Güd wrtr

(In honor of Sea Otter Awareness Week
and the Monterey Bay Aquarium otters)

•••

She log rolls on her side and rises,
breathes and pats her stomach,
rolls and pats, then, chin tucked
to her fuzzy chest, curls into
a forward roll, somehow undulating
into a twist, which to my untrained eye
would be a 10 in the gymnastics
world—a perfect otter doughnut.

I couldn’t do that.
Could you do that?
No, you could not.

But Ruby can, and Rosa and Ivy
and Kit and Selka, the aquarium’s
all-girl otter band, can, and, oh, look—
is that Ivy?—here she comes with
her elegant backstroke, a blue bowl
balanced on her chest as if she’s
ready for dinner to be served, please.

And when she rolls, she transfers
the bowl so smoothly to her paws,
momentarily disappears underwater,
her powerful tail twisting her lithe
form, propulsion and steering
all in one appendage.

How many hours on those dark
days of lockdown did I spend glued
to the otter cam? Looking up otter
facts as I watched the girls zip
in and out of the frame like
sleek brown rafts:

Otters have the world’s densest fur—
more than a million hairs per square inch.
Their whiskers are called vibrissae;
their valve-like ears and nostrils
seal up as soon as they hit water.

I’d watch and chuckle, get all punny
with exhaustion from hours of online
teaching/coaxing/counseling/
too much worry/too little sleep—

I otter stop watching now, get back
to grading. Gotta call the significant
otter. Look at those gyrating girls—
they’re just otterable. Aren’t they
otter this world?

Some folks seek celebrity sightings
of the two-legged variety. But even
as these new versions of us have
resumed our otterly rearranged
lives, I still like to sneak a peek,
catch up with sea otter girls—

the water ballerinas who made us
smile, who helped us through those
endless days and even longer nights.

•••

You can see the Monterey Bay Aquarium otters here.

What did I really see this day?
—John O’Donohue

•••

I saw the day break into a thousand
crystal shards when my spot on the planet

rolled into sunshine, scrolling up like
movie credits, light refracting into

sleepy eyes that would much rather
be closed on a horizontal body, still

tucked into clean cotton sheets newly
applied. I saw the day cast newborn

light on the last of the roses heavy
on stems, further weighted with dew

reflecting the morning. And as I peered
closely at a thousand tiny drops,

I saw my face, one I’ll never perceive
in three dimensions, only the flattened

two of a paltry reflection at best.
I cannot see myself as others do,

but I try not to think of it as a
less-than-lovely face, as we so often do—

disliking the shape of the nose, or
noting that one eyelid droops more than

the other or (no escaping this) visible
signs of aging. I try to remember that

others see this face as beloved, just as
their sweet countenances have endeared

themselves to me. What I saw this day
was my own face reflected in perfect

drops atop a crimson rose petal that will
droop and die far sooner than I would like.

Which is why the reminder surfaces
again—to consider this a calling, to

transfigure what has hardened in me,
to praise the passing beauty my

limited sight beholds, the heart of
creativity that I see in the mirror,

so fortunately loved by many,
this one I call me.

Or an old one, as the case may be,
for we fall into autumnal shadows

today, the lengthening ones,
the light fading more quickly,

winter on its way, the radiant
days darkening with an inkling

of farewell reverberating into
chillier mornings. I look up

at the old sycamore, its leaves
beginning their annual fade into

pewter green before the eventual
crisp and fall. So many people

I know who love this interval
between summer and winter,

but this year the newly fallen
surround me, their departure

shrouded in a haze of green
smoke drifting through,

the herb garden going to seed.
No matter how I color it,

this is the dying season,
though I remind myself that

this, too, is meant to be—
the sun crossing the equator

from north to south, lingering for
a moment over the planet’s middle,

as we continue sailing along
at a steady pace, undisturbed,

day and night of equal length.
this instant of perfect balance—

one I can’t tamper with, neither
good nor bad, in this continuously

changing, maddeningly beautiful
universe.

For all that has been, thank you.
For all that is to come, yes.

—Joan Stockbridge

The simplest forms
of gratitude,
heartfelt, whether
spoken or thought,

mean the world
to the world,
so in need of
honest appreciation,

all of us here to
help heal humanity,
grow our souls
as we repair our karma,

all of which begins
with an even
simpler, kinder
yes.

•••

With thanks to Joan Stockbridge for her insight and wisdom.

My mother has lost the little gold penknife
my father used to open small packages,
and it’s driving her nuts that she can’t

find it, she says, as her ride arrives for
her evening excursion. It has to be on
the side table, she insists, so I bend over

the kidney-shaped, three-legged
platform by her easy chair strewn with
all manner of stuff—tissues, her phone

(which should be in her purse),
reading glasses, rubber bands from
the day’s newspapers, kitty fur likely

plucked from the big, fuzzy guy who
loves her lap—but no penknife. She leaves;
I move her chair, dive under the table,

take in the avalanche of books and paper
careening toward the floor. I pull it all
toward me, a few books at a time,

a handful of folded newsletters, four
identical pamphlets on CBD oil, books,
books, books. It would be easy to judge,

except that I, too, have at my house
stacks of paper threatening to topple.
I have inherited the too-many-books

gene from her. On my knees I do penance
for my own acquisitive sins as I sort
and stack, shake and look for… ah ha!

