Güd wrtr

Last light blazes horizontally through
the urban jungle of volunteers in all shades
of green, around the thick, old sycamore
flashing leaves the size of bread plates.
Sunbeams strike the century-old house,
turning its pink stucco vaguely tangerine.

On the deck, two slender ficus rise from
their pots, grateful to spend summer outside,
unaware that coming cooling nights will
require relocation inside over winter.

On the lawn the orange cat snoozes
belly up, more golden than usual
in the waning light, his spine comfortably
twisted, rabbit feet twitching on some dreamy
adventure. The older brown tabby stalks
tiny bugs lifting skyward, swats at them
with surprising speed for an old girl.

And you, caretaker of this place for now,
sit crossed-legged on the grass, remember
sultry evenings when, just over there,

small nieces and nephews splashed in
a blow-up pool, when young men wielded
long-handled forks and spatulas before
a spherical black barbecue, when elders
sat in homemade Adirondack chairs
on the deck they helped build, hands
wrapped around cold beer bottles,

when, for a spot of a moment,
family gathered for occasions
you can no longer name—

when you were half of that couple,
when he still breathed,
when you tumbled into bed,
exhausted and happy, next to him,
the one with whom you made this place
a home.

Well, you may go to college
You may go to school
You may have a pink Cadillac
But don’t you be nobody’s fool.

—from Arthur Gunter’s “Baby, Let’s Play House,”
recorded in 1955 by Elvis Presley with additional lyrics

•••

On this day in 1957
Elvis plays the Lincoln Bowl
in Tacoma, Washington,
before 6,000 screaming fans—

two years after he hits the national
charts and signs a record deal, when he
buys his first Caddy, a 1954 Fleetwood
Series 60. In pink. Which, several months
later, goes up in flames and dies by side
of the road between Hope and Texarkana.

But he’s Elvis. He buys a replacement.
In blue. Has a neighbor on Lamar Avenue
repaint the new model in a shade later
dubbed Elvis Rose, which he gives to his
mama, who does not drive. So Elvis does.

It’s the thought, of course.

But it is Bruce who, seven years
after the King’s death, brings the pink
Cadillac to life for me in his raspy baritone,
on the B side of a 45 with a driving bass
line and Clarence’s wailing sax:

I love you for your pink Cadillac,
crushed velvet seats, riding in the back
cruising down the street, waving to the girls,
feeling out of sight, spending all my money
on a Saturday night….

Elvis’s ride lives enshrined at Graceland,
of course, and I wonder how many older
ladies and perhaps not a few men swoon
over that glamorous symbol of luxury
and pizzazz. I fear, should I find myself
there one day, I might do the same—
not because of the man who owned it
but because of the song that has thrummed
through my brain for nearly four decades:

Some folks say it’s too big
and uses too much gas.
But my love is bigger than a Honda.
Yeah, it’s bigger than a Subaru.
Man, there’s only one thing,
only one car that’ll do….

And though my love is bigger than
the Hyundai in my driveway, it’s gotta
sound system that’ll crank up Bruce
so he and Elvis and I can motor down
the highway singing with all our might:

Honey, I just wonder what you do there
in the back of your pink Cadillac,
pink Cadillac,
pink Cadillac,
pink Cadillac….

•••

You can listen to Bruce Springsteen’s 1984 recording of “Pink Cadillac” here.

In these summer months named
for Roman emperors—Julius
and his adopted son Augustus—
we find ourselves happily full
of two sets of 31 days,

and on this, the 31st day of
the eighth month, the moon
tonight rises super full, closer
to Earth, looking larger and
brighter, but not blue,

though this one is called that,
its perfect roundness appearing
twice in a calendar month.

On nights like these I stop
wherever I am to watch her
stately climb into the eastern sky,
though I know that we’re the ones
slowly rotating on the planet
below her magnificence,

remembering Augustus’s
famous last words:
Have I played the part well?
Then applaud as I exit.

And I do, every time—
putting my hands together
for our blesséd super moon,
a major player making her
grand entrance so brilliantly,

reflecting the light of our
nearest star and, before
making a graceful exit,
casting puddles of sweet
moonshine on earthly
beings like me.

(for National Grief Awareness Day)

•••
I want to praise things that cannot last…
I want to praise everything brief and finite.
—poet Barbara Crooker
•••

Praise the too-soon gone:
the leaves that decorated spring
with their green hands months ago,
brittling in the last days of summer,
soon turning to detritus underfoot
as fall falls,

as the year itself soon ends—
another one almost gone.
Where, we always ask,
did it go?

Like the ones we imagine gone,
no longer embodied because
we don’t see them walking
through our lives—

we think them vanished,
when, like the leaves,
like all the days of our lives,
we have drunk them deep,
absorbed them into our cells
where they now live.

They never disappear,
just as we have embedded
ourselves into the loved ones
we will one day leave behind—

we, the too-soon gone,
who will turn from mourning
into the mourned.

