Güd wrtr

As I roll out my mat in the back yard,
I see you, my cats of different eras,

arranging your long-gone selves around
the yard—from the blonde-furred,

blue-eyed Redford (one of the dimmest
bulbs on four paws) to the more

recently departed orange-y doofus
Diego and sweet little Poki, she who

ruled them all. Even as far back as
Max and Tang, the first big-guy pair,

then Noodles, more than a little
noodle-y of brain. And here’s

fluffy black Ozzie, a big sweetie,
and fluffy orange Wally and big gray

Biff, a gentle quiet fellow and the
easiest of housemates. The dogs

amble in, too—Buddy, best dog,
who looked so much like Sherry,

the dog of my growing-up years.
You all sit or recline in familiar spots

on the lawn and deck, watching
me move on my mat until drowsiness

overtakes you, seduced by the hot
summer afternoon, when all our muscles

loosen and stretch—you naturals in
downward cat or dog. My aging structure

finds ease, too, in familiar stretches
and your good companionship,

all of us basking in our affection
for each other, so alive in this moment.

Here I am! Didja miss me?
I know that I’m a fair-weather friend,
an over-90-degrees-before-I-test-
your-waters swimmer,

which is, perhaps, unfair, but you are
solar heated only by the actual sun, not
any fancy equipment, and I’m sure
I’m not the only timid one.

So it’s fine if you didn’t miss me,
that you barely remember my name
or my form breast-stroking
down your length,

though it feels as if we’ve been
on intimate terms for years—
decades, if truth be told. A
seasonal affair, you and I.

A same-time-next-year
arrangement that you clearly
enjoy with many others—
polyamory, is it nowadays?

But I’m not jealous, not as
long as you receive me as
warmly as you do tonight,
as I slip into your silky

embrace, reacquaint myself
with your liquidity, then
plunge in, stroking gently,
as we get used to each other—

oh, the thrill!—again.

Validation is a wonderful thing,
even atop a cardboard box
of supplies that arrives monthly.

Someone in a warehouse
somewhere has Sharpie’d an
encouraging message

with my name on it,
which indicates gratitude
for my purchase of bamboo

toilet paper and recycled
paper plates. But I choose
to see it as a cosmic atta-girl

from the universe, a divine
endorsement, even if all
my choices feel less than

powerful, knowing how I can
second- and third-guess myself
into a heart-pounding fluster.

The boxy affirmations make me
smile. Allow me to share this recognition
of your awesomeness with you:

Powerful choices, my friend.
Hang in there. You’ve got this.
Keep going.

You are a joy to be around.
You are so loved by so many—
among them, me.

Last night,
working late,
the glow of the computer
the only light in the room,

I heard the whine of a tiny
helicoptering something
whiz by my ear, and I
whapped at it

before I thought,
Summer! Bugs!
In winter I find myself
at first grateful for

the lack of flying,
crawly things in the house,
and then, around March,
I’m thrilled to see

a wayward fly trying to
escape through a kitchen
window, crawling, as
they do, upward.

And then I go looking
for a spider who’s outlined
her gossamer apartment
in the corner of another

window, wishing I could
steer the fly to her.
Give me another month,
and I’ll be hunting down

the fly swatter, rather than
opening the back door,
trying to usher them out.
But now I head into

the sun to admire the
bugs, acknowledge their
short-lived existences,
aware that even if I don’t

know why, they occupy
a unique place in the
ecosystem, and I look
for them, going about

their work as if they
know just how little
time they have left.

In tai chi, they say,
walking is simply
perpetual falling.

The young instructor
teaches this to a room
of beginners,

all of us in the older adult
category upstairs in a historic
house-turned-library.

So much accumulated wisdom
embedded in these walls, on
the shelves, in every exhale.

We elders watch this young man
teaching us how to breathe,
how to move so, so slowly,

take a single step with infinite
care—if not grace—wobble
but not tip, not fall,

beginning to engage in
an ancient dance that we
somehow already know

as he teases it out of us
one flowing movement
at a time.

I take myself to see Dr. Janis,
my co-conspirator in eye care,
whose mother had the insightful idea
to spell her daughter’s name
as my mother spelled mine,
which is to say unusually
for a Janice.

