Güd wrtr

She smiled when she asked, her
7-year-old self so serious, so sincere,

and like all grownups confronted with
hard questions we haven’t answered

for ourselves, I said, “It just stops.”
And she said, “No more lub-dub?”

because she had heard hers
lub-dubbing away through a

stethoscope at the doctor’s office.
“No,” I said, “no more lub-dub.”

And I gave her a smile to match
hers. “Okay,” she said, and turned

to head for the swings. Halfway
there, she turned and looked back,

gestured for me to come with.
When I got close enough, she asked.

“What happens to my heart
when you die?”

She took my hand as I felt
the engine of my being miss

both a lub and a dub. “It gets
very sad,” I managed.

“But I’ll already be in your heart,
so you’ll carry me with you.”

She nodded. “Wherever I go?”
“Wherever you go,” I said.

“Okay,” she said, dropping my hand
and skipping toward the swings,

taking her seat and, pumping
her little heart out,

having no idea how deeply
embedded she is in mine.

Surfers talk about it in terms
of waves they’ve zigged and zagged
and ridden till the swell fades,
dissolves into ocean.

But poets shred, too, tearing
into language with high energy
and skill. For those who surf
water or snow or concrete,

they mean mastery of the board,
confident wave control, a powerful
skillful style, perhaps a bit of flash
and flamboyance, too.

We word nerds try not to look
as if we’re trying too hard, that
we’re not kicking up a lot of spray
or carving big turns,

even when we are. Effortless,
we hope readers say.
Shreddin’ those lines, baby,
makin’ a nest that something

with feathers might want to
settle into, might sing the tune
without the words, and,
as the poet so gracefully said,

never stop at all.

•••

(in honor of National Poetry Day in the UK)

Every single one of us makes a difference every day —
it is up to us as to the kind of difference we make.

—Dr. Jane Goodall, scientist, conservationist, humanitarian
(April 3, 1934–Oct. 1, 2025)

•••

Listen: Fungus gets a bad rap.
But the intricate microscopic web
of lacy white filaments

that make up mycorrhizal fungi—
in existence for 400 million
years—have learned to live

in symbiosis with 90% of all
species on the planet. You can
sometimes spot them branching

atop soil, their delicate strands
entwined like fingers. But they
typically connect plants via

underground fungal highways—
the wood wide web, scientists joke—
sharing nutrients and sending

warning signals about drought
or pest attacks. Literally feeding
each other, these invisible helpers

bolster the resilience of every
living thing around them as they
sink carbon into soil, fostering growth,

as they’ve done since the planet
was young. We topside beings
might take a lesson from such

supportive soil engineers that work
in harmony, in the dark, in silence,
forming mutually beneficial relationships

with species quite unlike themselves—
earthworms, fruit trees, tomatoes,
peppers, squash, flowers, grasses—

unseen threads that weave communities
together, never asking anything
of those they so peacefully serve.

•••

I learned about mycorrhizal (migh-koh-RIGH-zuhl) fungi decades ago from Dr. Jane Goodall when I heard her speak in San Francisco at the California Academy of Sciences where the Jane Goodall Institute was located. The notion that unseen networks can feed living things, in this case by a particular kind of fungi, was one of her metaphors for cooperation so desperately needed by humans. From chimpanzees to fungi and so much more, Dr. Goodall’s vast knowledge and gentle wisdom changed the world for the better in so many ways.

Driving down H Street
Tuesday midday when I come
to a dead stop behind several cars
in a spot that is unusually backed up.

I wait, wondering if there is a slow someone
in the crosswalk ahead.

Only when the single file
of cars begins to move forward
do I see them—a gaggle of two dozen
processing slowly, ceremoniously, their heads
held high and proud atop slender black necks,
silent and stately as princes,

unflappable, their feathers
not at all ruffled by the humans in their
wheeled machines who—to my great surprise
and delight, do not honk or try to rush
the proceedings—

instead wait respectfully,
bystanders observing nature on foot,
until the parade passes serenely by.

