Güd wrtr

for Pat and Dee

They two
and we two,
born to two siblings
who hailed from Illinois—

we share the same
grandparents, we two
older girls and two
younger girls,

so much family history
between us, so many
photographs the older
two have dredged up to
share with the younger two,

spread out over a big table—
scattered snapshots, some
in piles, some in lovingly
assembled photo albums,

next to Grandma’s small,
century-old suitcase with
a letter typed on her manual
Olivetti in its distinctive
cursive font.

We look and laugh; one
of us copies photos on a
newfangled camera that
also makes phone calls,
summoning the spirits
of the ones who made us
by the mere mention of
their names,

those who walked our
ancestral path, paving our
way long before we existed,
who loved us before we had
a glimmer of an idea what
was possible, of the women
we would become.

Rain bucketing, pummeling
the park where, on the concrete
edge of the flooded baseball
field-turned-wading-pool, stands
a boy, his skateboard flipped
vertical, resting against his calf
like a loyal dog, watching.

At some signal from his inner
adventurer, the boy flips the board
horizontal with his foot and sets
a sneakered sole atop, revving
the board back and forth, its
invisible engine preparing for
takeoff,

which he does with a mighty push,
sailing into the sidewalk shallows
before him with such force that
his wheels disappear as he surfs
that rain-pocked sea, going farther,
faster than he may have imagined,
upright, riding the wave, staying tight
in the tube till it spits him out,

and his fist leaps into the air,
punches exultation through
the drops, amped as he stands
in ankle-deep water, then flips up
his stick, tucks it under an arm,
and splashes back to where
he began,

grinning and shaking his head,
wet through and through,
ready for another gnarly run.

for Dev Berger

The trick on a walk
in between winter storms
is to open to the sunny day
at the same time a friend
has joined you and talk
commences.

You try to listen more
than you speak, though
it’s just a mile to lunch
down a street you drive
daily.

Because in this liminal
state—one foot still
in winter, one walking
hopefully into spring,
stepping over puddles
where the sidewalk ends
and the street begins—

you want to pay attention
to the tiniest buds that
survived the drenching,
still hanging on to bobbing
branches overhead, even
as the evidence testifies
that some of their brethren
lie underfoot.

But you two—well fed by
the little restaurant down
the street that also survived
its share of storms, still on
your feet, walking in and out
out of spots of sunshine—

you understand how to
cherish being in the midst of,
poised for what’s next,
even when you have no
idea what next
will look like.

(for Lisa Morgan… happy birthday!)

It’s a kind of birth canal,
every tunnel we enter,
imagining, if not seeing,
the proverbial light at
what might or might not
be the end.

So much growth occurs,
rich nourishment received
in this final bit of gestation.

We want to go more deeply,
more deeply, more deeply,
unhurried, unafraid,
eyes open, listening keenly
into the silence, waiting
for the delicate to appear.

It’s the hope we cling to
as we enter the narrowing,
perhaps unwillingly,
little by little, until we are
sufficiently deep into
the fullness of the unknown,
squeezed so tight, so tight—
until, to our surprise,
brightness shines upon us.

We are received, recognized,
encountered, known.

We are not alone.

No wonder we gasp,
blink hard, maybe cry
to start the breath. Look
at the journey we’ve
undertaken to get here.

Look how far we had to go.

(for Gay Morgan, raccoon feeder extraordinaire)

I see them scurrying up the driveway
as I pull in—two fat-bottomed girls
who’ve been munching on the dry food
on the porch bowl, because I expect
that the night visitors will find
whatever the neighbor cats don’t.

You can come back now! I holler in
their direction as I get out of the car,
seeing a black snout poke out from
under the gate to the backyard.
I’m going inside!

I smile at their little footy prints
as I step onto the porch, the precise
toe placement and the invisible heel,
as if the artist didn’t quite finish
the impression, the long toes like
exclamation marks,

a calling card from the wild
reminding me that I’m not the only
animal who lives here, that it’s
important to share, and to be
kind to the neighbors.

though I didn’t see it then,
muddled in grief and regret,
unable to recognize anything
but the gone-ness of her.

