Güd wrtr

Be willing to be a beginner every single morning.
― Meister Eckhart

My favorite students to teach, those summer
mornings at the high school pool, were
the Beginners. A couple levels up from

Non-Swimmers, still tentative, some reluctant
to put their faces in the water. They taught me
that insisting they do it my way did not work,

that for some, just blowing bubbles on
the crystalline blue surface was a brave act,
like trusting the water to hold them when

they stretched out on their backs, little chests
puffed up toward the sun, my hand barely
between their shoulder blades for reassurance.

I’d whisper in their ears, half above the surface,
You’re floating! and they’d grin and start to giggle,
flailing and sputtering as I caught them.

Try again, I’d say. Take a deep breath. I’ve got you.
And now I wonder where such insight bubbled
up in a 16-year-old girl, herself a beginner,

barely launched in life, in love. Or was I giving
myself advice I’d later need for the journey,
for the beginnings that would inevitably arrive

unbidden, requiring a starting over, a call to
embark again, always the neophyte, the perpetual
apprentice with so much to learn?

This night
go outside to find yourself
caught in the spotlight of our
only natural satellite,
inhale yourself illumined in light
reflected by our star, as Da Vinci’s
wild imagination postulated
500 years ago.

The full moon embraced in the arms
of the crescent, he said, is
earthshine. If you could stand
on the lunar surface, as a dozen
earthlings have, your shadow would
be cast by your home planet.

As it is, all you can do is go outside
this night and find yourself joyfully
caught in full moonshine, a bit woozy
at the sight of your shadow self
splayed upon the ground. Admire
your constant chaperone, your
devoted consort that coexists,
envelops, protects.

Who is to say that’s not your soul?

Walk toward it and watch it
edge away. Kneel and touch it,
your shadow soul self.
Bless that part of you
that transcends death for now;
thank the heavens for the shroud
that accompanies you through
the eclipse of this lifetime—
oh, so brief, so dim,

the penumbra shadowing
your celestial body,
your silhouette of mystery,
this night, each precious day.

Back in business at last
for the Christmas sing
under the Capitol dome,

Mom and the Sweet Adelines
harmonize in Santa hats
and sparkly tops, sending
to the top of the rotunda
sounds of the season:

Mary, did you know that your baby boy
Would one day walk on water?
Mary, did you know that your baby boy
Would save our sons and daughters?
Did you know that your baby boy
Has come to make you new,
This child that you delivered
Will soon deliver you?

And I think of my father, who,
when hearing barbershoppers
hit a final ringing chord that
reverberated inside him, would say,
“Now that’s how it’s done,”
and, of course, that brings him
into the rotunda with us,
in the front row, applauding
as he did for all of her shows,
so many of our band concerts,

which is enough, when the familiar
lyrics of the closing song begin,
to fill my eyes and hear my voice
join in:

Let there be peace on earth
And let it begin with me
Let there be peace on earth
The peace that was meant to be

With God as our father
Brothers all are we
Let me walk with my brother
In perfect harmony.

Let peace begin with me
Let this be the moment now.

With ev’ry step I take
Let this be my solemn vow
To take each moment and live
Each moment in peace eternally
Let there be peace on earth
And let it begin with me.

—

• “Mary, Did You Know?”—lyrics Mark Lowry/ music Buddy Greene

• “Let There Be Peace on Earth”—Jill Jackson-Miller/Sy Miller, written in 1955 for the International Children’s Choir in Long Beach, California

Once you step in, begin to walk,
time dissolves,

something takes you from your place
in the world—
what you imagine your place to be—

into a space of evaporated time,
of disappeared place,
barely embodied, only your feet
treading the circuitous
path in,

shedding what is no longer
needed, knowing you can pick it
up again, if you wish.

But by the time your feet find
their way into center,
you no longer wish to do
anything

but gather leaves the color
of new lemons the trees have
released, and

arrange the earthly ephemera
into a pattern that that will soon
vanish with breeze
or machine.

You will carry only the color
and circumference of the leaf wreath
with you,
tracing the same path back out.

The return never looks the same
because you are not the same:

Every walk changes you,
leaves you lighter,
always,

shifted, somehow, this time
by the path
through ripe yellow that looks
good enough to eat,
that might, you imagine,

taste tart
on the tongue.

2 miles around the park
that was an oak-studded tangle
when I was a kid—
now tiny mammals swarm
these playing fields on weekends
with all manner of balls and bats,
cleats and grownups with
whistles who try to keep order—

and I quick-walk 5 laps around
the perimeter of tranquil turf
on Mom Mondays as she lies on
the acupuncturist’s table across
the street, before we go to the gym,
then lunch, then errands, then
home—

though the details disappear
as I stride through the shiny
day after rain has washed
the place clean, as survivor oaks
pose prettily for a photo, clouds
and sun lending their texture
to a puddle, a mild west wind
carrying seeds of thought into
the world via fallen acorns and
their jaunty berets, planting ideas
and not a little bit of hope in
as many places as possible.

