Güd wrtr

Against the panorama of cloud-free sky,
resident geese honk on their afternoon
commute, a singular scavenger angel

wheeling on the updraft, scanning for a meal.
In the distance I think I hear insects chattering
like so many voices trying to speak at once,

drawing me toward the spontaneous pond—
leftover rainwater in a gully pooling around
craggy oaks and fountains of sticks pointing

skyward with the promise of foliage to come.
I move closer, letting what turns out to be
the cacophony of amorous frogs wash over me,

smiling at the unceasing amphibian symphony,
one deep-voiced bassoon adding a pleasing
counterpoint. Abruptly it stops; the movement

has ended. I look up as a red-tailed hawk swings
a hard curve to land on a lofty oak arm.
Somehow the frogs know. Quiet: Danger is near.

A solo crow calls as it wings by, apparently
unruffled. Momentarily rooted, I study the hawk
studying me, the pond, the potential catch.

With one great flap it ascends and sweeps away.
An unseen maestro gives the signal to begin the next
movement, pianissimo at first, ribbits rising,

various sections adding their accompaniment,
building and blending, as I offer a silent standing
ovation for their timeless harmonic brilliance.

(To listen to the frogsong, click here.)

for Dawn Orosco, kindergarten teacher extraordinaire

I don’ wanna.
—You have to, Janis. You can’t go to kindergarten without knowing how to tie your shoes.
I don’ wanna.
—Look, it’s not that hard. See? You just make a little loop.
(Fumbling)
—Well, more of a loop. Like this. See?
(Lots more fumbling).
—No, like this. Here I’ll help.
I can do it.
—OK. Show me.
(Fumbling)
—Here. Let me help.
Thank you, Mommy.
—You have to learn to do this by yourself, Janis. Your teacher told the parents that she can’t be tying kids’ shoes all day.
I can read!
—Yes, you can, and that’s a wonderful thing. But you have to be able to tie your shoes, too. Keep practicing.
(Tears)
I can write my name!
—And that’s also a wonderful thing, but…
I don’ wanna go to kindergarten.
(Little sister) Mommy! I can tie my shoes.
—OK, Donna, but I’m working with Janis right now.
(Little sister sits down next to big sister, unties, then reties shoes. She is not quite 3.)
See? It’s easy!
(Tears)
I know, Mommy. I’ll go to school with Janis, and I can tie her shoes for her.
(Sigh)
Yeah, Mommy. Donna can come with me. I can read, and she can tie shoes.
(Sigh)
C’mon, Donna, I’ll read you “The Cat in the Hat” again.
And “Red Fish, Blue Fish,” too?
Sure!
Yay! Bye, Mommy!

They give you cookie dough as a bonus at pizza
places nowadays, chocolate chips and dough

lumped into a little plastic tub you take home
and spoon onto cookie sheets you haven’t used

in ages, following the instructions on the label
(375 degrees, 10 to 15 minutes, check ’em in 10)

to the letter—as if you hadn’t made hundreds
of cookies in your younger years, at home,

in college, in your first apartment, later in
your own kitchens, learning through trial and

so many errors that every oven is different,
like roommates, like boyfriends, and time and

temperature certainly vary, so keeping an eye
on them is a good idea, but not too close an eye,

because they need their space to heat up, to bake,
though ignoring them is not good either, since

timing is everything, and speaking of, there’s
the timer beeping, signaling the alchemy of dough

becoming cookie, with luck and proper attention,
so much delicious in so many batches, the chips calling,

We’re done! Come get us! You know you want us!

Make sure to live each day in such a way
that if you were to fall off a hundred-foot cliff
and your life flashed before your eyes,
you don’t die of boredom
but from the hard landing.

—Brother Weeps
thesacredbraid.com

Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it?
In the final film of our lives,
we want it all—

the dramatic entrances, the humor,
the scintillating plot with compelling
characters, and, of course, seeing
ourselves in the starring role
as the dashing protagonist.

We do not want the slow pan
over our failures and humiliations,
the bitter exits and deep sadnesses.
(Please, no rehash of the teenage
exploits/less-than-perfect love
affairs/marriages that seemed
so bold, so clever, so romantic
at the time.)

We want uplifting, delightful
with a chuckle or two, before
we hit the end. Which means
we better get to work on filling
in those plot points now,
while we’re still here,
while there’s still time.

Which there is, right?

I live on Earth at present, and I don’t know what I am.
I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing—a noun.
I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process—
an integral function of the universe.

—R. Buckminster Fuller

Once upon a time
rain, snow, thunder
identified weather phenomena
but were also simple nouns
naming things. Some place,
some time, humans verbed
those nouns, turning them into
action words.

They became things that moved,
had sound and texture and oomph,
the engines of sentences, which,
I used to tell my grammar
students, make sentences go.

Look, I’d say, up to a fifth
of all English verbs arose from
nouns. We name things,
then set them in motion.
Think about:
—color
—love
—peel
—bowl
—fly
—benefit
—comfort
—question

All splendid nouns that, when verbed,
blossom with fresh meaning:
—The fly flew away.
—His kind attempts to comfort her provided great comfort.
—Peel that peel right off that banana.

The older I get, the more I flirt with eternity;
I evolve, become more verb, though
I embrace sturdy nouns, too:
—Yesterday I napped for a quick half hour.
—I’d like to take a longer nap today.

