Güd wrtr

They nestle inside like a hundred
tiny puppies waiting to be born,

snuggled so tight they can hardly
be separated. But my visiting friend

from Canada studied the dried
pods dotting the gangly husks

of formerly green stalks. She,
who understands the nature

of flowers and other growing
things, took home some of

the nickel-sized bundles to
her garden. I imagine her

peeling open the husks to
free the bounding seeds,

letting them burrow their
way into rich northern soil

and set about becoming
hollyhocks. If I let my pods

remain, they will burst as if
on a timer, programmed

to literally spread their seed
like overeager males everywhere.

I have never planted a hollyhock
pod, not one eensy seed,

but they have somehow found
their way to my little plot of soil,

surprising me each spring when
fresh stalks begin to rise like

green pencils. Yesterday I cut
some of the dried stalks

still ornamented with pods and
tossed them into the green bin.

Others I’m leaving so I can
witness the reliable cycle

of growth and aging into
death and resurrection,

a needed a bit of reassurance
that we’re not done yet,

that there’s new life still
to come.

•••

For Sue Reynolds and her marvelous Canadian garden.

…it is a serious thing
just to be alive
on this fresh morning
in the broken world.

—Mary Oliver

Awakening earlier than you’d like,
somber, sober, shielding your eyes

from the insistent dawn, you
dampen your face and sigh.

Look at this fresh morning
breaking out like a happy rash

into this—yes, unfortunately—
broken world. You have no way

to fix any of it, but you are here,
alive in this moment, and it is

morning again. You woke into it,
a thing both serious and miraculous,

really, when you think about it.
Despite it all, a tiny piece of you

dares to love this broken world,
wants to linger in the great gift of it,

to say thank you, out loud,
to the sun, which has risen again.

Look into the new day,
squinting, if you must, smiling,

if you can. This brilliantly fresh
morning is reaching for you,

and you, lucky human, get to
step out into it.

•••

Mary Oliver excerpt from “Invitation”
in her collection, Red Bird © 2009, Beacon Press

Every year on his birthday
Ringo invites his fans
to send peace & love

to the universe,
a concept that’s never
left him,

one that should never
leave us—not out
of optimistic idealism

but because love
really is all there is.
All you need is love,

love me do,
give me love,
give me peace on Earth,

as the Fab 4 sang
right into our
ever-loving hearts.

•••

Happy 85th birthday, Ringo, from fans like me everywhere!

I don’t know her name,
but I can’t miss the woman’s voice
in the row behind me

belting out the old spiritual
with the projection of one
who has sung on stages:

I’ve got peace like a river,
I’ve got peace like a river,
I’ve got peace like a river in my soul.

And by the second verse she’s
singing harmony as the congregation
embraces the melody:

I’ve got love like an ocean,
I’ve got love like an ocean,
I’ve got love like an ocean in my soul.

And that does it—having led
a pre-church labyrinth walk for
seven souls an hour earlier

on what would have been your
94th birthday, you who harmonized
at the drop of a sequined hat,

you’re making an appearance.
The thought flickers behind my damp eyes,
That lady’d make a good baritone,

which, of course, was the part you
sang in Sweet Adelines for 60 years.
I don’t know if you’re telegraphing

this thought, or if it’s because of this
lifetime as your daughter, but when I
sneak a peek at the happily singing

woman, she’s got icecap white hair
and wearing your favorite shade of light
turquoise, an earthly echo of you.

Tears trickling, I’m thinking, All right,
already, the visitations are very sweet,
but couldja squelch the tears in public?

I’ve got joy like a fountain,
I’ve got joy like a fountain,
I’ve got joy like a fountain in my soul.

At the end of the service, I turn and
introduce myself to—it turns out—Mary Ann,
saying how much I’ve enjoyed her singing.

She smiles, says, “I know you. You’re the labyrinth
lady. I’ve walked with you.” And I nod moistly
as we grin at each other in that moment of shared

recognition, of peace and love, and, yes, joy.

•••

You can listen to “Peace Like a River” (performed by Elizabeth Mitchell
on Smithsonian Folkways) here.

Three days before what would
have been your 94th birthday,
as I’m driving home with newly
pedi’d toes, relaxed and happy,

I pull up behind a waiting-to-turn,
arrest-me-red Corvette with
a shiny Texas license plate
that stops me.

N-R-G, it says, as I look through
the windshield of your former
NRG FLO Elantra. “Hi, Ma!”
I holler, as though you

might hear me, having to
stop myself before I wave.
Not your style—red or
the ‘vette—but I’ve

so rarely seen other NRG
plates that it feels like a
visitation. Who knows?
Perhaps in your new

incarnation, your energy flow
runs to red. Here in mine,
gratitude revs through me
once again, driving

your sweet ride in
which I drove you,
which you left to me,
to carry you through

the rest of my days.

•••

Happy (woulda been) 94th birthday to my mother, Dorothy Haag,
whose NRG, as she’d predicted, is still with us.