And it took time—far too long,
it seemed—to absorb the here-ness
of her, still so present if I could
let my mind to drift her way
without allowing the cloud
of sorrow to automatically
overtake me.

I gradually learned to hear
her voice as though she’d just
called to arrange dinner out
and a trip to the bookstore after,
her voice trailing into my ear:

Mexican? Japanese? What
are you hungry for? Maybe
the Indian place on Broadway?

Then I could summon
seasoned joy, recall conversations
that seemed ordinary at the time,
not acknowledging, despite
the diagnosis, that there would
be a finite number, an end date.

And as I type now, I hear
her dropping in:
What end date? You think
this is over?

And there’s her wicked good
laugh echoing through the ether,
her presence eliciting a chuckle,
as she always has.

(for Georgann Turner, March 1, 1951–Aug. 17, 2021)

—for Richard L. Tracy,
garden editor, The Sacramento Bee (ret.)

Our hero in so many ways—
comical and horticultural,
good person of the earth.

Dear friend, father, husband,
fine writer and photographer,
raconteur, he of the wicked wit,
has announced his imminent
departure.

And we wonder if,
just before his last breath,
he will slowly raise
his left hand toward his mouth
and announce into his
atomic-powered, two-way
wrist radio,

“Roger wilco, over and out.”

(for Donna Gail)

Maybe because we flatlanders shiver
under skies delivering rare bits
of snow, while our neighbors
2,500 feet higher have been told
to expect eight inches tomorrow
and ten inches the next day,
which is far from usual for them,

and maybe because every winter
I forget what 105 degree days
feel like as my feet complain that
they will never be truly warm again,

but stumbling around online,
I find myself lusting after a girly
pink 1961 Holiday House trailer,
one of only 200 made that year
in southern Oregon designed by
a guy who created a now-famous
mail-order fruit basket company
and wanted to keep his workers
busy during the off season.

My sister would’ve been a year
old when this baby was new,
and I’d have been three, but I can
see us a few years later eating
at the starburst Formica table,
looking out the windows with
the skinny metal blinds, napping
on the cozy bed, opening the pink
fridge for some Kool-Aid,

Dad and Mom having hitched us
up to the ’57 Chevy and set off
for someplace warm with a lake,
summer on full blast, not a
snowflake in sight.

(For more photos of the 1961 pink Holiday House trailer, click here.)

(a nod to Shel Silverstein)

But, really, who else could you be?
You have to be you, as I have to be me.

If I tried to be you, I surely could not,
nor would I want to be.

For you are the very best you
as I am the very best me.

So you as you and me as me,
together let’s be we.*

(*Or, if you insist, “us,” my grammatically correct friends.)

(for Ursula, who said, “This sounds like a poem”)

For a long time I shut my
poetself tightly in a closet
crammed full of miscellaneous
words and stray lines,

and over the years it got
quite crowded in there,
just me and all that verbiage.
And now and then I’d unlock

the door, peek out at the
Real Poets poeting their
hearts out, boldly, unafraid,
flinging stanzas and sonnets,

chapbooks and publications
into the world. And though
they never did anything
to actively discourage me,

neither did they invite me
to poetic coffee chats or
share a draft or ask to see
one of mine.

I can’t recall the day when
I decided to use the key,
burst out of the closet,
poems in hand, ready to

fling them at unsuspecting
folks, but when I did, I
remembered that as a child,
I’d scribbled in notebooks,

filling one and offering it to
a friend as a gift, then going
on to the next and the next—
unafraid of whether

Real Writers thought my
pieces were good enough,
just poeting and storying
my own heart out.

So now I Poet in public
and urge others to do
the same, not worrying
whether pieces are met

with cheers or ignored—
a daily practice like
meditation or yoga or
putting on a favorite

pair of shoes, lacing
them up and heading
out for a walk, paper
and pen in a pocket,

ready to capture
an image as it floats
by, setting down a
line if one comes,

grateful for the gift.