(for our father Roger, who art, we imagine, in heaven,
and my sister Donna, who, happily, is still embodied)

I invoked your names today on the driveway
where more than a half century ago

one of you taught us how to wash a car,
and the other promptly set about doing so

weekly for 50 cents a vehicle, always beating
me to the punch and doing a bang-up job

on the Toyota and Chevy that lived in our
garage—where, just outside today, I stood

spraying off Mother’s Elantra, which I am
now driving, because, Father and Sister

forgive me, it has been three weeks since
its last wash and detailing to a fare-thee-well

by the Car Wash Goddess, then entrusted
into my care squeaky clean for Momdays

(which, I understand, some call Mondays)
when I drive her around and on other days

when I drive just me around. And though
I am not doing a thorough wash with

bucket and soap and sponge and chamois,
I have also watered the thirsty plants in

both front and back yards where we once
climbed oak trees and soaked up sun like

lizards on days like today that will top out
at the century mark. And I am reasonably

sure that Mother’s baby car will dry just fine,
no spots, with a clean windshield, and if I

get a little wet in the process, no problem
on this near-the-end-of-summer afternoon,

all of you here in spirit, giving me, I like
to think, a thumb’s up for a job, while

not up to your impeccable standards,
that’s close enough, as Father would say,

for government work.

(for Kai and Fia Skye)

Let’s call it a holiday,
24 hours when you can
use any tactics you like
to persuade people
to verbally admire you

(though you’ve decided
to graciously accept
love notes in any form, too).

So you don your most
flattering outfit, poof up
your hair, maybe even apply
a little lipstick, pop on
an eye-catching necklace.

But then,
not wanting to appear
shallow,

you think that maybe if you do
something for someone else—
hold open a door, perhaps,
or insist that the person
behind you in the checkout
line go ahead of you—

You only have a couple of items,
you generously say,
imagining a response like
How kind of you!
And what a great necklace!

But then you realize
that you’re performing
a kindness to potentially
get one in return—no
guarantee of that—which
makes it not so self-serving,
right?

Which means you really
do deserve that compliment,
you fabulous human, you.
And may I say how lovely
you look today in that
stunning blue dress?

In a way I love them best like this—bleached of spring
green, grass gone golden—though I pray a stray spark,
a careless or willful human does not ignite them,

these old oaks sentinels solid and silent on undulating
earth under clear blue skies, clouds stuttering by.
They looked like this four decades ago when I first

drove this windy road one tepid fall, to stop atop
the dam and look up at the dry hills, before the rains
plumped them into emerald carpets again.

The next summer, accompanying a photographer
into this same landscape charcoal’d beyond my
recognition, I met firefighters hosing hot spots.

Coulda been worse, one said. We’ve seen bigger.
This before we’d heard the phrase climate change,
before we learned about our rapidly warming globe.

And now, in a new century, admiring the landscape,
I remember young men with dirt-smeared faces
shoveling ash’d earth, saying, It happens. Fire.

And I whisper, Take care, as if the hills and trees
can do anything but bear up under whatever
comes, as if, with my fervent wishes, I can

somehow keep them safe.

(for Dickie and Michael)

One of you credits the Other One
with teaching One how to
to swiftly and skillfully print

black and white photos
in a newspaper darkroom,
though the Other One doesn’t

remember it that way, says
that One was inquisitive,
eager to learn. All I did was

what I was doing,
the Other One says,
and he was watching.

One calls the Other One
a master printer, his
mentor and friend,

while the Other One says
One quickly surpassed
his mentor’s skills.

By then he was his
own artist. Still is,
says the Other One.

He taught me everything
I know about printing,
says One, a highly prized,

world-class photographer.
Forty years on, mentor
and friend grin as they hug

in the city that shaped
them both, gratitude leaking
from the corners of their

soft blue eyes.

(for Lisa and Stuart Morgan)

Here’s to the trusty scoops
at the ready to ball up a perfect
sphere of your favorite flavor,
bound for dish or bowl or cone.

Here’s to the porcelain-topped syrup
dispensers with their clear lettering
boldly announcing vanilla, strawberry,
orange and more,

the graceful tulip fountain dishes
begging for two scoops topped with
hot fudge, whipped cream, nuts
and a cherry,

the neat rows of ice cream float glasses,
water glasses, soda glasses, every
manner of glassware hovering over
the hot fudge warmer, the mint green

Hamilton milkshake mixer, near a
stack of upended pointed paper cones
prepared to cradle a crunchy, edible one
supporting a single or double scoop.

And behind it all, a teenaged soda jerk
swathed like a pharmacist in white
from shirt to apron, paper-hatted,
ready to take your order,

as you and a girlfriend sit swiveling
on chrome-rimmed stools, elbows
chilled by the marble counter,
grinning, giggling, gossiping,

reaching for a fresh straw fanned
from the fluted dispenser, taking a
deep pull of Coke, then returning
to your endless conversation,

which—though this scene will fade
into history—if you are lucky,
will continue well into your long
lifetimes.

A poem isn’t something I make, it’s something I serve…
—Jane Hirshfield

Serve the poem on a large platter;
decorate with all the trimmings
accompanied by hearty staples—
yummy line breaks, tasty stanzas—
smothered in metaphor.

Let it stand as centerpiece
of a moment, as a thing
somehow greater than it
appears at first glance.

Let it fill you and move you,
satiate you so well that
dessert becomes unnecessary.

Let it go for the distance
traveled by a great egret
high-stepping through
summer green rice paddies,
then flapping away, bound for
some unnamed landscape,
some other poet’s perfect
moment.