Güd wrtr

One still on the planet, one not—
Parton and Joplin, two music icons
whose songs so many of us can
sing from memory—

though for two fine singers
born on the same day,
you couldn’t get such
different musical styles.

And how is it that Janis
was born three years before
Dolly? Each seems ageless,
larger than life—or death—
frozen in photos as young
women singing their hearts out:

—Take another little piece of my heart now, baby
—I will always love you
—Oh, Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz
—Pour myself a cup of ambition
—Try, try, try just a little bit harder

And you just know that one day
when Dolly takes to that great stage
in the hereafter, she’ll find Janis,
and they’ll sing up a ruckus so loud
we’ll hear ’em all the way down here—

…all I really know
is here you come again,
and here I go…

You can’t stay in your corner of the forest waiting for others to come to you.
You have to go to them sometimes.

—Winnie the Pooh
(by A.A. Milne, born Jan. 18, 1882)

So let’s lace up our big boots
and step out into the world
where the rain has stopped

for a bit, and the little clouds
float in the blue as the winter
sky shimmers with radiance

that comes with a freshly
washed world, perfect for
a walk, perhaps a visitation

to someone who might like
a friend to stop by, someone
who, like Piglet, with his very

small heart, might find in it
a rather large amount
of gratitude that you,

big, old bear, came to sit
and talk awhile, because,
after all, it’s so much more

friendly with two.

I let my poet off her leash,
and, unclipped, she turned
her furry head and shot me
a question—

Really?

Yes, I said. Go ahead.
Run wherever your heart
directs you. Sniff what
catches your fancy.
Gobble up luscious lines.
Lie in greening couplets
and rest when you like.
Chase what verbs need
chasing.

Nose twitching,
she licked possibility,
tasting syllables,
inhaling stanzas, and,
in a blur of metaphor,
I threw the leash away,

as she streaked toward
all those waiting words.

Joy is not made to be a crumb.
—Mary Oliver

Joy is the whole cookie,
fat with chocolate chips or
smooth as shortbread. In fact,
the more crumbs you mash
onto a finger and apply to your
tongue, the sweeter the joy.

No one tells you this;
it’s something you must learn
yourself. But this is why we fall
into doughy goodness, mad for
the cookies that call to us:

snickerdoodles, gingersnaps,
biscotti and peanut butter,
oatmeal (with or without raisins),
those with gluten or without,
macadamia nut, molasses,
macaroon, the thumbprints
with their divine jelly wells,
holiday spritz, the snowball,
lebkuchen, the gingerbread—

all cookies cut out or dropped,
made of thousands of crumbs
of delight mixed with love,
baked into pure bliss.

Gleefully gobble those
morsels—don’t miss a one.
Let all that joy dribble
onto your grinning face.

for Dick, on his fourth “rebirth-a-versary”

The universe keeps dying and being reborn,
physicists say. It doesn’t stay the same;
it’s ever expanding, as Einstein theorized—
exponential expansion, which means
that as much as we want things to remain
the same, a rock solid cosmological
constant, they just aren’t.

In the universe of your heart,
the seemingly dead was jumpstarted
back to life. Weighted with such
inexplicable mass, I had to sit
and breathe for a bit, as did you,
recovering.

Now, four years later, I remind
myself that we are continually reborn,
the cosmos within each of us
exponentially expanding at times,
contracting at others.
Our meager concept of time
turns out to be a mere eyeblink—

proving again that love is the true
cosmological constant, like atoms
ping-ponging across the cosmos,
traveling through space to lodge
squarely in our fragile, starstruck
hearts.

East Lawn Cemetery, Sacramento

In between storms
I take my walk to find,
not far inside the open iron gate,
the first uprooted tree, its underside
typically hidden underground,
the lacy petticoat and fine bones
unearthed, nakedly exposed
under a hazy blue sky

Another of the fallen, its green apron
of grass still attached, has been sheared
open, exposing its heart to the sun,
surrounded by rings I’m tempted to count,
wondering how long it stood here.
A thousand lost, say the estimates,
in this city known for its trees.

