Güd wrtr

Had they explained it to me in math class
using the circular plate, pressed in a crust
and prettily fluted the edges, added a filling

tempting to taste buds—apple, cherry,
any kind of berry, pumpkin—but not mince,
never mince—then baked it to a gentle bubble,

I might have understood or at least gotten
a glimmer of the miracle of mathematics.
But being told that pi is the ratio of a circle’s

circumference to its diameter made no sense
to my teenage brain. It was all I could do
to remember its first five digits—3.1415.

They held no meaning for me—I could not
taste, touch, feel those symbols. But pie, I
could understand—Grandma’s cinnamon-y apple

with its lattice-top crust. A small Chinese man
walking through his restaurant with his
banana cream (a recipe, he teased, that he

brought with him from China).
A man I loved fork-feeding me bits
of cherry pie he’d made from scratch.

Pie, it turns out, is love in all its infinite forms.
Numerical or baked, it is a constant. It is both
irrational and transcendental, and, I have

learned, this miracle of numbers and dough
and filling continues, without repetition
or pattern—on and on and on, ad infinitum,

amen.

Yeah, that ain’t me on the sign up there,
my thighs hangin’ out like the drumstick
the gal’s holding, kickin’ up her heels in neon.

My grandson’s idea, him the fancy chef,
settin’ up shop, usin’ my chicken recipe, which
is all well and good, but when people ask,

Where’s Lucy? I wanna holler in their ear,
Right here! Call me the ghost of chickens past,
call me a hovering spirit. Just don’t go thinkin’

I’m the dark-haired beauty lit up at night,
lookin’ all sassy. Though, come to think of it,
I had no little sass about me when I walked.

In fact, I’m still carryin’ all that sass with me
now, so maybe me and that gal up there
have somethin’ in common, after all.

***

(Thanks to Jessica Bruder for the daytime photo and the inspiration. And to Lucy’s in Austin, Texas.)

You hear the incredulity from locals:

—Never seen this much snow…
—The house is mostly buried…
—We shovel and shovel—more keeps coming…

and
—The bay’s frozen over.

Sure enough, snow white has overtaken
the emerald, frosting little Fannette Island
like a vanilla cake topper,

the lake’s only island, which a ranger showed
me the summer I spent as a journalist in Tahoe,
climbing the rocky hill to the Tea House

commissioned by Mrs. Knight, the wealthy
woman who lived onshore and occasionally
boated guests out there for Earl Grey and

finger sandwiches—now truly a shell of its
former self, frozen in time like the surface
of the glacier-gouged bay that surely sleeps

beneath that creamy surface of glistening ice.

for Kevin, best neph, who is 33 today

This is the springing forward,
the first of 240 days to make
more use of daylight from

the second Sunday in March
to the first Sunday in November.
The Canadians started it in 1908,

nothing to do with farmers or
the trajectory of our nearest star,
except that humans have long wanted

to harness more of what shines
upon us—much as the demigod Maui
lassoed the sun to slow its progress

across the sky to allow his mother’s
kapa cloths of pounded bark
more time to dry. We all want more

time in the sun to make hay while
it shines, make love, make do, make
waves, make light of so much dark,

especially as our half of the earth
starts to warm like an egg sunny side
up in a pan. Longing for winter to

catapult us into spring, we mortals
imagine that we can nudge the season
by turning clock hands forward,

as we catch our collective breath,
open a door, fling wide a window,
welcome the warmth of that

trickster sun once again.

Worry descends before the rain,
remembering the last one—water,
water, so much water deluging our
arid selves, power outages and snow,
snow, deep blankets of snow, pristine
icing layers thick atop groaning roofs,
shoveling that doesn’t stop.

And now another atmospheric river
chugs up from Hawaii, the Pineapple
Express barreling toward us—warmer
rain to melt all that snow up the hill,
lots of water predicted for us below.
We hunker down, sit tight, wait.
And wait.

As the Express finally arrives,
spitting like a petulant child, I head
out on errands anyway, surprised
to see the pet food store deserted,
the single employee shivering—
heater’s out again—and to my
favorite local Mexican lunch spot—
good to see you!—alone, watching
watery trails stripe the large window.

Back at home, yes, rain, but no
ferocious wind yet, and, just to be sure,
I offer up prayers to La’amaomao,
the Hawaiian wind goddess, the keeper
of dozens of winds from soft to stormy.

Please, I entreat her, makani olu olu—
fair winds, gentle, wafting breezes—
ones that do not rattle the trees
and leave us powerless.

All night, as the wind builds
to a ko’olau, the kind that chops
calm seas into treacherous peaks
and valleys, I whisper into the dark:
Calm down, ease up.

And in time it does, dead calm
by morning, wee bits of blue
piercing the gray, widening
by midday into a sunny grin.

More inclemency is on its way,
they say, but for now we’ll bask
under momentary fair skies.

