Güd wrtr

The stalks shoot up first, though
you have done nothing to deserve
them—months ago you pruned
the spent stalks to the ground, yet
here they are, restarting from last

year’s leftovers, fuzzy green lengths
extending slender arms ending in
palm-sized leaves. And all along
the new stalks, tiny buds cluster like
friendly tumors, ones that will grow

and eventually burst into frilly
magenta rosettes, taking over the bed
by the garage, growing taller than
you, sending you searching for
sturdy sticks to prop them up.

They don’t last long in vases;
they’re meant to live right where,
like gangly teenage boys, they
send up all that height, that
heady profusion of pink,

glorious for a few weeks, then
the green fading to sickly yellow,
blooms dropping, reseeding nearly
instantly as others sprout
alongside their fallen brethren—

beaming at you every time you
venture outside, delighted by
the stately towers, the grand
columns of color just beginning
this prolific season that always

seems as if it will never end.

You can listen to Jan read this poem here.

That’s me in the back at the xylophone,
mallets in hand, next to the drummer on
the set, watching the director up front with
an intensity I usually reserved to study

the boy I had a big crush on when
he boarded the bus each afternoon,
silently swooning when a swath of
chestnut hair fell across his left eye.

It’s tricky to play and read music and
watch the director up front with the baton,
and I’d leave band practice winded,
even though I wasn’t blowing into an

instrument, even though some people
thought the percussionists in the back
had it easy. You count all those measures
of rest and then come in with a two-octave

run up those wooden keys with your
tiny mallets, and see how you do,
I wanted to say—and probably did a
time or two.

To be sure, I wasn’t anything like my friend
the tiny-footed piccolo player piping out
the ear-piercing solo to “Stars and Stripes
Forever,” or the ace trumpet player

hitting the screechy high notes in jazz
band. To me, they were the superstars.
But from my place behind everyone
I had the best view of music being made,

even if we were far from accomplished,
even as many of us were still figuring out
how to read tricky syncopations and
managing difficult fingerings on instruments

we were still learning. Those were the
first-date moments, the getting-to-know-you
years, when we fell in love with music
foreign to us but considered classic

to older folks, when, if we were lucky,
we embraced our horns and grasped
our mallets with the passion of the
newly smitten, when—no matter

how many wrong notes or incorrect
entrances—we found ourselves happy
to be there, part of the band, making
music with our friends.

***

You can listen to Jan read this poem here.

She wanted to walk down the hill
of backyard lawn to see the lilac
in full bloom up close—prime
time for her favorite plant
at its fragrant peak.

So, as I watered the potted plants
on the patio, she carefully made
her way to the lawn, urging me to
come with her. Now that she finds
it difficult to detect nuances in
bright light and deep shadow,
I’m inclined to follow.

So I set down the hose, trailing
my mother to the slender tree
set into the ground years earlier,
after another longtime resident
had died.

It’s supposed to be a bush,
Mother said, but it’s tall—
not a solid profusion of flowers
but one oblong globe per branch.
She stood a respectful distance
away while I zeroed in on a
particular blossom for a sniff
and a sigh.

Still, she was not close enough
to inhale that heady fragrance
she loves, so fleeting it’ll disappear
in a couple of weeks or so.

Let’s go see the other one,
she said, already heading
off across the grass.

Though she couldn’t see it from
where we stood, she knew that
the other lilac had twined itself
amid the towering oleanders, and
when she reached the shade line,
she stopped.

Can you see them? she asked.
Yes, I said. Right in front of you.
Overhead, too. It’s dripping with lilacs.

Still she stayed rooted, and, reaching
for me, put her slender, ringed
fingers into my hand so I could
lead her slowly into shadow.

Oh, now I see it, she said, freeing
her fingers to touch and linger
on the tight clusters.

Here’s one low enough to smell, I said,
but she didn’t move till I took her hand
again and guided her to the nose-high
blossom. She inhaled, smiling into lilac
memories rising with the molecules
of a scent she has long loved.

Oh, yes, she said.
Oh, yes.

