Güd wrtr

Dearest Miss D.,
I hope that you have a
well-deserved place
in the balcony where you

can look down upon
scads of us mere mortals
who hold your words
in the highest esteem,

shy as you were about
publishing in your day.
I have fat books of
your poems and letters,

which you likely would
have hated, seeing as
how you wanted them
destroyed. But Emily

—if I may be so bold—
195 years after your
birth, we revere
your name much as

we do Shakespeare’s
or Miss Austen’s or even
the Beatles, some of
whose lyrics I think

you might like. That
blackbird singing in
the dead of night is
one fine bit of poetry—

an example of hope
is a thing with feathers,
if I’ve ever heard one,
or a bird that came down

the walk. And as we dwell
in possibility, we’re still
wondering, as you did,
what is so special

about the buzz of a fly?
If you’ve figured that out,
having long since joined
the ranks of the gods

and goddesses of all things
wise and wonderful,
please send us a sign,
won’t you?

•••

(In memory of Emily Dickinson, Dec. 10, 1830–May 15, 1886)

Every year, as this tree outside the
science building on the university
campus I still think of as mine

releases its gold bounty, I make
a mini pilgrimage to stand beneath it
and wonder who comes with what

implement and makes perfect circles
around the ginkgo’s strong center, turning
the leavings into leafy sculpture.

Every hour more little fans flutter
and join their grounded brethren,
gradually obscuring the pattern

that I see today has spokes radiating
around the circles—an ode to the sun
that has been a stranger for a good

two weeks? Or is it merely the fancy
of the one I imagine who applies
the rake and those who resist

collecting the fallen? Perhaps
they do so in silent acknowledgment
of the hard work of this living,

breathing being, who, I suspect,
has no idea how stunning
it is, who, like so many,

humbly does what it does, with
no expectation of adulation
or applause.

This time last year, I found myself
caring for two aging females
both literally on their last legs,
one with four furry ones,
the other a two-legged one
who hadn’t had to shave
her smooth legs for years.

This year as the sun sets earlier and
earlier, inching toward the shortest day,
I think back a dozen months ago,
when the two-legged one drifted
into mystery in the house
where she raised us.

I recall the many dusky drives
on my way to sit the overnight shift.
Other nights my sister was on duty
as I stayed home with the skinny kitty
who, as it turned out, outlived
our mother by a few months.

And I learned again the lessons that
only the dying can teach about patience
and fortitude with one who was never
easy, about sitting a vigil, ready to do
the smallest of things for beloveds
nearing the ends of long lifetimes.

Almost a year later I drive the same
route on a cold December night for
a happier reason—a holiday concert—
and gratitude infuses me like swelling
chords, a perennial hallelujah.

Dying, it turns out, is some of the hardest
work we ever do, and those who choose
to make the journey with ones on their way
undertake some of their most challenging
soul work, too.

Sometimes it feels like not enough,
that we can do so little, so imperfectly,
but it turns out to be everything that
was needed at the time,

just as those two- and four-footed
loved ones did for us
for years and years and years.

•••

(In memory of Poki cat and my mother, Darlene Haag)

They make you special art and leave it
where you’ll find it, fully expecting you
to use it for the purpose for which
it was originally intended.

As if you’d ruin such heartfelt sentiment.
As if you don’t go looking for another roll.
As if you don’t take a photo guaranteed
to make you laugh

every time you come upon it.

We might’a thought:

Look at the cute old people
taking their own photo
next to a trough of fire.

It must be winter—they’re
all bundled, though the man
is wearing an aloha shirt
under his jacket. Do you
suppose he likes Hawaii?

And the lady is wearing
a pink scarf with what
looks like leaves on it.
I wonder what that
says about her?

They have such
friendly smiles and
the kind of eyes that
smile, too, behind
their glasses.

I wonder what their
story is. Do you suppose
they’re a couple who
have been together
long enough to watch
each other’s hair
turn white?

Will we look like
them someday?
Will we be as happy
as these two look
together?

Oh, I hope so.
I sure hope so.

•••

For Dickie on the 36th anniversary of the day he declared his love for me, and for the 30-something years we’ve been each other’s best person/main squeeze/partner guy & gal. I’m beyond gratitudinous for every minute of it.

Sure, easy go, too,
but after all these years
of having words flutter by

and, when possible,
pinning them down—
or at least borrowing

them to affix temporarily
to a page—I have come
to see them for the gift

they are, not to think
of it as cheating or luck.
Because I’m just

renting them, really.
They’re no more mine
than anyone else’s.

If I like, I get to shape
them into the mosaic
of the moment.

And when I stand
back to look at them,
nod at the not-badness

of the assemblage,
the little flitters will
rise again and take off

to be of service to
another who fancies
themselves a creator.

When, really, we know
in our little hearts
how fortunate we are

that the words or images
or colors or ideas
popped by for a visit,

and we thought to
borrow them for this
sweet, fleeting moment.

A day like this one—
afterdayafterdayafterday
of gray skies, low-hanging
tule fog, stupid fog, not
pretty, wispy, mystical,
moody San Francisco fog—

when the sun makes a
ta da! appearance, though,
of course, it’s been making
its daily march across the sky
while we hunkered down
under the stupid cold fog—

you just want to fly through
the blue splashed overhead
as if some overenthusiastic
art goddess purposely spilled
the paint bucket just to
dazzle you,

and you find your wings,
the ones that have apparently
been tucked between your
shoulder blades all your life,
and, shaking them out
damply,

you stretch and shake out
the cricks in your neck, make
a few tentative up-and-downs
with those wings, then start
flapping hard,

and the next thing you know,
you’re lifting, lifting, soaring,
flapping, moving across the blue,
heading for the river, the one
this city was named for,

and you circle the towers of
the bright gold bridge lifting
out of the water like light itself,
and you behold this place
you call home,

wispy fingers of cloud reaching
for the blue, building tops shiny
and arranged with geometric
precision, and you flap and glide,
flap and glide,

not tiring, never wanting to stop,
certain that this day is meant
for you, because it is,
you high-flying soaring beast, you,
it so is.

