Güd wrtr

for Lauren and Gerald, now joined by Henry

He should have arrived with
a list clutched in his tiny fist,
an instruction manual for this
new human, specifically tailored
for his particular self.

But no. They don’t send them
with one. I don’t know why.
Like it would be so much skin
off God’s nose to send a how-to
pamphlet (OK, maybe a set of
encyclopedias) called:

How to Be in the World

So, like every other parent,
you’re gonna have to guess.
Make your own list. What does
this kid need to know on his
road to becoming a fully
formed human?

One of you will likely want
to make sure he knows his way
around an engine, have him
peering into one when he’s
a toddler. The other one will
pass on her love of good movies,
how to gently pat the doggie
and kitties, and tie his shoes.

Both of you will read to him
endlessly, thinking, this book again?!
and then one day you will miss
those snuggly moments when
he reads on his own.

You will teach him to scramble
an egg and make toast, to brush
his teeth and hair, to aim first,
flush after, to pick up after himself
(some times more successful than
others), to ask for help and say
thank you, two of the best prayers,

how to be a good friend, and
to cultivate awe, as he will when
he becomes captivated by fire engines
and big trucks, by butterflies and
flowers that smell good.

You will, of course, both
steady him as he sets off on
his own two feet—something,
I’m told, good parents do
all the days of their lives, you
already excellent teachers, you.

Lucky him. Lucky you, setting
off on this great adventure
together. So much fun. Some tears.
Lots of laughter. It all adds up
to a life well lived.

Go do that.

LavaUmuchly,

Great Aunt Jan

First, you can’t.
You can try. But you can’t.

They have to want to return,
and if they have lost the gleam in the eye,
the impetus to continue, the breath,
you have to know that all the urging,
the pleading, the desperation
will not help.

Here’s what might:

While they can still move, breathe,
smile, speak, whether they can still
walk the dog or feed the cat,
or not,

when they can still hug you
with their arms or their eyes,
when they can speak to you,
with words or their eyes,

whether they can wag a tail
or brush against your leg for a pat,

at every opportunity,
in silence,

let your heart wrap them with
each corpuscle of love coursing
through you, let your vertebrae
hold them upright, feel their cells
embed in yours, and think:

You are everything to me—
you cherished human/husband/
wife/son/daughter/beloved friend.
Stay as long as you can.
And when you can’t, I have
tucked you, a constituent of
matter and light, inside my
marrow,

your microscopic photons
ping-ponging through me—
you, there, for as long as I am,
which, with luck, equals
eternity.

I say to Poki, when she begins
to eat again after a week of languishing,
when I wondered daily if she was
on her way out,

watching, because if she was
truly dying, she didn’t seem to be
in pain—just wanted to sleep,
tolerated occasional gentle pats,

which is what we all want in times
of The Great Tired. And when she
nibbled cat treats, just a couple,
on Day 6, I wanted not to scare

her by shouting, Atta girl! So I
whispered it to her as she chewed
delicately, and then again the next
day when she ate some dry food

and the next when she ate her
usual wet food. And I find myself
murmuring it as I perform
the most mundane chores,

when I complete a task—
especially one I’m not fond of.
Atta girl, I whisper. Good girl.
You got that job done.

June 23, the anniversary of the day in 1868 when a patent was granted for the first practical typewriter to a trio of inventors, including Christopher Latham Sholes, a Wisconsin newspaper editor who designed the QWERTY keyboard.

•••

Around here every day is
World Typewriter Day.

Every so often someone
who comes to my house

looks around and asks,
How many do you have?

And I have to confess,
I honestly don’t know.

Lots. Too many. But look
at those majestic machines,

most of which I acquired
long after their prime.

The pink Royal made for
girl typists in the 1950s.

The classic black Underwood,
anchor-heavy. The tiny

Corona designed for
war correspondents.

Think of all the words
they typed, the miles of

ribbons used by all
kinds of writers from

office staff to novelists,
poets to someone hunting

and pecking out an address
on an envelope. Once in

service to millions, some
now survive in places of honor,

excellent retired workers
like so many of us,

including the one
typing right now.

She’s visible on the longest day,
Venus a bright white jewel
winking in summer-blue sky,

a pearl earring that requires
us to squint in a what-is-that?
daytime moment.

And once the sun reluctantly
steps offstage, that show-off
Venus really beams

in the spotlight, obscuring
tiny Mars shining feebly at
her upper left.

But, not to be outdone,
the wafer thin crescent moon
waxes celestial north

of Venus and Mars, a cosmic
triangle to end this solstice
day, one that

blessedly seems never
to end in our little corner
of Earth, as splendid

a day as we can imagine,
perfectly content to rest
right where we are.

when it’s so un-summery, a mild
85 degrees at most, with a soft breeze,
the sky still blue, no smoke or smog
darkening it, the thermometer kindly
hovering far below the century mark.