You are the perennially left out,
the ignored, the tromped on,

some of the hardest working
among us. And it’s the us

I want to embrace today of all days,
the us of the we, the people,

whose feet and hands and backs
ache from the work you do for us,

to feed your families. Yesterday
one of you labored over my

pampered, old white lady feet,
delivering a calf massage

that left me boneless. Mine
were only one of how many

pairs of feet you hunched over
and cleaned and painted

with the precision of a surgeon
in just one day? And though

my tips always raise your
eyebrows in surprise, I leave

knowing that it is not enough.
It cannot make up for what

is being yanked out of your
aching hands. We do not pay you

or thank you or care for you,
the tired, the working poor,

nearly enough. And now
the unkindest among us

are making it harder for you
to make it. My “I’m sorry”s

do nothing. But I am,
especially on a holiday

that purports to celebrate
liberty and justice for all,

so, so sorry. You, who are
never them, who are us,

who are we, the people,
deserve so much better.

Though I wouldn’t mind supporting the local
carrier pigeon racing club or youth sports or
the Urban League, I don’t buy fireworks.

The pop and snap and sizzle startle me—
always have—which makes me like the dogs
who prefer to hide when all the boom-booms

commence. And yet, what I’d give to see my
thirty-something father filling a silvery garbage can
with water and hauling it to the street,

just in case, keeping the hose nearby, too,
while sidelining another empty can for
spent sparklers and piccolo petes

and other screamers that he would
set alight as we kids watched from
a respectful distance (me with my fingers

plugging my ears). I loved to see him
hold a Roman candle aloft like the Statue
of Liberty, its brilliant flame highlighting

his goofy smile. Firework after firework
until the end of the show when he would
distribute slender sparklers—as many

as we wanted—to any kid who’d wander by,
and watch us carve our cursive names into
the night over and over until the little wands

poofed out and we tossed them into
the can with all the other dead soldiers,
as my father called them. Only years later

did I realize that he, as a young infantryman
in Korea, certainly knew soldiers who
died, was almost one himself, as

the purple heart in his top dresser
drawer—the one he never talked about—
attested, proving beyond a doubt

his loyalty to the land of the free,
the home of the brave.

fine (fee-nay) noun: the place where a piece of music finishes;
“the end” in Italian

•••

The house is really theirs now,
the sign with our name replaced
by a new one with theirs,

which is as it should be,
as my sister and I want it to be.
We no longer have keys

to the house where we
grew up, where our
mother died, and that’s

as we want it to be,
passing this place on to
our beloved next generation.

But oh, seeing the sign
with their name backlit
by summer light

near sunset zings
the strings of my old
heart, tenderizes me

in places I hadn’t
expected. It’s fine,
more than fine,

this place of finishing,
this place of beginning.
These are happy tears,

I swear.

(In appreciation of East Lawn Cemetery, Sacramento, California)

The cemetery of my heart
is not unlike the one I walk through
as if it’s a lovely park, which it is—
large, undulating with greenness
and tall pines, not to mention
a vast field of well-scrubbed
tombstones.

Having once, on a previous walk,
met the man hired to buff them up,
I now take an interest in appreciating
his good work. The in-ground plaques
bronze up from the grass like gleaming
license plates, and when alone,
I stoop to read them, whisper
the embossed names so they are still
held in someone’s mouth.

In the cemetery of my heart, I do not
bring stuffed animals or poinsettias
or decorate the graves of the beloved.
I prefer them unadorned, letting their
spirits rise as they will to populate
the dream of us mere mortals.

I do not expect visitations, but
now and again, after I return home,
his long-gone, musky wood shavings-
and-wet-dog odor curls into my nostrils.

It prompts me to say, as he used to,
when he’d hear my voice on the phone,
There you are! Indeed, there he is,
securely tucked into the cemetery
of my heart where others have
come to join him.

Whether they make themselves
known or not, I trust that they’re
threading their way through my veins,
tiny beloved corpuscles powering
this being I think of as me,

breathing as I walk
the land of the previously
living, the perennially blessed.

Why Sunday I don’t know, but I swear
that’s when I hear them panting,
their little green tongues hanging out,

especially in summer, when I check on
each of them and carry them to the sink,
place them on the pink plastic mat,

murmuring as if to the cat or dog,
Here you go, pouring water gently
over the violets’ dry soil, loosening it,

noticing as the little monstera,
whose cousins grow huge in Hawaii,
nods a bit, or as the heart-shaped

succulent expands as if on an inhale.
I carry the large cup to the anthurium
in the dining room, pouring a gush

of water around its base like a sudden
swell of rain. And then it hits me
with the force of a flash flood:

We did this together, he and I,
watering the houseplants on a
weekend evening before bed,

standing before the sink,
passing a cup of fresh water
between us,

all of us living things feeling
more hydrated, more alive
in the routine of that

mundane moment
I’d give anything to have
back again.