He rings the doorbell hard, repeatedly,
as if it’s an emergency, the original bell
in this old house mounted in the kitchen
pealing like a fire bell, insistent
in a way that cannot be ignored,

summoning me from wherever I am,
from whatever too-important something
I’m doing. So I come, heart-pounding,
because, although I have lived in this
house for 38 years, the urgency seizes me
every time—What now? Oh, no…
Dammit, I’m in the middle of…

But then I see him outside the screen door,
Lanky and blonde, this man as old as
gray-haired me, standing over his latest
latest creations fanned like a wildly colorful
deck of cards on my tomato red porch.

It’s Robert, our neighborhood artist who,
bless him, stops by regularly with all
manner of found objects that he’s
daubed paint onto—boards and picture frames,
the box he’s turned into a slot machine
that dispenses words for the writer,
or paint-stirring sticks morphed into
zombies, sometimes even canvases
when he can get his hands on them—

talking before I open the door, gesturing
with can’t-stand-still excitement,
showing off his latest fever dreams
of creation.

“Look! Look!” the kid inside him cries,
and I look, I look, astonished at his informal
art show, smiling at his rat-a-tat stream
of semi-consciousness flowing over me
like the circular stream of the garden hose.

He’s perennially in media res, in the middle
of whatever thought he’s having, always
happy, chattering about something
wonderful that’s happened—

the head shop downtown that’s featuring
his art, someone has asked him to paint
stands and signs for a pumpkin patch,
the beautiful woman he met in a bar
(“I’m in love, I’m in love,” he sings).

Plus, he’s a sweetie who knows of my
affections, painting typewriters on
a rough plywood rectangle, the Tower
Bridge on a gift box lid, cameras for
my retired newspaper photographer.

“Get Rich! Write A Book!” trumpets
one masterpiece. “For you, the writer!”
he exclaimed when he brought it to me.
And I’d be lying if I didn’t say how
touched I am by his thoughtfulness,
this artist who never asks for anything
but my smiles of delight.

If I saw this guy on the street and didn’t
know him, I might veer away from
his exuberance, his over-the-topness,
unsure of his intentions, torn by dual
self-protective urges of wanting to
praise the weirdos and avoid the crazy.

In truth, I carry a bit of both, too,
as we artistic ones do, as every
appearance of the doorbell-ringing,
zombie-painting artist reminds me.

Wake up! the doorbell calls.
Creativity is literally knocking.
Open it and step into a moment that
will make you smile—a little weird,
a little crazy, every piece unique,
a beacon of brilliance in this topsy-turvy
world that so needs splashes of
whimsy, of spontaneous delight
delivered right to your door.

Did the first one come with me
at birth? Or did I just began
poeting without one as
soon as my mother put
a pencil in my hand?

Certainly I didn’t wait until
I was sixteen to careen
into metaphor, stomp
on alliteration, speed
into images that, with luck,
might evoke some emotion
in a reader.

What made me think I could poet?
For years I deferred to male
colleagues who were well
published, confident,
matter of fact about
their admirable
abilities.

I hid my proverbial light under
a journalistic bushel until,
licensed or not, lines
burst out of my pen,
onto electronic paper,
not necessarily good
but true, like these,
I hope.

Come to think of it, my
best friend bestowed
my poetic license
upon my old
baby car—

GUD WRTR—

as she assured me that it
wouldn’t seem like
bragging to have it
emblazoned on
my car—

“not spelled like that”—
and she was right.
Though she and
that car have long
vanished into
the who-knows-where,

they remain right here,
tucked into a poem,
which may or may
not be good, but,
I promise, it sure
is true.

•••

Poetic license / by the fabulously prolific poet/story writer/author/lyricist
and, of course, artist Sandra Boynton
(with decades of appreciation and admiration)

(for Ed Cole)

I walk by the ceramic vase by the window
with a myriad of feathers emerging
like the tail of a hastily assembled bird—

as if God had grabbed a brown-and-white
variegated tail feather from a turkey,
and the curving tiger stripes ending

in the white tip of a red-tailed hawk,
along with the black-banded
feathers of pheasants

and mashed them together in
a funky flying creature that has
dropped a feather here and there

for you to retrieve on your walks
through farmers’ fields and by
your riverside. And, knowing

of my affection for the plumage
of birds I rarely see in my city,
you’ve been adding

to this bouquet you didn’t know
you started years ago, my friend,
which reminds me of you

every time I walk by, as I reach
out to touch one of your
feathered friends’ offerings

that they once wore as they flew
through the highest blue,
as we wingless ones wish

that we might do, too.

