Güd wrtr

(for Louise Bierig)

Before she left Canada,
Louise wanted to swim
in Lake Erie one more time
to help fortify her for
the drive home to Media,
Pennsylvania.

I brought my suit, not
expecting to use it to take
my first dip in in a Great Lake,
but I had lake envy after
watching Louise two days
earlier—her swim was lovely,
the water temperature perfect.

She became an online writing
buddy during times of isolation.
I was her teacher; she has
become mine, reminding me
that all I have to do is
tug on the swimsuit, head for
the beach, drop the towel,
and walk slowly into the vast
liquid stretching to the horizon,
feeling ridges of sand underfoot—
no toe-seeking rocks for stubbing.

If it’s too cold, she says, you can
turn back and walk out. But I
keep going, water reaching knees,
then waist, then shoulders,
warming with every step, my
feet bouncing off the shallow
bottom, and there I am, me
and my new friend, bobbing
and chatting, floating face up,
toes skyward.

I turn ny weightless body
to look back toward the long beach
stretching behind me, then
turn again toward the invisible,
opposite shore of this Great Lake,

which I trust is actually
out there—because Louise
says it is—the place where
she grew up, a land I
cannot see, in a country
we both call home.

(for my Amherst Writers & Artists colleagues)

A dozen writers stand on
the Canadian side, where, I’ve
heard, the best views reside,

and that turns out to be true,
the gigantic froth of Horseshoe
Falls thundering as it straddles

the border—an unbroken curtain
2,500 feet wide draining Lake Erie
into Lake Ontario. And we watch,

transfixed by all that water power,
roughly 6 million cubic feet cascading
over the falls every minute, before

finding tables outdoors where,
some distance from the edge,
the mist finds us, dotting our

pages as we write, smudging
newly inked thoughts. The
undercurrent of rumble

makes it hard to hear each
other, but we read aloud,
as we do, and, when one

of us notices a not-uncommon
phenomenon here, she calls,
Rainbow! No one rushes

the railing for photos, though
we all look up, delighted to see
droplets in the atmosphere

breaking midafternoon
sunlight into seven colors.
Not until everyone has read

do we tourist ourselves
to the railing where hundreds
of souls, many of them speaking

languages other than English,
gawk at what rightly should
be the eighth wonder of the world,

awash in rainbows, showing off
all that magnificence to
the assembled humanity—

not least a gray-haired Californian
with misty sunglasses who has
taken 65 years to get to this

place that is the epitome of
awesome, grinning her fool
face off.

(for my Amherst Writers & Artists colleagues)

Oh, my dear,
whispers the goddess,
what you hold in your
once-slender hand—

fingers now thicker, yes,
the road maps of your life
running into your knuckles,
this hand that has held

thousands of implements
for writing or drawing—
is a reminder: Keep going.
Keep reading. Keep writing.

Keep finding big trees under
which to walk. Take the paths
into the forest that are new
to you, ones that promise

to lead you to surprise.
And when you cannot make
your way into nature, remember
that you are nature. Study

the rocks and pebbles and
shells that you have brought
into your life; hold the essence
of all there is in a glass sphere.

Listen to what it all has to tell
you: The gifts of the world
are yours, always, in this
and beyond, truly—

Amene.

(for Louise Bierig)

I see my first Great Lake
for the first time on the last
day in September, Truth
and Reconciliation Day
in Canada, the same day I
watch Louise wade farfarfar
into the shallows of Lake Erie,
eager for a swim.

This is her lake; she grew up
on the Pennsylvania side,
swimming, sailing, lifeguarding.
I feel a bit of water envy as
she plunges in, bobs like a
blonde buoy in the distance.

I bend over the sandy shore,
look at Canadian rocks,
pick up a few smooth ones
to pocket—pale sandstone
like mini speckled eggs.

I wear the new orange T-shirt,
I bought two days ago on
on Scugog Island, home of
the Mississaugas First Nation:

Every child matters.

I put a hand to my chest,
close my eyes, think about
children ripped from their
homes, their people, beaten
and starved by white people
trying to kill the Indian in them.

They nearly succeeded.

Like the beaver, the otter,
the people have slowly returned.
This day honors the children,
the ones who never came
home, and the ones who did,
forever scarred.

Louise, mother of two sons,
breast strokes slowly back
to shore against a low bank
of clouds shrouding the U.S.
side of the lake. She looks
as though she could swim
to eternity and back
if she wanted,

perhaps with a child in tow,
returning him to his people,
the too-long-gone prodigal
come home at long last.

(for Sue Reynolds)

When Sue suggests, on my first night
at her house, snipping some mojito
mint from the garden for tea, I grin
and wiggle like Whiskey, the big dog
who accompanies her into the dark.
She returns, flicks off the lamp strapped
to her forehead, a handful of fragrance
in hand.

She rinses the leaves, stuffs them in
the sweet red teapot with its matching
zippered jacket for warmth, and lets
it steep, the delicate scent wafting
when she hands me a cuppa
a few minutes later.

I’m in heaven here, a guest
in this house on the pond in this
rural bit of southern Ontario.
And the next night, when Sue asks,
“Mint tea?” I’m all in.

