Remembering that we all hold them
helps us find compassion for those
we imagine are not like us at all,
when, of course, we are far more
similar than different, all beings
wanting to be happy, the reminder
to release judgments, see the spark
of grace in us all, we who are one,
behold with awe the divine connections
we all share.
•••
(for Margery Thompson and her great, compassionate heart,
on her birthday… and for her brother Dick Schmidt on his
half-birthday, too, with love and gratitude)
(for Pia Sieroty Spector)
Pia brought lemon cake
to the writing loft tonight,
and even before I set out
the rest of the snacks
(because people write better
fed, I always say—not least me)
I am ogling the spongy
triangles, their backsides
coated with a delicate glaze,
imagining a slice on a purple
paper plate sidling up to a few
blueberries, opposite the hummus
neatly corralled by small carrots
and cauliflower pieces,
a few almonds for texture,
a still life of snacks jostling
in my head, and I cannot resist:
Even before I start the writing
session, before I load up a plate
and take it with me to my spot
at the table,
I snag a slice, feel my teeth sink
into the gentle waft of lemon
gracing my palate, making me
smile because lemon does
that, along with a soft-tempered
summer evening spent writing
with lovely humans.
I do not know who engineered
this life to land me here and now
with people putting words onto
pages—and lemon cake—but
I owe someone a ginormous
thank you.
Tonight, Pia, it’s you.
A must-see for tourists,
this tree spreading its long arms,
aerial roots and leafy canopy
canopy over a half-acre,
it grew from an 8-foot sprout
planted behind the courthouse
in 1873 to honor Protestant
missionaries, who landed
in this whaling village
a half century earlier.
One hundred plus years
after it was set into the lava-
baked earth, standing on
the boat from Lanai entering
Lahaina harbor, I’d study that
tree’s crown before other
passengers and I transitioned
from sea to land, admiring its
spread, its sheltering spirit,
tended with aloha for
generations.
In one night set aflame,
left charred but still standing
as its town burned around it.
No one knows if it will survive,
this ancestor among the ashes,
its spirit perhaps wandering with
others like the night marchers,
looking, they say, for a way
from this world into the next.
And what is more generous than a window?
—inscription on Pat Schneider’s headstone,
June 1, 1934–Aug. 10, 2020
•••
Along your windowsills you arranged stones
picked up and pocketed on your walks,
the odd small cypress pod or a small cobalt
feather a jay might have left for you.
I, too, keep rocks on windowsills, even on my
kitchen counter, loosely arranged, some atop
others like lounging puppies, with a bit of
abalone or a pearly cowry picked up on a
beach on Kauai.
Why do we collect bits of the outside to bring in?
What is it about the smooth bit of shell in the pocket
that our fingers find when the hand sinks in
for warmth or keys? Why do we heft the stone
in one palm as the other grasps the toothbrush?
The reassuring there-ness of rocks calls me,
especially as I think of you, no longer here,
but where your there is, I can’t say, and I have
given up trying to imagine. It doesn’t matter.
You are as solidly with those who love you
as the stones or shell bits.
Do you know that after you died, your children
took the rocks from the sills, from your desk
and bookshelves, and set them around your
headstone, inviting people who loved you
to take one?
How I wish I had flown across the country
to pick up one of them, knowing it had graced
your palm, that it was important enough for you
to bring home, place carefully and admire. As if I
don’t already carry so many pebbles you dropped
into the fabric of me, embedded in memory,
that whisper,
Here. There. With you. Always.
(in honor of International Cat Day, Aug. 8)
I was a cat girl first, long ago
in the days when we allowed our
female felines to birth litters
of kittens that my best friend,
my sister and I “trained” to play
with dangled bits of yarn, little
fluff balls that we plopped in
the litter box and moved their tiny
paws to show them how to dig
a wee hole in the sand.
As if they didn’t arrive already
programmed to do both
and so much more.
All these years later, having cared
for more than my share of kitties—
some feral, some babies needing
hand-feeding at all hours, some big
dumb boy cats and some savvy
females who grew cuddly with age—
I realize that I cannot dodge
the moniker of friend to felines,
though currently I live with two,
way below the legal limit.
Perhaps, born a Leo, I was fated
to serve four-footed enlightened
beings who meow, who come
to me as I type, place a careful paw
on my leg and hop up to settle
onto my lap,
their little engines rumbling
as they fall into meditation
or prayer, sharing their
peaceful cat karma with all
beings everywhere,
not least with me.
Moments in a life sit side by side one another — the infuriating next to the divine, serenity next to fear, joy next to wonder and awe — moment after moment, one story layers over another that is erased or grown dim with time or distance…
—Fia Skye (flyingedna.com)
•••
You’ve tossed them onto the table—
the queen next to the ten, the jack sidling up
to the ace—life moments not only side by side
but also atop, below, adjacent to or opposite,
so many buried you can’t retrieve the ones
you try to bring to the top of the deck.