And with them here lie the markers
of those gone long before these giants
fell on this memorial field, their limbs
strewn on muddy grass, the normally
tidy in disarray,

the new dead upended with the old dead,
some with their stones dislodged—

Justine L. Coffey, waiting for the Lord,
next to Charles E. Coffey, WWI Aero Squadron,
Julius Nyberg, beloved husband,
Angeline Marie Glans, in loving memory—

side by side as it has always been,
as we among the living walk through
and remember.

for Pat Schneider

You never Zoomed a poetry reading,
I’m sure, certainly not of the journal
you founded forty years before anyone
imagined speaking at a computer screen.
You held proper readings at the Jones
Library or the Munson, requiring
in-person attendance of readers
and listeners.

They were Events, painstakingly
planned, with a typed Reading Order
and Refreshments that you provided,
likely a Podium and Microphone.
You—MC, introducer, cheerleader,
hugger—as each reader came up,
often nervous, with you there
afterward, whispering, “Wonderful!”

Tonight we held our second virtual reading
for the 36th edition of Peregrine,
Zooming with a terrific batch of onscreen
readers from all over—among them
Kate in Wales, Bonnie in Portland, and
Ralph whose poem reflected his childhood
in Brooklyn—along with a generous
audience of listeners.

I imagined you among them, too, though
your face did not appear in a box
on my screen, though you vanished
into mystery more than two years ago.

I cannot say your name as I sing
your praises during the introduction—
as I did each time you came to speak
and lead workshops in my town—
without sensing your steady presence
as I metaphorically step to the virtual
microphone, read what I have written,
only to step away and hear you in my ear:

“Wonderful, honey. Nicely done.”

(Special thanks to all the folks published in Peregrine, the Amherst Writers & Artists journal, especially those who read at our two virtual readings, to Danielle McKinney, our MC, and to Sue Reynolds, whose fine leadership and sweet praise will stay with me. And, of course, to AWA founder Pat Schneider, whose work we carry on with great love and much enthusiasm.)

And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been.
—Rainer Maria Rilke

Things that have never been:

This new year stretching long before us,
bright and unshadowed.
This breath, and the next and the next.
This awaited, hoped-for blessing
that will come with a great cry,
a new being entering the world.

This celebration, that death,
this laugh, that heartfelt tear,
a thousand untouched moments
we cannot anticipate and don’t
want to,

even as we walk the same path
to the river or the blocks to the cemetery,
dogs tugging on leashes, the errands
that seem the same, the hellos and
goodbyes to our familiars—

we are given the new every day
if we put on spectacles of surprise,
tuck wonder into our heart pockets,
allow awe to explode far more often
than anger.

We believe in this time given us,
no guarantee of how much
or how little, every fresh flash,
each day’s awakening, the surprise
of walking by a creamy winter rose—

this twinkling second, so precious,
this thankful breath, refreshed
by another and another, this
opportunity to sing the tune
not again but, with feeling,
anew.

for Lauren and Gerald and Henry

for Helen Plenert

The artist posts a photo of
her paint-speckled hands after
reloading her acrylic paint palette,

and I enlarge it to look at the colors,
which I cannot accurately name—
periwinkle, bright blue, mustard
that looks as if it could be rising
on dancing stems a winter field,

and, of course, the brush, which must
have hundreds of colors embedded
in its handle. But I focus on Helen’s
speckled palms, evidence of a painter’s
craft, every dash and dot testament
to pigments coming up on canvas or paper,

perhaps like words show up for me—
only with more color in the impressions
rising from formerly mute paper,
feathery brushstrokes that our minds
imagine into images

from those graceful, painterly hands.

to remind you that you, who lives
amid such abundance, who has
so much of what others do not,

are just as reliant on the basics—
good food, clean water, electricity—
as everyone else, that your

privilege can, indeed, leave you
in the dark for 56-and-a-half hours,
that you have no control over

so much in life that you take
for granted. But O! the joy
when, at 8:20 a.m., the light

next to your bed switches
on, startled to life, as you are,
after thunder woke your part

of the world in the deep dark
of night, a tympanic overture
to morning’s amazement that

prompts you to leap out of bed
in the chill of your unheated
house to see if—yes!—

the heater is again diligently
chugging away, and you,
forgoing slippers, dance through

the wintry house in your jammies,
flicking switches, watching lights
come to life, chortling as they do so,

confusing the sleepy cats with
exclamations, with thank you’s
to those who brought back the light,

as you promise yourself never to
take the blessing of electricity,
of indoor heat and hot water

(as some of your students used to say)
for granite ever again.
Amen.