In fact, we’ve not yet seen 100 degrees,
something I shouldn’t even think,
much less say, for fear of jinxing us,
though we can and likely will.

But for now, how to celebrate the
just-right amount of brightness
our nearest star bestows?

For some, taking to the water, finding
a patch of sand by lake or river.
For at least two people I know, perhaps
celebrating birthdays they may or may not
wish to acknowledge.

For me, on my sixty-fifth summer solstice,
I think of recent days’ delights:

holding the newest family member
in my arms as the grownups around him
ogle his perfection, later listening
to 22 lovely humans who write with me
read from our group’s latest collection—

two practically perfect debuts—

like this summer day I can see through
the window, which taps on the glass
and calls, asking if I can play, urging me
to put aside the pen, put on comfy shoes
and head outside to see what my favorite
season has to show me.

Pretend there’s a cup of water on the dashboard,
said the former ambulance driver,
and you must drive so carefully, so gently,
that you don’t spill a drop.

I tried with everything in me
after his surgery to make the drive home
as gentle as a feather drifting onto a cloud,
like dolphins smoothly generating momentum
even through the roughest water.

But unexpected road cracks, hidden bumps
and train tracks—even slowly rumbled over—
pained him. I noted every wince crinkling
his closed eyes, despairing that I could
not soften the blows.

I remember that drive home after surgery
on the longest day of the year, fresh stitches
seaming his newest incision, clutching ice
to the sore spot, pain pills in a small white
bag, but nothing for the worry about what
might come next.

As one in his pod of protectors, I so wanted
it to stop—try to bump him to the surface
for air, keep close, witness his suffering.

And on this summer solstice so many years
later, I remember gentling the car around
the cracks and divots, mid-afternoon traffic
parting, allowing us semi-smooth passage
over a usually bumpy sea. I pulled into the
driveway, and we released our held breaths,
looked at each other across the stretch
of a long friendship.

You were perfect, he said. You didn’t spill a drop.

for the brave and beautiful writers who write with me

a rough untamed one
where wildness roams
& daring rambles
where nothing
is trimmed
or clipped
to impossible
perfection

where you dance
with abandon
sing loudly
because you can

where there is
no command
to color inside the lines
stay in the box
punctuate properly
enunciate clearly

in this wild country
inside you
put pen to paper
scribble
make a mess
risk failure
dare to say

i love you
this is who I am
a brave
& beautiful
writer

for Curtis

It’s not that I’ll be 65 next month,
or that I’ve had to wade through
the confusion of Medicare, but
the long-loved optometrist
saying, I’m pulling the trigger—

something we’ve talked about
for years—writing the prescription
for drops that, she promises, will
plump up my puny lashes, deepen
the hazel of my irises, and, we hope,
halt any possibility of early
glaucoma in its tracks.

Like Bodie, I say, the ghost
town, in arrested decay?

She laughs, this other Janis
who has looked longer, more
deeply into my eyes than
anyone who has loved me,
studied my retinas, examined
the macula and the optic nerve,
a tiny glimpse into the human
central nervous system.

The enormity of this hits me
a day later, seizes my chest,
watering my precious eyes before
any drops enter them. And it takes
me a minute to breathe, before
calling the college boyfriend,

legally blind since babyhood,
who understands better than
anyone I know what it is to live
partially sighted, who spent his
career working on behalf of people
with disabilities, who has said more
than once that most of us find
ourselves disabled at some point—
perhaps not permanently, but…

I know that I need to hear the voice
of this man who, though he could barely
see me, long ago looked into my eyes,
those of my younger, still-forming self—
understanding something about my
depths that I did not—

to gently tell me four decades later,

—The drops will help.
—You’ll be OK.
—I love you.

unlike x or y, which can be,
the online dictionary quiz implies,
so I rack my brain for words—
victor, va-va-voom, environment—

and then root around for the silent x—
well, faux pas, but that’s French.
Because I cannot conjure silent y words,
I hurl myself down the rabbit hole,

getting lost in online lists of words
with silent letters—and y is not
among them—remembering some
of my non-native English-speaking

students in years past
who delightfully pronounced
the b in lamb or the k in knife,
the l in salmon (which some native

English speakers do, too). And my
own embarrassment—as a freshman
in high school, so wanting to impress
the teacher who might allow me to

work on the newspaper, though
she usually only admitted juniors
and seniors—when, reading aloud
to the class, I mispronounced

horizon, prompting Mrs. Colón’s
eyebrow to arch and her to say,
Whore-a-zon?! and me to blush
because that’s how my mind said it

when I read it. And how, despite that
faux pas, she put me on the newspaper
staff, unknowingly catapulting me into
two careers—as a journalist and a

writing teacher, regularly reminded
to practice patience with those who
stumble over this confusing,
maddening, astonishing language.

(for Gerry Colón)