The third night Whiskey and I
go to the herbs, me wielding
the scissors, him along for a sniff.
And on the fourth day I cut
a wicked mass of mint to take
with us to a retreat center
a couple of hours away.

It is a smell I will associate with
this time, this place—late September,
still so warm for these parts,
sitting by the pond writing as
the goldenrod and the purple asters,
soon to disappear with the coming
cold, wave lazily in a sweet breeze.

How simple, I think, how glorious,
this minty bounty. How grateful
am I.

(for Sue and James)

It doesn’t have a name other than
The Pond, its caretakers tell me.

To them, it is not big, but here,
in the great province of Ontario,
there must be thousands of small
ponds and lakes in a place where
rainfall is typically abundant.

It should be falling now,
one of the caretakers says,
adding that they’re in a moment
of drought.

But to this Californian,
coming from the land of little rain,
everything radiates a dozen shades
of green, even as fall’s yellows
and crimsons begin to creep across
the canopy, as leaves release and flutter.

Sitting atop one of the man-made dams,
listening to the stream cascade behind me,
I keep watch for beaver who have done
more than their share of beavering here,
working by night to dam up the openings
that contain the pond.

The caretakers tell me the pond
has risen 4 feet because of the beavers’ work,
and one of the caretakers regularly
has to dismantle part of the avant-garde
assemblage of downed branches that
the builders so industriously construct
so the water can flow merrily down
the stream.

The beavers’ projects are still evident—
the caretakers do not wish to destroy them—
and I imagine the sharp-toothed crew
paddling this pond and others in the dark,
looking for spaces to build because,
after all, this is their work.

Overlooking one of their innovative
sculptures, I pause, amazed, and,
my human sound rippling across the pond,
applaud these creators so committed
to their art.

(for Sue Reynolds and James Dewar,
stewards of the pond)

Sitting atop the small dam
next to the pond, I watch
a squadron of dragonflies
flit like tiny biplanes, coming
to rest in the sun next to me.

The large blue dashers hover
closest to the water, their
four wings fanning the surface,
helicopter-style.

The smaller, rust-colored
autumn meadowhawks alight
for no more than a minute,
efficient hunters said to catch
97% of what they pursue.

Fall is beginning to take hold
of the pond. Most of the insects
of summer, the peskiest ones—
the horse flies, mayflies, black flies—
have fallen; the dragonflies
will soon be gone, too.

But look—just there, next
to me on the weathered
planks—two dashers and
two meadowhawks have
landed, arranging themselves
into a tidy flightline, engines
revving, preparing to take off
again.

The longer I sit, inhaling
the warmth of the day,
the more they show up,
the closer they come—
one on my knee, three
decorating my shoulder
like so many living brooches.

I close my eyes, feel a lacy-
winged being tickling
the knuckles of my left hand,
alive in this moment by this
sweet pond, with nothing to
do but return to the breath,
me and my happily full heart.

At 35,000 feet I queue
at the rear of the Airbus
for the loo, lean over a pair
of temporarily vacated seats
for a gander out the oval
porthole to the sky.

The blue upper atmosphere
gleams as sun rains on
scudding clouds far below us,
and I’m surprised to see
the ground splotched with
a thousand lakes in imaginative
shapes—a griffin, a locomotive,
a sheep in need of shearing.

Where are we? Where is this
state or province so generously
lake’d that I’ve not heard of? Does
each body of water have a name?
Can I find them on a map?

It takes a full minute before
it lands in my altitude-addled
brain that the lakes seem to be
moving too, and the illusion
vanishes.

Now I see that they’re cloud
shadows on the move, carrying
their own moisture, some of
which they will deposit at their
pleasure when the proper
conditions arise—

perhaps for thermals that birds
and gliders ride like gentle
waves carrying surfers to shore,
air pressures we wingless
souls cannot feel in flight,

an illusion that never fails
to amaze me, that—no matter
how many times the phenomenon
is explained, how this steel
and aluminum capsule manages
to fly through weightless clouds,
taking so many of us to a common
destination—it always feels
like magic.

•••

enroute to Toronto, Ontario, Canada, from Sacramento, California,
with gratitude to the outstanding Air Canada team of flight 758

More fly than dragon,
you, dragonfly, tiny
biplane touching down

• • •

Agile flyer, you,
dragonfly, flitting forward,
then backward with ease

• • •

Dragonfly brings change,
rebirth as tiny biplane,
wingéd happiness

• • •

(Dragonflies belong to the infraorder Anisoptera, from the Greek meaning “unequal wing” because dragonflies’ hindwings are broader than their forewings.)

Though we appear to die, we do not.
Death is merely a change of address,
and loved ones wend their way
like turtles or salmon or whales—
by smell, by feel.
This mourning, we do for ourselves,
but when we raise our heads,
sniff the breeze, feel gaps of air
between our ribs—if we give them
space, the dead loved ones return.
Or maybe they never left.
We only think they did, when
like snakes, they shed their only
skins and belly-crawled to the next place—
which is the first place,
which, when we think about it,
is home.

•••

from Companion Spirit, 2013, Amherst Writers & Artists Press