And we stood in the shade together
a bit longer before moving, each of us,
back into the light.

You can hear Jan read this poem here.

for Dickie

You taught me to see light
falling through a broad leaf
from the underside,
its green veins illuminated
like a manuscript,
shining with lifeblood,
and the lacy fingers of ferns
hanging shaggy in rainforest
damp, droplets poised
just so at the tips,
pointing to something
else to be looked at
closely, to be studied
in the eyeblink it takes
for a shutter to open
and close, to capture
what many people bypass,
then praise after they
see it spring to life,
framed, hanging—
when they call it
art.

William Shakespeare’s birthday is traditionally celebrated April 23, though the date of his birth was not recorded. But because he was baptized April 26, 1564, which often happened when babies were three days old, his birth is celebrated on the 23rd, which, coincidentally, is also believed to be the date on which he died 52 years later.

***

Why’s dude so famous?
a student once asked me.
Because he’s perhaps the greatest writer
in the English language, I said.

The student, a lanky kid made
more for basketball than literature,
said, You call that English?
And I said, Yeah, a really old-style
English, to which he nodded,
and said, Show me.

So I went all fangirl, whipping out
a little Macbeth contemplating murder:
Is this a dagger I see before me?
A sonnet or two, a little love poetry:
I do love nothing in the world so well as you—
is not that strange?

A little philosophy from Prospero:
We are such stuff as dreams are made on,
and our little life is rounded with a sleep.
And a full-court press from Ophelia:
We know what we are,
but know not what we may be.

And I recited and showed him
scenes from plays—Juliet panting
after Romeo, King Richard hollering for
a horse, any number of sword fights.
The student listened, he nodded,
didn’t seem enraptured.

He went away for the summer,
returning, to my surprise, to sit
in the front row of my creative
writing class, telling me he’d been
captivated by the old poet dude—
he’d watched all the movies; he
wanted to write poetry, too.

And he did, full of meter and rhyme,
though I told him he didn’t have
to do it that way. And he came
to my office after class and said,
Ma’am, I gotta rhyme!
I just gotta rhyme!

So he did, touching my old heart
with rhymes that were something
more than rap, that sang, as he said,
with the iambic and the pentameter,
among other rhythms he didn’t
even try to name.

And when he presented me with
a sonnet—14 lovely lines, a fine
rhyming couplet at the end—
written for his lady love,

I swear I got misty-eyed
listening to the young poet dude,
of whom, I had no doubt,
Will and I were both so proud.

for Lauren, Gerald and Kyle

I like to think it’s not because
I slipped Kyle some small bits
of beef that his grandpa grilled
in the backyard and the family
ate on the deck under the old oak,

or because I fussed over him
as a good aunt does. Because
the whole family fusses over
this little pudge of a dog—like
his uncle, once upon a time

my little nephew, and others
throwing blue rubber balls again
and again, everyone stooping
low to give him a pat, this happy
guy who adores everyone.

So when Kyle hopped up on
the ottoman where I sat, walking
up my legs, his little Stitch
face grinning at me (as only
French bulldogs can),

I hugged the little fireplug with
the big bat ears, who turned
from the platform of my lap
to look at this little family
of three generations gathered—

with Kyle’s mama due to deliver
the first of the fourth generation
in June—doggie panting, me
thinking on this perfectly ordinary,
wonderfully warm spring day,

not for the first time,
lucky, lucky me.

Earth Day—April 22, 2023

They floated around out there, the Apollo 17
crew in my 14-year-old imagination, snapping
photos on a space-age Polaroid, the device spitting
out a damp image spit from its slotted mouth,

astronaut hands waving it dry in the artificial
atmosphere of a capsule. Actually the first
picture of our whole round planet was shot
on a Hasselblad film camera after the spacecraft

left its parking orbit around Earth to begin
its trajectory to the moon. Three men on the final
lunar mission looked homeward and took
the first global selfie to go viral.

