Güd wrtr

Put your chin in the little dip
and look into the bowl of stars,
tiny suns that blink and disappear,

then press with an eager finger
the button to indicate that some
part of your peripheral vision

has noted them. But immediately
you wonder, Did I really see that?
Was it an eyeblink or a floater?

Because you fear that you cannot
trust what you think you see, no matter
how tack sharp or dull your sight.

It is the sense you most rely on,
you and you and me, too, so you
sigh during this test, try to relax

your shoulders, breathe as normally
as you can, soften your focus and
imagine looking through a telescope

at a thousand, ten thousand suns
winking at you from a great distance,
casting light thousands of years old,

and you, lucky one, catch glints
as quick as a whisper into the cosmic
past, your eyes not deceiving you,

letting the light in, as they are meant to,
you wide-eyed, wonderful thing,
you.

Out the back door window
I see part of Mary’s mural
lit up, a soft midday spotlight
on words she painted a couple
of years ago:

I awoke with your voice and because…
…small green fans on slender…
…gold and fluttered to the ground…
…their little lives…

My words twine amid green
stems swooping up to gold fans
leading to poppies and anthuriums,
gold and red under a domed sun,
a bit of dangling purple wisteria—

plants that flourish in warm times,
recalled by a tender bit of winter light
beaming in from our nearest star,
making a momentary appearance,
as do so many of our beloveds,
as if to say,

Turn around; look up and blink.
I’m never far away, here,
just behind the rain.

Stones are very slow stories with secret memories of fire inside.
—John Tarrant

In this first month of a new year
pick up a stone—perhaps one
that calls to you, perhaps one
you picked up some time ago and
kept for a reason you can’t recall.

Pick up your stone, feeling,
for the moment, that it somehow
is meant for you, letting it warm
your hand. If you hold it long
enough, one hand covering
the other, close your eyes
and smile, the stony memory
of fire bringing a tiny puddle
of heat to your palm.

Sit with that fire.
Sit with the slow story
of your stone, letting it unravel
like a knitted thing, filling
your hands with kinked yarn,
its secret, flaming memories
given to you to hold, gently,
the warmth of something you
thought lifeless and mute
infusing you.

Accept the gifts your stone
has laid in your hands;
they are yours to carry into
the year spread before you.
Walk into what comes next,
scattering stories, maybe
a song or two, like pebbles
you offer to other hands
that will hold the secret fire
and share it with anyone,
with everyone, who needs it.

(Thanks to Jennifer Cox, Christie Domasky, Julie Woodside and Kathy Laharty for your good listening in my online writing group that helped shape this poem!)

take it apart
find Be wild
in the big word
then Be wild

however that
shows up for you

put something
on the page—
a blob of color
or words that
could become
something
but don’t have to

or let a sound
escape into the air,
a tune from
your own lips,
one of your
own invention
perhaps

Be wild

allow yourself
to marvel,
maybe with
a bit of
bewilderment,

at what you
have made—
no wrongdoing
or rightdoing

like the velvet
gray doves
matching today’s
nomadic clouds
coo-ooing
somewhere
you can’t see
just because
they can

(Thanks to Jill Badonsky, marvelous artist, for the inspiration. You can find her here.)

Workers chain-sawing downed
trunkslimbsbranchesbareandneedled
all manner of blowers blowing
under threatening skies holding off
for now

but we know the next storm is on its way
gathering like atmospheric birds of prey
and we, unused to so much water so quickly,
sit vigilant

wary about what’s coming at us, hoping
we’ve battened down the hatches well enough
knowing there’s only so much we can do,
that so much of this

is not up to us, and we must trust that
the coming tempest will pass through, move on,
that we will hunker down, then rise above
the gathering storm

to help each other set things right again.

people have often told me,
but she, like so many of us,
does not see this, even after

I point out that we have limited
vision when it comes to our
faces, only able to see in 2-D

what the mirror shows us.
But she sees 91 years of life
etched into her face, her neck,

and I say, But Ma, we’re not
supposed to have the faces
we had when we were 35—

we’re not the same people.
We grow into faces that reflect
the souls we are now—earning

every crease, wrinkle and sag.
We are lovely as fine leather
softening into itself, cheese

and wine becoming more
flavorful, mellowing friendships,
trees growing into venerable elders.