Big fan, really, from the moment
I first walked across your inky
brittle ground crinkling like glass
underfoot, and look at you go, girl—

meaning no disrespect, Madame
Pele, just enthusiastic yah-hooing
an ocean away from your fountaining
fissures on Mauna Loa this week
that some might call a bit show-offy,
but I see as geologic performance
art, the work of a literal rock star
goddess creating new earth
on the planet.

We don’t get to see your active
state on the surface nearly often
enough for my taste, though I fully
appreciate your great power.

My first time on your island, setting
foot on one of your incarnations—
smooth pahoehoe only months old—
a young geologist leading the way
advised, “If you hear a rumbling noise
run toward the mountain, not the ocean,”

which was how I learned the term
bench collapse, one of which weeks
before had taken two visitors into the sea,
never to be found.

“Of course,” said the scientist
in hard hat and lava-singed boots,
well acquainted with your fiery self,
“if she wants you, she’ll take you.”

That made me grateful for our
safe passage that day and ever after
across lava, which makes me cheer
like a crazy fangirl when I tune in
live to see your screamin’ orange
magnificence blasting through land
you created not that long ago, that
you’ll continue to make long after
I’ve left the planet, when, somehow,
I hope, in some form, I’ll still be
among your enthusiastic admirers.

We are not used to getting our feet wet
when we step outside. We recoil at damp
mail pulled out of the box, shake our
annoyed heads when the cat pops in
through the flap in the back door,
fur glistening, paws imprinting the floor
like dirty rubber stamps.

We are a dry people unused to rain,
and while we are grateful in theory,
in practice we are rusty. The umbrellas
don’t unfurl as we think they used to;
our jackets get soaked, and it’s not
even a downpour out there—it’s
just plain old garden-variety rain.

And speaking of the garden, which
we gave up watering a month ago,
as of late this afternoon you could
surf across the backyard, and though
we just raked, something about
precipitation yanks down leaves
even without much wind, so that
brittle plates of sycamore float
atop the shallow sea, under which.
we imagine, stunned blades of grass
reach for the surface, waving like kelp,
as the invisible quarter moon
tugs on the tiny tides.

for GAT

They arrived on the doorstep today,
and I thank you aloud—because
who other than Santa, maybe,
would think to send me a pair
of what became my favorite slippers

practically the moment you insisted
I try on what became my first cozy pair
at the island hay and feed store—which
sold so much more than hay and feed—
because, you said, they’ll keep your
feet extra warm, and who can’t use
extra warmth?

Especially as the days shorten
and colden, you’d say.

I want to tell you that they’re
perfect in size and color, and yes,
the toes stay toasty in the Acorns,
and I hope this thank you note will
reach you in your latest incarnation
because you didn’t leave a forwarding
address—as if sunflowers get mail,
as if rainbows require anything
more than simple, unqualified
admiration.

Striding into a thankfully cloudy day,
your pupils perform a fine imitation
of Hershey’s Kisses after the optometrist
dilates your aging eyes, which are in
(hallelujah) not-bad shape, the two
of you agree.

But outside, your aperture wide open,
you perceive a tack-sharp focal plane
a hair’s-breadth wide against a blurry
background, and you wish you could put
a hand on the lens of your retinas to pop
it all into sharp focus.

But no, your vision will remain expansive
for a while, leaving you a wide-eyed kid
inhaling the petrichor wafting up from
the just-rained-on ground, eagerly taking in
the unusual perspective, stepping gingerly
over the slick linoleum of leaves underfoot,

trying hard not to squint.

on the first day of the last month,
we find ourselves walking on
a carpet of golds—some burnished

with smudges of cinnamon—but mostly
ginkgo leaves the color of new lemons,
a startling contrast to the wet road.

We are drawn to put our feet on them,
what yesterday seemed determined
to cling to where they’d been born,

but like us, once so firmly attached,
somehow persuaded to detach,
find a place among what some

might consider litter as we scuff
damp toes through them like
little kids, bending to peer more

closely, absorbing the colors of
marigolds, of honey, of bumblebees
that cruised the garden, itself

turning tawny, the once vibrant
now the texture of a broken-in
saddle. Which is why, out here,

we exult in color on a such dull day,
knowing that shades of daffodils
still exist, underfoot and underground,

colors so alive that even in
their dying we can taste them:
mustard—Dijon and regular,

mango and tangerine with
a little carob tossed into this
leafy salad of ginkgo gold.

(for Deborah Meltvedt, River Park walking buddy)