You’ve dealt them with no idea of the suits,
much less the order. But turning them over
one by one, you find this delightful moment
tucked under a devastating one, no memory
of that one but another offers a flicker of
recognition: the smell of the wedding bouquet,
the baby’s lashes damp with tears, the feel
of his hand taking yours. Each one a story
settling over another. You gather the cards,
shuffle them, feeling the life bits fluffing
between your hands. And that bit of air
whiffing into your fingers?
Hope, hope, hope,
my dear, mixed with joy
and not a little bit of love.
The dark horse of the alphabet,
it can stand for the Christ in Xmas
or indicate the female chromosome.
It can mark the spot, this letter
derived from the Phoenicians
(the letter samekh—“fish”),
borrowed by the Greeks (chi),
two crossed strokes, which
the Romans used for
the number 10.
All this in an X,
uncorruptible even by
the wealthy and powerful.
Though I love best when
I see it appended to a note,
handwritten by a loved one,
or typed in a hasty email:
XOXOXO
the kissing X,
the hugging O,
the quick dash of affection
a la tic-tac-toe
like a kiss brushed on a cheek
a blessing
like this one I send to you.
And he, like me, having reached
the age of Medicare, sounds as
happily besotted as I’ve ever known
him, 3,000 miles away by phone.
I haven’t heard her side of the story,
perhaps never will, but I hope she
understands that his occasional
bluster shields a tender heart
belonging to one who, half a lifetime
ago, after we’d put the college newspaper
to bed, would read E.E. Cummings
to me in our bed, desire and pleasure,
poetry and language unfurling
between us like a prayer—
i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite new a thing…
as it must be to him and his beloved
now, too. I wish them all the poetry
and romance and handholding in
day-to-blesséd-day discovery,
to live and grow in love, which is,
after all, what each of us is here to do.
Amen.
•••
(for Curtis)
Hot July afternoon, iced tea with Lisa
in my back yard, two cats lolling on
the carpet of well-watered greenery
that passes for lawn, when Diego
moseys over to sweet old Poki lying
under a rose bush, leans over and
gently licks the top of her head.
Normally, she tolerates his presence
in her house, but, as I tell Lisa, I’ve
never seen him do this in all the years
they’ve cohabitated with me.
He tongues her head fur flat, moves to
caress one of her ears, then the other,
Poki, eyes closed, soaking up the love,
as we humans stare at such naked affection.
Then Diego opens his mouth wide,
grabs Poki’s scruff as she protests,
but he’s got her pinned, and it hits me
that he thinks all this is foreplay,
the big dumb boy cat minus his
equipment for years.
Before I can rush to Poki’s aid, she’s up,
hissing, gives him a decisive whack,
sending orange fur flying. He whacks
back, misses and retreats as she sits
glaring at him.
Dude! I holler. Really?
He looks my way, tosses me a
can’t-blame-a-guy-for-trying shrug,
as Poki continues to throw shade
from her place in it.
Lisa and I, friends since high school,
sigh, remembering with relief long
gone days of unwanted advances,
wonder if those big dumb boys
ever got a clue,
and dang, we should’ve taken a cue
from wiser women like the old cat
before us—clipped those dudes
a good one, sent ’em flying to
a corner to lick their wounds,
taught ’em a thing or two about
messing with a strong woman who
hasn’t consented, isn’t likely to—
and yes, fellas, we do blame you
for trying.
(for Mom and Donna
with thanks and love)
I am driving my mother’s car,
plunged back into the pool of my
16-year-old self, terrified that
I’ll do something dumb and hurt
the car I’ve just learned to drive,
and how can she trust me with
her baby car when, while teaching
me to drive, she sat in the passenger
seat gripping the door handle
as if ready to escape should I do
something dumb, and my sister,
two years younger, is in the back
seat watching everything, learning
to drive better than I can, and she
hasn’t been behind the wheel yet,
but she will, and she’ll be great
at this clutch thing—oops,
killed it again—it almost makes
me never want to drive, but Mom
says I have to drive, You can’t be
an independent woman in the world
if you can’t drive, look at Grandma
who needs to be driven everywhere,
you can drive, you will drive,
and so I am driving, have been for
almost a half century, and now
Mom’s not, so I drive her around
on Mom Mondays, next week in her
21st century clutchless car that my
sister has gone over and detailed like
the car goddess she is, this lovely
vehicle that I still don’t want to hurt,
and Mom says, You’ll be fine, the car
will be fine, I want you to drive it—
and I believe her, I believe her,
I believe her.