We can’t see ourselves
the way others do—in 3D,
lifetimes of energy radiating

like sunbeams, like crowns,
from our heads, glowing,
you beautiful woman—

you who made me and
my sister, also beautiful,
forever lovely, yes, we are,

and getting sweeter with
every year.
Amen.

We drive home, all the way up the central
valley under soft gray puffy clouds that have
not yet flattened into rain, past crepuscular rays
as we climb the Grapevine, admire the

godlight arrowing into Pyramid Lake—
Look at the light! clean and crisp—imagining
that we have outrun the atmospheric river
swamping our drought-stricken state.

But just below Modesto on the interstate
the drops find us, lacing the windshield
with pretty patterns before settling into
driving rain, and we follow twin taillights

of cars, of ginormous trucks that lead us
home in the dark where the cats complain
and I know small lakes lie in the backyard
where two weeks ago the grass thirsted.

What we don’t know is that we are getting
the gentle edge of the storm, that levees
will be breached, people stranded, record
snow in the Sierra. We drive blithely on.

When the sun emerges on New Year’s Day,
the river ceasing for a moment, the cats and I
venture out to see what the old sycamore
has dropped as its end-of-the-year offerings.

Already the bowls of water are receding
into the uneven ground. Every year I think
I should fill those in—the depression where
a small tree once grew until it didn’t,

the dog-sized dip where he used to wriggle
his retriever self into the grass for a nap
as I’d tend the roses, and we’d both remember
the man who once shoveled endless

wheelbarrows-full of soil amendments
into the flower bed by the fence, grinning
at me, Just call it what it is, Toots—manure,
knowing it would feed the roses, coax

the cosmos to grow tall, even in thick clay,
even as we longed for rain that rarely came,
like the remnants resting here now, godlight
winking blue-sky reflections at lucky me,

high and dry, between the storms of this new year.

And how did that happen?
That enough 24-hour spans occur
that they become lived time,
a lifetime.

And that we are all not granted
as many as some, fewer than others
(and how we are missing those others).

And that there’s no way to know
what the number will be,
or how we are made
or by whom, only that we are.

And we pause in gratitude
on the threshold of this new year,
smiling at whoever you are,
those seen and unseen—

you who make us in silence,
moment by splendid moment,
breath by sweet breath.

noun: a hormonally controlled quiescence resulting in a reduction of metabolic activity, often occurring seasonally, especially in insects

I’ve just learned that
as the cold descends,
you, little red-suited beetles,
cuddle tight to each
other like cubs in a den
napping, your metabolism
slowed to the consistency
of honey, your appetite
for aphids momentarily
on hold.

I had no idea you could
survive a winter, but
here you are umbrella’d
under a broad leaf with
your black polka-dotted
buddies in what I now
realize is ladybug
hibernation—
not a bad idea for us all—

a time of quiescence
for living things,
tucking into stillness,
relishing dormancy,
until the awakening signal
plucks at us, persuades us
to stretch our tiny wings
and take flight into
a whole new year.

run your fingers like a prayer
over every bit of the world,
saying quietly, with each
breath, thank you for
this chance to love
—Kai Skye

because if thank you is perhaps
the best prayer, then we cannot
utter it often enough

because if the world has offered
itself to us as this blue-sky miracle,
then how can we do anything but

love it, with all its storm clouds,
its human-made devastation?
Because we are the only ones

who can love our planet and each
other enough to mend what we have
ruptured, what has been riven

like a log split with brutal force,
like fabric savagely torn. Let us be
the stitcher of seams, of echoing

prayer, the thankful breath,
the quiet love that seeps, with
great gentleness, into every

heartfelt hello.