(for Antsy McClain)
Even without the band,
it just takes one man,
six strings
and a voice that reaches
into your soul and tugs
on your deepest self,
urging you to settle in
for a spell of kindness,
to feel like family,
embraced by his large
heart and song after song
that make you smile—
even if you don’t yet
know the words—
and sing along.
This bird woman uncaged,
florally abundant, smiling,
clear-eyed and colorful,
a woman who has seen and loved
and lived well, holding it in every
cell, every fold, every wink.
Let me grow into this old woman
amid blooming things like
flowers and wingéd things
like birds and insects,
all manner of creatures
who show me how to fly,
how to relish every minute
of these too-short lives—
really just an eyeblink—
and, when it’s time,
how to wing off on a breath,
truly uncaged from
the house of this body
I think of
as me.
Though we were only two at the table,
certainly her mother joined us, as she always does,
along with another who mothered me, too,
as a 20-something, new-to-town journalist
who didn’t know she needed mothering.
That little town gave me two maternal voices
I didn’t know I needed, and we hoisted our
delicate china cups to them in the lovely tea room
down the street from that used-to-be
office where I and others I came to adore
worked. How much this town gave me,
I think now when I make occasional forays
there. How much gratitude spills from me
45 years after I first drove in on the same road
I did today, thinking of those now-gone ones,
the ones who mothered me, others who loved me
for no good reason, who taught me what it is
to be a grownup in the world, doing work
we loved, with people who became family,
who live with me still—those here and gone—
lucky, lucky me.
•••
(for Eileen and Ruth Rita and Julie
along with my old Vacaville Reporter family)
The memory of your face,
your voice, your embrace,
your last kindness, so that,
as I leave you in this moment,
if I should not return,
you will remain tucked
into the folds of my heart,
my brain, my cells,
where you will stay,
ever as I go.
I am drawn to the circular path,
the one-way passage to the center,
then retracing the same way out,
though it never looks the same.
I gave her the little silver spiral
set onto a turquoise glass pendant.
I don’t recall how often she wore it,
or if she did, our lady of the zillion
necklaces, which she left to my sister
and me.
This one is more her style than mine,
but the spiral reminds me of a labyrinth,
my favorite walking meditation that
always settles something, even when
I don’t know what the something is.
As I walk the path and wind the curves,
I’m suffused with a kind of calm,
the same cool color that hangs
just below my clavicle.
Peace arrives unbidden,
descending as a form of grace—
another gift that I had no idea
she was leaving behind,
one I could not have found
until after she was gone.
(for Donna and Lauren and Rosie)
We love the boys, too,
but these three generations
of Just girls have my heart,
my sister who made me an aunt
on my 29th birthday, then my niece
who made me a great aunt
(You’ve always been a great aunt,
Aunt Jan, she loyally told me)
with Henry, about to be 2,
and now with Rosie, who at 2
months makes eye contact and
laughs and holds up her head
with surprising strength for
one so fresh out of the egg.
As the family matriarch
floated off into mystery
on the winter solstice, our
newest girl was still baking
inside her mama. Sitting
now with Just these three,
I cannot help but be amazed
by the going on-ness of it all.
“Every generation improves
the breed,” our long-gone
grandpa used to say,
and these three are living
proof of that. I hope that he
and the other ancestors—
them’s what made us—
drop in now and then
for visits, that they are
delighted by what they
started and how it so
blessedly continues.
Creativity is a way of moving through the world, every minute, every day … Noticing what you find interesting, what makes you lean forward. And knowing all of this is available to use next time you sit down to work, where the raw data gets put into form.
—Rick Rubin, “The Creative Act: A Way of Being”
•••
Holding hands with creativity
turns out to be a way of being in a world
it’s sometimes hard to be in,
a form of faith that says,
There’s something in here
that needs to get out—
through a pen to a page,
through a brush dipped in paint,
through a horn blown alone
or with others to make a joyful
or sorrowful noise. So many ways
to let creativity take us
by the hand and say, Here,
sweetheart. Sit here and just
for a little, let this leak out of you.
Maybe others will see it or hear it.
Maybe it will touch someone else.
Maybe it won’t. But really,
it’s for you. Always, only, for you,
this way of being—no other way to be—
which takes not so much belief
but trust that your voice
is worthy of the page, or
the canvas, or the place where
you put the horn to your mouth,
and notes appear to hang in the air
for the briefest of moments,
then disappear, until you make
more of them, and more,
and more.
•••
(For the painters like my brother-in-law Eric and the trombone players
like my nephew Kevin, and the actors and composers and sculptors,
for the photographers like my dear Dick Schmidt, for the writers
who write with me and the ones I admire from afar, living and dead,
thank you for your gifts of creativity.)
It seems like forever since I last opened
my mother’s sewing box, a motley collection
of notions she rarely used but kept on hand
just in case.
The strawberry pincushion with its elegant,
pearl-topped stabbers rests there with any
number of threaded needles, their unwieldy tails
proof that they are ready for action. See also
the seam rippers, a measuring tape or two,
safety pins, stray elastic, scissors used only
to cut fabric.
Hooks, eyes, snaps, elastic, interfacing, bias tape.
And my favorite—the palette of thread with colors
so vibrant I wanted to lick them like ice cream
atop a cone when I was a kid.
Why, of all her things, did I bring this sagging,
soiled thing home? Because, like too much else,
I could not bear to throw it away. Though she
rarely sewed and had limited skills with a bobbin,
she taught us how to tack on buttons and whip stitch
a hem. My clumsy fingers did not easily accept
the challenge, but my sister took to the machine
and set it humming,
Look at that bold purple thread, the seagoing
dark turquoise, the strawberry pink, the pistachio
green. How could I not want to preserve that
yummy spectrum of possibility?
How could I ignore the notion that so much
can be made from bits and bobs, that these colors,
aged but so vibrant, still live, waiting for
someone to finish what was long ago begun?
This is a flower, a gift from the earth from which it grows. May you know that the earth provides all you need. May you know beauty, and may all you do be a blessing to the world. You are the earth.
—from the Welcoming New Life ceremony for the children of the Unitarian Universalist Society of Sacramento, June 1, 2025
•••
There is no spiritual blemish
to be washed away, says the pastor
looking at the children, many of them
in their parents’ arms, assembled
before the congregation,
which cannot help smiling at
such a mass of squirmy-ness
and sweetness, as these little ones
from tiny to taller are welcomed
into this community of kindness.
They are gladly received—
nothing asked of them,
no atoning necessary—
embraced by strangers,
many of whom will come
to feel like family,
thankful for all the blessings
all of us have been given,
with an unwavering faith
that there will be better days,
that these children will
become a force for healing
in the world, for justice
and wholeness.
After watching child after child
receive a flower and a blessing
of water, air, fire and earth,
let us each accept the gift
of a flower chosen for us,
as we then select a flower
and offer it to another—
a holy nudge in floral form
so that we assembled souls
might also live as blessings
to the world.
•••
Thanks to the Unitarian Universalist Society of Sacramento—
especially the Revs. Lucy Bunch and Roger Jones—for their
embracing community, which extends so much kindness
and welcome to all.
An experiment in driveway poetry (on my driveway). It’s the ending of an older poem, “This season”:
But dear one,
listen. Breathe
deeply, exhale slowly and
with your whole,
far-from shaky self,
take one trusting step
into the unknown,
and begin again.
You can read the whole poem here, if you like.
Güd wrtr 