It is a strange and wonderful fact to be here, walking around in a body,
to have a whole world within you and a world at your fingertips outside you.
—John O’Donohue

•••

We talk about the re- (as in incarnation)
with great hope (even if we’re mostly joking)
about perhaps getting another body,
another chance to do it again,
get it right, maybe.

But haven’t you already gotten
your money’s worth out of this body,
despite its trials? Apparently,
thankfully, the warrantee’s not up yet.

Who could’ve predicted, when you
were a tiny person fresh out of the egg,
precisely how this body would grow
and change, would love and be loved,
would stumble and bumble
and become so humbly human?

Sure, you look in the mirror and don’t
recognize that gray-haired woman
or thinning-haired man, a far cry from
the younger you still deeply imbedded
in your bones—no matter how much
they ache. You may wish for a do-over,
another incarnation.

But not so fast, my friend.

These bodies, each one a garage for our souls,
with our beating hearts and breathing lungs,
contain a whole world inside us,
moving through the world outside us.

And if we’re here, organs still breathing
and beating, it means that this incarnation—
when you’ve gotten so much of it right—
isn’t over yet.

There’s more to this wild ride,
as frustrating, bumfuzzling, mystifyingly
joy-filled as it is—such a marvel,
this strange and wonderful adventure,
indeed.

•••

(Wishing Guy Howard Klopp a most happy birthday,
with love and gratitude from his fans, including me.)

Cherishing is love with its sleeves rolled up.
—Father Greg Boyle

I circle the labyrinth on an overcast morning
the first week of fall as fifteen pilgrims make
their way along the single circuitous path,

many new to walking this singular path
to the center, though it always leads where
pilgrims need to go follow—and yes,
everything on the labyrinth is a metaphor,
and yes, there are gifts along the way.

So I walk the perimeter of the great circle,
holding space for fifteen pairs of feet in motion,
fifteen pairs of eyes looking down, their steps
slowing with the weight of what they carry—

tension and stress, anguish and grief—
which without effort often falls away
with each breath, so that when they reach
the heart of the labyrinth, they can rest, receive,
reflect before retracing their steps.

May they remember that they are cherished,
that they belong here, embodied prayer,
in this moment.

They stand, often with closed eyes,
so much dripping from them like new rain.
I feel their hearts rising, pain giving way
to what feels like a peace-full presence.
And then, heeding some unknown signal,
each begins the return, their footsteps
tracing the same path.

But, as every pilgrim discovers, it never
looks the same. No one takes the same
journey; each heart opens differently.

But they do open, and as their feet
and mine connect with the earth
that gives us life, I feel the widening
into something that could be joy.

And as they come off the path,
I am there to greet them.
Welcome back, I say, looking
into their newly softened eyes,

reminded that all of these souls,
each on their own journey,
have been holding me, too.

•••

With thanks to Christie Braziel for her excellent seminars on the labyrinth
through the Renaissance Society Sacramento.

(for Dickie)

I count aloud like a kid
learning her numbers—
one, two three, four, five

pairs of specs on his table,
not counting his shades,
which are who knows where?

I, who usually has more of
everything, own just one pair
for the everyday along with

a second pair of shades.
But he has close and middle
distance, progressives and

bifocals and single distance.
I envy him—not only his
array of eyewear, but his

actual eyes, which, since his
cataract removals, can see for
days, or at least tens of yards.

I’ll never have his kind of vision
that this still-got-it photographer
has, whose point and shoot prowess

on his phone many of us envy.
When people ask what camera
he uses, he’s been known

to respond, “It’s not the camera.”
No, it’s his perceptive eyes,
though he’d never say that.

How lucky am I, decades after
he discarded film and long lenses,
to see the world through the pixels

he produces, this fellow with
interchangeable lenses of
a different sort, a man with

extraordinary vision, one
who consistently, kindly
sees the world—and me—

in the best possible light.