Güd wrtr

In response to the widespread web outages today,
we encourage everyone to get outside and look at some birds.
—National Audubon Society, 10/20/25

Why’re all those two-leggeds staring up at us?
Have they lost their minds? Or have they lost
the little boxes they’re forever clutching
and looking into?

We’re certainly no more interesting today
than we were yesterday. Same old us
standing on the same old wire.
Singing to you from the tree
in the back yard. Doin’ what we do.

But look at ’em looking. Some with
big eye extensions held to their faces
bringing us in closer. Funny two-leggeds
with their clodhoppin’ feet.

You know what we’re gonna do?
Perch here and look right back.
As we do every day, even if tomorrow
you go back to the little boxes,
whether or not you venture outside,
think to look up and hear us singing
for you.

Malama ke kua’ana i ke kaikaina,
ho’olohe ke kaikaina i ke kua’ana.

The older sibling cares for the younger sibling,
And the younger sibling listens to the older sibling.

—Lāiana Kanoa-Wong
Hawaiian Word of the Day, Hawaii News Now

•••

Though, like all gods and goddesses,
Pele inhabits all of Hawaii,

the fiery volcano goddess makes her home
in Halema’uma’u crater at the summit

of Kilauea volcano on the Big Island—where,
for almost a year now, she has burst into

fabulous displays of fountaining lava. She’s
like that at times, the show-offy older sister,

unlike her younger sister Hi’iaka, the
goddess of hula and healing, whose

sacred power over lightning makes the sky
flash with streaks of quiet power.

They work together: Pele creates new land
and Hi’aka heals it, greens it, makes it fertile,

causes new life to grow. As you have done,
kaikaina, younger sister, your gentle hand

on the tiller of this family for six-and-a-half
decades, bringing the light and growth

and healing to so many, including your
kaikua’ana, this grateful older sister,

wishing you a tender hau’oli la hanau
on this, your birthday.

•••

For Donna Gail, best thither ever, on her 65th birthday!

A tiny frog
in the back yard
pipes up days
after rain has left
a puddle in the grass,

hoarse, croaky,
perhaps struggling
with a… you know…
in its wee throat,

imitating, it seems to me,
a persistent squeak of shoe
or complaining floorboard—

not unlike a human-sized
inflatable frog on the street
defending democracy,

one small ribbit joined
by pumped-up friends
Panda, Giraffe, T-rex,
Hot Dog, Unicorn and
other nonviolent resisters,

some carrying the grand old flag
upside down in protest,
other costumed citizens
on the march,

demonstrating their right
to free speech, hoisting,
as the song goes,

…a high-flying flag,
forever in peace
may you wave.

•••

(Lyrics from the song “You’re A Grand Old Flag” by George M. Cohan in 1906.)

That remembers something old—
Earth

A word from what you are harvesting now—
Gratitude

One that a bird might say—
Joy

Give me a word that wants to be repeated—
Kindness

One that feels like an embrace—
Hug

Give me a word that feels like
kindling for more words—
Speak

Let the heat of each letter
rise with the flame—
Dream

Give me a word that you
don’t have to surrender—
Humanity

that is an act of defiance—
Gather

a word that might be
a candle in the dark—
Hope

•••

For those around the world protesting tyranny, Oct. 18, 2025.

(Thanks to Emily Stoddard for “a word” prompts.)

For even during your final summers,
the engine of your life

literally working its little heart out,
could not adequately heat your chilled self,

did not warm your hands and feet,
kept you swaddled in fleece and warm slippers

on the most blazing days.
As the temperature finally starts to drop

after a few days of cooling rain, I am thankful
that you do not have to endure another winter.

I think of your essence, which was never cold,
you who offered enduring comfort to everyone

in your embracing orbit, a generous circumference
around all your beloveds

who feel your warmth
still.

•••

For Margery Thompson (1946–2025) on the day her family
and friends celebrate her remarkable life.

There are few still alive
who remember my little girl hair,
which I, of course, cannot recall.

Except that my earliest memories
tug like the brush through
unruly ringlets that my mother
tried to calm, if not tame.

All these years later—after bouts
of attempted straightening,
even in college going full permanent
that made me look, as my colleagues
at one newspaper fondly said,
like a blizzardhead—

I wear my hair short,
let it curl whichever crazy way
it wants.