In the great cosmological mystery,
I flow from passive to active
and back again, my life’s sentences
continuously under construction,
still writing my story,

delighted to call myself a tiny
but elemental component of this
ever-expanding universe.

for Lucie

As aware as I am of
the Is-ness—the all that Is
that fills me, the trees, the wingéd
and the footed, the dirt and detritus,
everything—Lucie says that all energy,
all spirit embodied in the universe,
is aware of me, too.

That this feeling of being held,
like floating in warm ocean,
is purposeful, she tells me,
divinely ordered.

Call it God, Lucie says,
the divine, the universe,
whatever you like.

Howard, I tease her,
as in our father, Howard,
in heaven.

She chuckles at that, my
spiritual master beaming in
onscreen from another dimension,
someone I hadn’t known I needed.

The divine, which is love itself,
knows you, loves you—yes,
specifically you, she tells me.
You are of it and it of you.

How could it not return your
admiration during a glorious
afternoon walk, when you pause
to peer closely at the ruffly
red of a fresh camellia? When
you look up and, beholding that
so-blue sky, inhale all that love?

How could all that Is, Lucie asks,
beckoning to you from every
living thing, even the stones,
not know your name?

Tucked under my bed
wearing the fuchsia spread
from Sears lived in the biggest
square box I could find in the garage
collection, not too tall but deep
enough to hold treasures I carried
indoors that grownups thought
should be left outdoors.

Bits of metal that, when picked
up off street or path, thunked
satisfyingly into a palm. I had no idea,
for the most part, of their provenance
or purpose, what mechanical beast
they’d separated from, but there
was something about their shape
or size (had to fit in the box)
that called to me.

I liked the short, fat screws that
looked like little people with hats,
the smooth slimness of washers,
their doughtnut-hole centers
perfect to plug a finger into,
springs that sproinged, and,
if I was really lucky, old keys,
bent and rusty that sent me
spiraling into imagined locks
that would never receive them
again.

My father had a workbench
full of this stuff—it wasn’t as if
we lacked for hardware. He was
perplexed by my junk museum,
tried to persuade me to keep it
in the garage, but I wanted it
under me as I slept, the solidity
of missing items found, treasured,

felt when my hand reached
into a denim pocket, a silent
specimen offering itself to my
imagination, spinning errant
metal into precious nuggets,
brimming with potential.

(Jan. 30, 2023)

My half birthday this year
falls on a Mom Monday,
so I spend the afternoon driving
around the one who long ago
coached me through the sticky
business of clutches and shifting,
who carried and birthed me
64-and-a-half years ago, who
passed on her love for, among
other things, tuna melts at Mel’s
followed by ice cream—

both of us chalking up our half
birthdays this month, because
your years are your wealth, darlin’,
as a friend of ours used to say,
and not everybody gets so many.

When you got ’em, you celebrate ’em,
the half birthdays, especially at the end
of the 10 darkest weeks of winter,
as the sun now lingers a wee bit longer
through the diner window, haloing
the 91-and-a-half-year-old and her
bowl of mint chip,

even if, as my father might have joked,
we old gals ain’t what we used to be—
in so many ways, we’re even better.

for Amy Roark

Amy must have a gig soon,
I think on a Sunday morning
as the second-story strains float
from her apartment into
my closed windows,

which I open in the bathroom,
preparing for my shower,
partly to let the steam escape
but mostly to hear the flutist
next door practicing.

Her fingers arpeggio those
silver keys, breathing runs
that scale the highest peaks
of classical pieces I can’t identify
and don’t want to.

I want Amy’s flute solo,
for once not part of the large
orchestra across the country
to which she travels, just
this flute, these Sunday
morning grace notes

as gray clouds wander
over our lives, heading east
as Amy will soon, hoping
there’s good weather where
she’s bound, knowing that
once she opens her case and
assembles her magical flute,

sunshine will emerge like
birdsong.

for Lois Mae Haag Dietz
Jan. 29, 1923–Sept. 26, 2006

If she were still here—
or we made it to her musical
heaven—wouldn’t she be at
the piano, fingers moving
smoothly over her own
happy birthday?

All of us singing along
in that celestial space—
her parents who gave her
and her brother so much music,
instruments all over the house,
piano lessons with the pianist
who became one of my
grandfathers, the one who
pushed the piano out into
the village to play for street
dances on warm evenings.

She, who taught so many hands
on both piano and organ in what
my sister and I thought of as
Auntie Lo’s music room,
where older cousins Dede
played the marimba and Pat
the clarinet, where the family
would gather after dinner,
we little cousins urged to
“sing it out, girls!” to so many
spoonfuls of sugar and let’s
go fly a kite and every kids’
song that Auntie Lo knew
by heart.

Because that’s where the music
was embedded, what she held
in her generous heart, shared on
keyboards, spread around the table,
with so many she loved, what
endeared her to two nieces
who loved to walk with her
and the long-legged chihuahuas
to the park, old bread bits
toted along for the feathered
friends at the duck-duck pond.

She who’d later come to the guest
room those nights we spent on
Ostrom Avenue, stand at the
threshold and cue us to blow
out the light. We’d purse our lips,
and whoof out the overhead
as her finger switched it off,
Auntie Lo’s voice floating down
the hall:

See you in the morning, girls.
Sleep tight.
Don’t let the bedbugs bite!