The little penknife slides from its hiding
place between (of course) the newsletters.
I hold it up like found treasure, place it

atop the cell phone where I hope she’ll
find it. Then I head for her bathroom to
try to conjure up her favorite nail file

that’s gone missing. And while I’m at it,
could I look for her charm bracelet?
I, who struggle to locate things I have

misplaced in my own house, me, whom
my family saw as scattered, a bit flaky,
have become the finder, a backup

for my mother’s dimming eyes, funny
since mine miss so much, but in other ways
seems only fair—since she, after all,

was the one who gave me mine,
the hazel pair that look so much
like hers.

“I wish”—
whispers the bottom stair, trod by countless
feet, in the translated words of Hafez,

“I could show you”—
the 14th-century Sufi poet’s
writings about divine love,

“when you are”—
in his birthplace of Shiraz,
he who learned the Quran by heart,

“lonely or”—
whom others called Hafez,
the memorizer, the safe keeper,

“in darkness”—
whose poems have leapt more
than six hundred years into our time,

“the astonishing light”—
accompanying us up and down
the stairs of these earthly lives,

“of your own being”—
always luminous, even when
we can’t see our own shining selves.

(for Robert Gordon, with thanks)

How many people can say they
walked out on their front porches
midday on a mid-September Sunday

to find two zombie/skeleton
sculptures propped up like ghoulish
Jesuses on survey-stake crosses?

Not many, I’ll wager, unless like me,
they’re lucky enough to know
the eccentric artist who lives

down H Street, an unconventional
Puck who drops by unannounced
and stealthily leaves on my porch

treasures assembled from
all manner of recycled bits
that others might call trash.

One zombie’s white face appears
to have entered the world as a
cardboard shoe insert, the other

a thick rectangular block of a gift
box painted a sickly chartreuse,
complete with Frankenstein-style

scar and, atop his ribs, a bright
red heart. I had no idea that I
needed zombies today (though,

apparently, Robert did),
but they make me smile, shake
my head in amazement at this

man’s creativity, his offbeat
genius in crafting art from some
of the most disposable stuff

that the rest of us mortal fools
so thoughtlessly,
so short-sightedly

throw away.

(May 2021)

Books boxed, shelves emptied,
left like gaping mouths, every bit
of paper in the filing cabinets
boxed, too—nothing left behind
for recycling—no one to remove
it on the pandemic-closed campus.

No one to say goodbye.

Faithful iMac wiped clean
of so many documents/photos/
whole publications. Spot on the desk
where the bright red stapler waited
to perform its job hundreds of times
a week. Slender ceramic tray cradling
old-fashioned letter opener, a prettily
decorated dagger that could, I belatedly
realize, have served as a weapon, had
a student sitting in the chair by the door
decided to come at me.

But they never did.

They sat there and unfurled
their hearts like multi-colored banners,
they asked questions and cried—
oh, how they cried, so many weeping
in the days after the towers fell,
no idea why so much sorrow
leaked out of them—

they laughed and pulled the chair
close to mine so we could look at
their stories together, as I taught
editor after editor semester after semester
how to edit a sports story/news story/
feature story headed for the campus
newspaper or magazine,

as I reviewed poems, short stories,
bits of memoir with others hoping
to have their pieces accepted by
the literary journal (and often were).

They sat in that chair, in so many chairs
in a half dozen offices over 30 years,
their names now vanished, their faces
blurring my brain like a soft cloud
as I leave this office for the last time,
stealth packing during quarantine,
the proverbial thief in the night
stealing back my past and boxing it,
carrying it home to sort later,

switching off the light as I leave,
depressing the little button on the inside
of the doorknob to lock it, not looking
back, two dear ones helping, witnessing
the end,

hoping I’d done what I meant to—
encouraged writers of all ages, shapes,
sizes and colors, convinced them
that they could write, that their voices
were worthy of the page, that they mattered,
the collective whole of them—

to the world, to themselves, to me.

Shanah tovah, our Jewish friends
say this weekend, offering us all

wishes for the good new year 5784,
this Rosh Hashanah, the birthday

of the universe, asking forgiveness
for mistakes, which I ask, too, as

I cut up apples, dip them in honey,
crack open a leathery pomegranate,

pull out its pearly seeds and place
them on the tongue, a taste of

blessings to come. May this sweet
new year bring only good changes:

more peace, better connection,
more tolerance, more bravery,

more love.

Of all the poems I could write today,
one about a cat gazing adoringly
at Dickie—as he laptops at my house
during an internet outage at his—

seems so trivial in these desperate
times of fire and flood, earthquakes
and mudslides, of so much suffering
in the world. But there is always

so much suffering in the world.
We are never short on that. And
sometimes I have to tune out
the agony of other beings and

look into the sweet eyes of one guy
staring with such devotion at
another guy taking up table space
with some electronic contraption

the first guy cannot comprehend
because Diego is—in addition to
being a cat—a classic doofus, far
from the brightest thing on four feet.

But none of that matters because
this is, it turns out, a love poem for
two guys who cherish me, and I them—
we three beings whose problems

don’t amount to a hill of beans
in this crazy world, but whose
fondness for each other makes
everything in our little orbit

that much brighter.