
surely, at this time of year—even
on an 86-degree October afternoon—

are numbered? Can I gently
cup it in my hands to transfer
it safely, to do so without harm?

In meaning to extend a kindness,
our actions often yield the opposite,
however unintended,

like the grasshopper scrambling
for purchase on the glassy surface,
and, as I debated, disappearing

in a whoosh. So I drove on, wishing
I’d handled things differently, helped
this one or that one or the other one

touch down in a soft landing place
when we find ourselves where we
don’t want to be—amid so much

turbulence, so much uncertainty
in the rough and tumble frenzy of this
bewildering world.

which is almost as odd as saying,
Lauren is a mama,
because it was just a little while

back that Donna birthed Lauren,
who arrived earlier than
predicted, and tinier—

smaller than cousin Marryn
and Robyn’s Cabbage Patch dolls—
and now Lauren’s a mama

(though wasn’t it just a few
minutes ago that she and little
brother Kevin splashed around

in a blow-up pool in the back
yard?), and that old adage about
time whooshing by as we age

turns out to be true because not
only has my baby sister retired
after a long career, but today it’s

her birthday, this happy grandma
to Henry, a whole four months old,
though to me Donna Gail is still

that cute young mama with a
brand new baby girl, the one
born on my 29th birthday, who

grew up to marry Gerald and
made this baby boy grinning at all
of us googly-eyed relatives in

a wee scrap of a sweet moment
here and gone in an eyeblink,
a heartbeat, a sigh.

(for Jill Batiansila and the Together We Heal
community, with love and gratitude)

Whether we want to or not, like
acorns released from their jaunty caps,
dropping from valley oaks like arrows,

we crack, we split, not for any reason
we can determine, but because it’s time.
And the challenge becomes not to try

to climb back up that tree, attempt
to reattach to the stem we called home,
not to wish ourselves back to what

we used to be. Cast down into the dark,
we are surprised to find sunlight
stretching its long arms in our

direction, warmth embracing us.
We can’t believe that what’s
emerged from brokenness is love,

that in being cracked open, in falling,
our most tender selves exposed,
we can find the peace of place

in this spot where we’ve landed,
among others not unlike us—
there and there and there.

Just here. Just now.

Diego walks in the house calling
and will not stop until he finds me.
He’s not seeking food, just reassurance.

Where are you? There you are.
You were gone, and I couldn’t find you.

I’m here! I call,
knowing without looking that
he’s paused in the doorway
as I type. I hear scratching
in the catbox, and I know
he’s found another kind of
comfort, which makes me
shake my head:

You were just outside;
you could go out there.

But no, he covers, hops out
with sandy feet, comes to me,
still typing. He sits, looks up,
purrs.

Poki joins us, hops up
on the box next to me,
four penetrating eyes
relaying an insistent message
before they wander off
to curl into naps:

Here you are.
Here you truly are.

•••

(Originally published with the title “You Are Here”)

Even when you walk the same street
two hours later, things look different—

picket fence shadows slanting northward,
bread plate-sized sycamore leaves
wind-pressed against a retaining wall.

The walk home feels different, too—
mid afternoon sun on your face,
a vigorous breeze skittering the leavings
under so many trees silently preparing
to release the year’s foliage, standing tall
as they have for generations along this
busy street.

A bicycled boy from the middle school
down the sidewalk, stops, waits for you
to pass, and, two blocks later, another boy,
both helmeted, pedaling furiously,
and just now a pig-tailed, plaid-skirted girl
from another era walking home from
the Catholic elementary school where,
earlier, you heard children’s voices
ricochet off the playground.

You smile at stepping stones painted in
rainbow colors, the texture of criss-crossed
palm tree bark, picket fence shadows,
and the unspoken trust of plastic-sheathed
dry cleaning flapping like translucent ghosts,
hanging on a front porch mail slot, delivered
from the cleaners a block away.

You walk, speaking into your phone,
looking as if you cannot move without
this electronic device, drivers in cars
probably judging you, but this is the way
without pen and paper you capture
the poem, gathering.