On Christmas Eve 1970, as the rest of us Earthlings
got a peek at the photo dubbed the Blue Marble,
I went to my red Folger’s can full of marbles,
retrieved a swirly blue boulder and peered at it,

visualizing a tiny world inside—one partly
shrouded by cloud rivers, dust plumes,
even a sun reflected in oceans, wondering
about tiny beings going about their lives.

And I, looking on from the outside, holding
that boundless worldview in a cold glass globe
in my palm, somehow knew to cradle it gently,
set it down carefully, not tuck it into a pocket

as I usually did, before I headed out onto
my home planet to crawl up my favorite tree,
notebook and pen in hand, settle in for a spell,
and write about it.

for Lisa Morgan

Folsom Lake, next to Mormon Island Auxiliary Dam

I have come again to the granite boulders
beneath the oak tree on the angled hill
looking down at the lake—this spot
I occupied a few weeks ago—
to see what has changed.

So much. Oaks stretching
their long limbs fully leafed out.
Knee-high grasses, in some places
thigh-high, waving hello,
tousled by the vigorous breeze.
The lake navy blue, furrowed
with chop.

Spring comes and goes always
too quickly.

Lavender twining brodiaea have
almost gone, giving way to a profusion
of purple vetch, their violet heads
hanging on their stalks,
trembling in the wind.

The lake has risen, almost covering
a sea of purple blooming on the shore
below, one small island still above
water, a raft supporting a single tall tree.
If the snow melt arrives as predicted,
the little strip of land will likely vanish.

We all find ourselves underwater
at one time or another, waiting
for the waves to recede.

The sudden rise takes us aback;
we feel as if we are drowning.
We forget about rises and falls,
comings and goings,
beginnings and endings.

And then we remember:

We know how to swim.
We know how to float, how to rest.
We just need to lay our heads back,
let our lungs fill with sweet air
washing over us,
and breathe.

When, in the midst of an online discussion,
someone says the word tree and invites
you to envision that tree—a magnificent tree

with a strong trunk, one with roots reaching
deep into the earth, drawing up what is needed
to grow and live, a tree with a grand,

welcoming presence—you do. Feel the texture
of the bark, the someone says. Notice the rich colors.
Feel the soles of your feet opening to the subtle

energy of the earth. And you see yourself sitting
on a slab of granite under a resplendent tree
you visited a couple of weeks ago, overlooking

the lake where you grew up. And you long,
instantly, to drive to that place, walk up that hill,
sit under that gracious oak, today, this moment,

and let yourself be gradually filled by
its vitality, its generosity as you rest under it.
Right now.

But you cannot get to that tree right now.
Obligations await, must-be-done today stuff
punctuated by the mrawww of the big orange cat

making an entrance, wanting something he
cannot get without you. So you finish the session,
feed the cat and sigh, looking out the back

door window into a gorgeous afternoon.
It is spring, you remember, and the big sycamore
in the back yard, recently trimmed, is leafing

out nicely. It is not the oak by the lake, but
this is the tree you have, right here, right now.
So you open the door, and you and the cat

walk into the day, sunlight winking through
new leaves. And feeling a bit silly, as well as
rather ungrateful to this century-old friend

who has sheltered your house well before
it became yours, you step into the ivy at
its base and put your hands on rough bark.

You close your eyes, inhale, shadowed,
protected by a girth you cannot encircle
with your arms. But you try. You wrap

your arms around the hefty trunk
and smile at yourself, the tree hugger,
the cat watching from his sunspot on

the deck, both of you blinking, all of you
breathing, living into this perfect moment
of grace.

for Rose Varesio on her birthday

Heads bowed, the first roses of the season
hang heavy on strong stems, some as thick
as crayons brushing the spring green grass.

They do not look up when I pass, so I lift
their crimson chins and peer into their deep
centers. If I take them from the back yard

now and vase them in the house, they’ll not
last many more days. But if I leave them,
no one can admire their profusion,

the enthusiasm with which they burst into
being. After such a wet winter, I cannot
feel anything but delight at their presence,

which has nothing to do with me but
everything to do with faith—that life
returns, even when it seems absent,

even at the coldest moments, something
is readying for blossom, preparing to
surprise us with so much exuberant,

bountiful joy.