How could I not find instant rapport
with a blonde, bespectacled Janis?
And even as my vision declines,
as her thoughtful eyes scan mine
through the big, bug-eyed machine,
I feel well seen.

Someday, should she have to deliver
the news—as another eyecare professional
had to tell my mother—that it is time
to stop driving, I will not be happy,
but I will understand.

I will not rage as my mother did,
unloading on her calm ophthalmologist,
as my mother sputtered, “But I can see!”

Never mind that, weeks earlier,
momentarily blinded by sun streaking
through the windshield, she’d driven
across the road and ended up
on the shoulder, stunned but not hurt.

I have a good idea what’s coming down
this bumpy road of macular degeneration
strewn with glaucoma. Every time I get
behind the driver’s wheel of my mother’s
former car,

I remind myself to not only look carefully
as I ease out of my driveway, or when I gently
pull out of parking spaces, but I also
offer prayers to the eye gods that I not
outlive my vision as my mother did.

Because there’s a world to see,
and I want to drink in every bit of it
with all the vision left in me.

It occurs to you that all those times
you got dumped by someone you adored
may have been the work of the unseen ones
protecting you from future heartache.

From the handsome one who liked to follow
every new flower that came across his path
to the ones who drank and/or smoked themselves stupid
to the inconstant or merely clueless,

you thank them all
for loving you, for teaching you
what you didn’t realize you needed to learn.

And you send great gobs of gratitude
to the guardian angels working overtime
on your behalf, as your late best friend often said—
she, who you suspect is now among them—

who keep you from stumbling over
even greater bumps in the road
and for the little ones you have
weathered along the way.

My third grade teacher said it so often
that her roomful of 1960s peace-and-love
8-year-olds automatically chimed in
as the first words fell from her lips:

There’s no need to be mean.

All these decades later I like to think
that my former classmates and I have not
given up on peace and love, that we believe in
you-can-always-do-something-for-someone
good will—

a small kindness, a simple act of generosity—
reminding us that compassion exists
even as people perpetrate acts of violence,
of oppression, of meanness,
all of it needless.

And on a day when the world learns of
even more brutalities committed
by the nation I think of as mine,

I take myself into the sunshine of a summer
morning, the sky blue-ing, as it does,
through the deep green of live oak leaves
holding unanswerable questions, and say
to nothing and everything:

Let me do a small, kind thing
for someone in this moment, which
is all we ever have, all we can ever do,
giving rather than giving up.

Let the cracks in my heart
break me open, and let love
waterfall its way downstream
to those who need it most.

Then let me do it again
tomorrow and the tomorrow
after that, for all the tomorrows
I may be granted.

There you go again,
flagging me down,
forcing me to slow my roll

because, as usual, I am going too fast,
missing something placed in my path,
trying to get my attention.

I do not know why I was born with
two speeds — go and sleep — but,
and you know this well,

I have over these almost 67 years
managed to reduce my speed a wee bit,
though some might disagree.

Nowadays, on every walk, I literally
stop, bend and sniff all the roses I can,
especially the white and yellow ones,

which a friend recently told me
are the most fragrant. These days,
with every pause,

I find myself giving thanks
for every blooming thing,
for all the beauty I cannot yet see.

(June 20, 2025, at 7:42 p.m., Pacific Time)

Suddenly, there’s so much outside
to do, now that the last of fall
leaves that didn’t come down

till January have been blown
or yanked from under the lantana
profuse with orangey-red

pom-poms like miniature citrus.
And because we live in the land
of little rain, even the tongues

of the most drought-tolerant
pant for water. So we take
to the yard morning or

evening—sometimes both—
to spray, sprinkle, shower
and mist the thirsty,

delighted to see them
on this day of seemingly
endless sunshine, unlike

the depths of winter when
we cannot imagine the sky
lightening before 6, not

darkening till 9. We will tire
of all the watering by September,
wish for cooler days and

elusive precipitation. But now,
like the plants, we thrive in all
this blesséd light,

all this wing and buzz and hum.
We point the hose at our
flip-flopped feet, grinning

as the water cools our hot toes,
the sun still well above the horizon,
twilight a distant illusion

on this lovely, longest day.

•••

(With thanks to poet Tess Taylor for her inspiration.)