Bright sunlight turns it the color
of a woolly, pewter-tinged cloud,
and I imagine those who held me
and combed me and fussed over me
more than six decades ago,
looking down from their perch
in the forever,

nodding and smiling at this
slow pupil finally coming to
embrace these curls inherited
from those who made her,
this hair that she
has come to love.

(for the participants of the recent Together We Heal retreat in Galt, California)

Graceful: Softest light pink, gentle
lips that whisper the name of one gone

Fierce: darkish brown, these lips
mean business, speak their truth

Sophisticated: pinkish with purple
undertones, svelte, out-on-the-town,
va-va-voom lips masking a tremble

Badass: bold but delicate orange-y,
take-no-shit lips that don’t look as
if they could widen and scream—
but they can

Unstoppable: fire engine/stop sign red,
she-is-here-world red, moving forward,
get out of the way, coming through
with lights and sirens,

like it or not,
here she comes

•••

Thanks to Bossy Cosmetics for their cool lipstick colors and names
that inspired this poem, as well as to Grace Vineyards in Galt, California,
which donated the lipsticks and provided their lovely space for the retreat
where I was honored to facilitate writing workshops.

And huge gratitude from all of us to Jill Batiansila, visionary extraordinaire,
who created the Together We Heal community to offer space for those struggling
with loss in its many forms and equip them with tools to build a joy-filled life.

Learn more information about Together We Heal opportunities here.

I sat, extended an arm behind
me to the roll on the wall, which
spun freely but did not release
the dangling end that makes

it easy to grab and pull and tug
off as many squares as necessary.
Instantly, deep in my brain,
I heard my dead mother snap,

Who put that on upside down?
One of the many things that
irritated her easily irritated self,
the age-old question of which way

to install toilet paper always
prompted the anecdote about
a long-ago guest at our house
who (the nerve!) repositioned

the TP roll so that it came off
the back, which could still get
my mother’s dander up
decades after it occurred.

And they told me that they’d
fixed it for me, she’d fume,
insulted, because, she insisted,
everyone knew that the end

should always hang in front.
Unless you had little kids who
liked to spin the roll, creating
a TP puddle on the floor

that some beleaguered mother
had to respool. Then backward
was an option because you did
not waste perfectly good TP.

Sitting, remembering, I figured
the roll in my bathroom must’ve
been turned around by plumbers
working on this old house,

but I could feel her reaction flow
through me like, well, water through
new pipes. The direction of the roll
has never much mattered to me,

though I now realize since she
vanished into the wherever—where
certainly TP must not be an issue—
that mine has typically cascaded

like a tissue waterfall off the front,
one more lesson I unconsciously
absorbed, despite her longstanding
belief that I didn’t listen to her.

Oh, Ma. I did. I so did.

Blue sky perfect,
whispers of clouds,
fall hinting at its arrival
under a setting quarter moon,

no sign of the predicted coming storm
allegedly headed our way this afternoon.

Some days are like this.
Call it deception or miracle.

Walking the neighborhood I call mine
in this still-capable body,
on my way to brunch with a friend,

I stop, look up at the sky, the trees,
the comma of moon, into
the deep hope that is.

•••

With thanks to Lucie Chalifour for the conversation
that gave me the poem’s last line. And to Savannah
and Ruby for a delightful brunch!

(for the team of Drain Time plumbers)

Luis behind the fridge,
Leo in the front bathroom,
each using a drill

that sings a distinct series
of notes, rising and falling
in mechanical melody.

“It’s the speeds changing,”
Luis says, but I hear it
as the plumbers’ song,

two tools harmonizing
as these experts labor deep
in the recesses that they’ve

cut into this old house,
carving out old pipe,
replacing it with new,

hooking me up, as the kids say,
in a whole new water way.
Brand spankin’ new pipes

will daily deliver the source
of life, the miracle of clean
water into mine,

others taking away
what’s no longer needed,
an ebb and flow I generally

take for granted. But now
when I turn the tap or flush
or water plants, I will

think of these young men
and their colleagues who,
over several days,

assembled hundreds of pipes
and elbow fittings, tee fittings,
couplings, adaptors and unions

like Tinker Toy rods and spools
underneath and inside this old beast
of a house, revamping its

arteries like the expert surgeons
they are, making what was old
magically new again.