And, oh, what a gift it is, this neighborhood
in this city of trees that has sheltered you
for decades, the familiar sidewalk curving
onto your block where you pass your favorite
neighbor ginkgo, still green-fanned, this old
friend that will release its bounty next month,
goldening the lawn around it.

You walk home in spots of light
and periods of dense shadow,
an obvious metaphor, you think,
hardly poem-worthy,

but you grab it out of the air,
set it down on a line,
just to see how it looks.

There.
Like that.

Not Indian, for good reasons,
though I like the notion that the name
for this in-between season possibly
came from the Narragansett people
who believed that these distinctly
un-fallish days were delivered by
a warm wind from the great spirit
Cautantowwit.

This second summer, after the first one,
flushes with temperate days still warm
enough to coax leggy cosmos into doing
the can-can and prompts what surely
must be the last hollyhocks of the year
to burst like pink boutonnieres
destined for young men’s jackets.

I am happy to slip on flip flops and
aloha shirt, to head into the back yard
where it is warmer than inside the house,
which seems to have gotten the message
about cooler nights. But out here
a shaggy-headed rose nods along
with the geraniums and canary yellow
zinnias eager for a drink, so I pick up
the hose, wondering how much longer
I will need to water—then shake
my head at such heresy.

Too soon I’ll be inside looking out,
wishing for second summer days
like these, lingering over the persistent
flowers I sprinkle now, scuffing
through fallen leaves wearing
their crunchy veined smiles,
the old sycamore already growing
next year’s greenness deep inside
itself.

Because I was teaching—
something I rarely do these
days—I missed the eclipse,
relying on the eyes of others,

later absorbed by photos of
hundreds of tiny half moons
projected through a pinhole
of some kind—a colander

in one case—little smudges
of light and shadow spilling
onto sidewalk or building,
piercing black pupils

surrounded by bright irises.
I focused on those partially
eclipsed crescents beamed
earthward, imagining that

those wispy shapes had
more to teach than I did.
Why didn’t I think to urge us
all to push away from our

screens and step outside?
Not to look up, but to look
down at the reflected glory
in miniature of our nearest

star—just there, underfoot—
such resplendent grandeur
that surely will outlast
us all.

(on her feast day, Oct. 15)

Watering the garden of the soul
helps it grow, she said, like
the initial strain of pulling a
full bucket up from a well

gradually becoming easier,
as if by a God-driven pulley,
leading to effortless irrigation
by an unseen hand, and,

eventually, oh, ecstasy—
rain falling from heaven,
no human intervention
needed. This from a woman

who cradled her nephew,
crushed by a collapsed
building, until he returned
to life.

And I see her, this saint,
mourning a dead loved
one, all her years of soul-
tending prayer poured into

earnest supplication, as
women do hourly now
amid the rubble of what
had been their lives,

holding the bodies of
beloveds, praying for
miracles, for evidence
of replenishing rain,

for acts of love.

In certain ways writing is a form of prayer.
—Denise Levertov

Let the pen fold into the hand
like the neck bending forward,
chin tilting down,

Let the point of the pen touch
the blank page with reverence,
with gentle pressure,

Let the ink begin to flow,
words begin to appear,
a necklace of strung gems

that, without thought, take form,
become something where
there was nothing,

an offering, a supplication,
a devotion, a surprising bit
of grace,

a communion of spirit and self,
like any other kind of prayer,
this one, like every one,

unique in the moment, and with
the final words, a benediction
of thanksgiving.

•••

For the six new Amherst Writers & Artists facilitators I’m training this weekend and next… to your own writing and that done by participants in your workshops!

(for Sue Reynolds on her birthday)

The day you turned 2
Paddington made his debut,
a stowaway from darkest Peru,

the tag on his jacket reading,
Please look after this bear,
with the sweet face of one who

tries so hard to get things right,
like you, dear Sue, who does
try, who does get things so right,

whose great heart, like that
of the little bear with the red
wellies, does good and more

good, again and again, thank
you for looking after this bear,
after me, with so much love.