•••

With thanks to photographer Martin Christian for the stunning photo of downtown Sacramento and Tower Bridge, which inspired this poem.

While you hold it you can’t get lost. …

Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.

—William Stafford, from “The Way It Is”

•••

I am the thread, one who keeps you connected to all things.
You can try to release me, but you’re always connected

to all things on this planet, seen and unseen—
especially to the trees and the leaves falling now,

the buds tight inside that, before long, will bring new life.
It is the way of things, and you know this,

even as you despair over the doings of men. Yes,
tragedies occur daily; people suffer and get hurt and die.

You will get old, and, even more difficult, so will those
around you. “Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.”

But the connection with birds and sea and air and wind,
of every living, breathing thing (yes, the rocks, too)

is yours for this time and beyond. I am the thread
that unites every thing, that links you to the All.

I am the divine connection that will never leave—
like the ones falling from trees now,

the ones behind them waiting to be born.

•••

With my deep appreciation to the poetic genius of William Stafford, to his family, particularly to his son Kim Stafford, and to Brian Rohr of the Stafford Challenge for their contributions to the art of poetry and encouragement of poets.

Your heart’s no good as a heart until it’s been broken at least ten times.
—Actor/screenwriter Emma Thompson quoting her grandmother

•••

1. Being born. If that’s not a heartbreaker, what is? Coming into air, for starters, cold air that prompts lungs you didn’t know you had to start—what’s that?—breathing. You’re squeezed through a tight chute only to emerge into a bright, cold world only to get a rude whack on the back or butt, a taste of unfairnesses to come. You’ve done nothing to deserve that. Or any unkindness. Ever.

Good heavens! you prayerfully wail. Let me crawl back into that warm place and hibernate forever.

God (or someone in charge) doesn’t seem to be listening.

2. The taking away… of boob’s sweet milk, of a mum’s and dad’s comforting arms, of the cradle for a crib for a bed, of the bottle for food to moosh around in the mouth.

3. The next child. There are others like you? You thought You Were It. What is this crying thing taking up the attention that belongs solely to you? Why do they not hold you like that? You cry, too, feeling—before you know the word—bereft.

4. And that rhymes with being left. At daycare. Or some strange place with strangers. At this thing called school where other small people (and some big ones) can be so unkind. One day they want to play with you and the next they don’t. Or call you names, make you feel like crawling up your own armhole.

5. Failure. Or what feels like it. If you are lucky, it’s not fatal. It just feels like it. The test you fail, written or spoken, with someone you didn’t know was testing you. Sometimes you feel that you have failed, and you may not have, but that feeling deepens the cracks in your little hearts nonetheless.

6. The friend who no longer loves you. The lover who no longer loves you. The spouse even.

7. The employer who no longer thinks highly of you. May well fire you. Does fire you. The job that didn’t work out after that one either. And maybe the next one.

8. The big whoppers: This one dies. That one dies. Whether your first pets or our older-than-god-grandparents, they disappear. Forever. And then your dear friends and those you never knew but have admired from afar. Their loss stings longer than you think it should. Spouses and parents, even. Good ones who adored you. Poof!

9. Watching your home/your life/your country burn. And you with only the smallest fire extinguisher that, once spent, can no more quell the flames than can your tiny feet trying to stomp them out. This is wrong! you cry. It’s not fair! And you are not wrong.

You feel your heart crack in the same spots it has for years, thinking, This time it’s over. We’re done for. And, flailing, you reach out a hand only to find, to your surprise, another hand meeting yours. And you look at the one attached to that hand and see that someone else is holding their hand, and, down the line, someone else and someone else—this great human chain of kindness, which you thought had burnt up long ago.

And this, it turns out, is how you begin to patch up your cracked heart. By borrowing pieces of the generous hearts of others, so many of whom are happy to donate parts of their own broken hearts, to you. Yes, you. As you will in turn (as you have done, actually, for a long time now) to someone standing next to you. You will reach out your hand and connect to a hand you don’t know. A stranger’s just a friend waiting to happen. So let it happen.

10. And oh, the magic, the mystical, the inexplicability of closing your eyes and finding a long-gone beloved there, or awakening and feeling that you’ve just been with them in a dream you can’t quite recall. The joy-tinged sorrow of that. Or walking in the door and smelling their scent that disappeared years before. Of finding the companion spirits in attendance, as they’ve always been, the gods and goddesses hand in hand with the guardian angels working overtime on your behalf, wielding their little patch kits, lining the cracks in your heart with gold, making it shine—the light at the edge of your darkness.

Let it shine. Oh, let it shine.

•••

• See the whole Emma Thompson interview at the 26th annual New Yorker Festival

• “A stranger’s just a friend waiting to happen.” (Antsy McClain, “When You’re Laughing”)

• “The light at the edge of your darkness. Let it shine. Oh, let it shine.” (Dan Fogelberg, “There’s a Place in the World for a Gambler”)

Just look at them flaunting their true colors
that have lain hidden under their modest green
robes since spring.

Some leafy one must flip a switch, and the trees
that participate go all-out like the drag queens
they secretly are for the rest of the year.

We, their appreciative audience, stop on our walks,
in our cars to gawk and take photos of such
short-lived seasonal fabulousness

before they drop it all and let us see what they’re
truly made of, standing tall and proud,
each one of them such a beauty.