Mahalo, I murmur to the gods.
Malama pono. Take good care.
Keep us all safe.

In between
2nd winter and
The Pollening

I awaken with a headache
that usually means something’s
blooming, and, in fact, so

much is, in this inbetween
moment, which March so often
is in my neck of the woods,

which are not woods at all,
but a city of trees in a neighborhood
with lots of them blossoming

their fool heads off, which I love,
so pretty, but one or two among
them makes my sinuses throb,

especially on awakening, and this
brings you close, Daddy, with your
stuffed up nose and perennial

sniffle thanks to hay fever that Mom
dosed with lots of vitamin C, which
allowed you to mow the lawn

without suffering. And there you are,
my long-ago love, who felt the precise
moment when the almonds came

into bloom, eyes instantly tearing,
nose running, you who at long last
escaped to the east, where I

imagine you encased in snow,
but when I look online, your neck
of the woods shines, 58 degrees

today, and you, I hope, are breathing
without obstruction into Actual Spring,
so beautiful, so full of promise.

After days of gentle blue overhead,
punctuational clouds dashing
and comma-ing the sky, some
trees suddenly donning their
pink tutus, others ready for tea
in saucer magnolia cups,

we prepare for what may be
winter’s last blast—more rain,
more snow, we hear, drenching
us from mountains to valley
a couple of hours below the peaks
on the horizon groaning under
all that white.

If we are looking for inspiration,
we have only to look up.

We learn a new word, thanks
to the new owner of our
favorite neighborhood Mexican
place who, delivering burrito
and tacos to our table, tells us
about catching tiny white flakes.

Hail? I ask since snowfall on
the flatland is rare as rubies.

No, softer, he says, holding out
his hand, as if he’s managed to
hang onto a tiny bit of origami ice,
sky poetry written on his palm.

Later we learn that he held graupel,
a word weather folks know—
snow falling through a cloud,
soft, oblong crystals that can
resemble snowflakes, so fragile they
quickly crumble and disappear—

temporary bits of snow crystals
that once in a while make it to earth
for us to marvel over on a day when
heavy clouds thick as sweaters
overtake us, a different kind
of sky poem,

as we wait for the marching patter
of tenacious rain feet to come.

To the girls we were,
the women we’ve become,

to the women we’ve loved
and ones we have not,

to the ones here and not here
who made us us, despite

years of bemoaning our
imagined imperfections,

flaws, failures, which truly
weren’t, and to those who

thought to give us a hearty
“atta girl,” reminded us to keep

going, that we’re just getting
started, no matter our age or

experience, that this is why we’re
here—to live and grow in love,

to share our light on this mortal
plane as we work to heal our own

karma, watching our souls grow
and flourish, to find balance in

serving others and ourselves,
to put a whole lot of heart

into it all, to see every day
as accomplishment, simply

in the breathing, the moving
through, the doing of the most

mundane/important tasks
—it’s what we do

and who we are, we far from
ordinary, truly extraordinary

women.

I have decided that I’m here in this world to be moved by love and [to] let myself be moved by beauty.
—Ada Limón, Poet Laureate of the United States

And so I move again
on foot toward no specific
destination, moving just
to move, eager to be
surprised by loveliness
rushing at me or simply
ambling along—

the woman pushing
a walker, who looks up
at me and beams a
beautiful smile—

the dog grinning,
tongue flopping,
pulling its person
who matches the grin
when mine joins theirs—

the tiniest buds
bursting into white
flame on trees branches
so bare only weeks ago,
still in place despite
the pelting rains—

the everyday ordinariness,
not so ordinary at all,
of cars passing on a
quiet Sunday, of birdsong,
acknowledging all this
beauty as blessing—

especially when I
extend a hand to receive
a lick of dogtongue,
delighted by this kiss
from a passing soul,
a stranger no more.

A few nights ago
two planets appeared
(from our rooted earthly
vantage point) to snuggle
each other, separated by
the width of a pencil eraser
held up at arm’s length.

I missed it, thanks to clouds,
but, I thought, no biggie—
kissing, while a charming
notion, is a bit silly because
Venus and Jupiter are separated
by 400 million miles, more than
four times the distance between
Earth and sun.

Tonight, just before getting
into my car, I looked up to see
the pair dancing higher in a clear
western sky, on their way to
the horizon, farther apart now
and vertically aligned, a cosmic
colon in conjunction.

And I stood midway in the moonlit
street for a while, captivated, trying
to decide if Venus was higher than
Jupiter or the other way around,
until I realized: doesn’t matter.

Those two pearly orbs, like all
planets moving in their grand ellipses
around the sun, do their do-si-dos
in the same pattern across the sky,
as they have for millennia,
as they will do for millennia,

and we lucky souls on this planet
get to count ourselves, yes, starstruck,
when we think to look up and admire
such dazzling brilliance in this fortunate
happenstance of a moment.