Güd wrtr

Maximum cat, you are,
I say to the big guy sprawled on his side
on my office floor, where I have
joined him for a time, still getting him
used to the idea of me, as together
we get used to the idea of not having
Mother in the world.

Do you miss her? I ask as he gets up,
winds past me, his tail high.
I run a hand over his back where
the fur is nicely regrowing after Dr. Sue
shaved off the mound of mats he arrived
with. Less encumbered, he seems
to be thriving, though I wonder if
animals remember the ones who
once loved them.

If, as I’ve long theorized, that,
after we die, all that’s left is the love,
she, who had a hard time showing affection,
left it behind in this big black-and-white
furball—another beating heart in the house,
she used to say— who walks through
my life sounding his little radar call,
looking for someone to respond.

And, as she used to, from wherever I am
in the house, I call, Maxi, I’m here!
until he finds me and fixes me with his
big, green eyes—several shades brighter
than hers, not unlike mine—and often
settles someplace nearby, radiating
big kitty love—hers through him
to me.

•••

Thanks again to Dr. Sue Lester (aka the OG BFF)
of Four Paws Animal Clinic in Nevada City for the great
cleanup job she and her team did on Maxi in January.

(for Clifford Ernest Polland
May 21, 1952–March 19, 2001)

You pop in less frequently now,
but, when I see a handsome older man
walking into Target, about your height,
hair and beard the color of a storybook cloud,
I think—not for the first time—
that could be you.

73 today, if you’d stuck around,
which you never thought you would,
having brought with you an innate sense
of your mortality. From infancy,
you could not stomach cow’s milk,
struggled to gain weight, worrying
every female in your family.

But somehow you thrived and grew tall
and played basketball and baseball—
even with your oddly plumbed heart—
and used your good hands to fix engines
on large boats and small cars
and came to love me.

Now I see you in the tall, slender man
with glasses squinting at the large
black-and-white photograph
in the art museum. That could be you,
I think, watching from a respectful distance,
sizing up your own sizable skills,
comparing them to those of the master
on the wall.

Or maybe I have it wrong. Maybe
you wouldn’t have vanished at only 48.
After a long life, you might just stand tall
and admire the beauty bestowed
upon you, upon the world in general,
grateful and without judgment,
as you did again and again
for me.

under stars, kabillions
of twinkles, of which I can
usually make out

only a few dozen, until
I migrate to the sea where
night waves soften

my gaze enough to float me
through the curtain of night
into the greater universe

where I sail effortlessly
on waves of eternity,
which is what, I imagine,

it must be like to fly or die,
either of which, when
it’s time—

though not yet,
oh, please, not yet—
will be fine with me.

Now that I’ve given you up,
I run into you every time I pop in

to drop an envelope into the thin maw
of the beast that embraces the mailables,

and (please, postal gods) magically
ferries them where they need to go.

You were mine for three decades, your
silvery face as familiar as a longtime lover,

me the inconstant partner arriving
periodically with the little brass key,

deftly inserting it, turning it and, opening
you, peering hopefully into your depths.

Even when you held nothing, I knew
that you waited for me—only me—

day after day after day. Even on Sundays.
You look good, just like you always did.

I hope someone nice has you now.
I hope they are grateful for your silent

patience, your always there-ness,
which, I realize now, I probably never

told you, certainly never appreciated
you nearly enough.

I have just learned that the wood thrush,
a bird that lives 2,000 miles east of its western
cousins near me, possesses two sets of vocal cords,

each in its own tiny chamber in the throat,
allowing it to sing two distinct notes at once,
a one-bird duet that some have called

the voice of God. I am immediately
envious of these syrinxes, the double voice
boxes tucked into the trachea.

Not only do I want to fly to where
these birds live and sing, to stand
beneath them and listen, I also long

for my own second voice box so I can
harmonize with myself—not unlike
the days when I’d nudge my little sister

into singing her tenor part of a barbershop
tag that our parents had taught us,
sometimes joined by the lower registers

of the pair who made us, but often
simply our two high-pitched girl voices
trying to ring chords that these

little birds with spotted chests
produce all by themselves.
As we must do, we two progeny,

now that those who made us have flown
into mystery, where we hope that they are
—please, God—

singing in harmony once again.

•••

(with thanks to Carrie Newcomer and James Crews for the prompt)

These long nights keeping watch,
standing vigil, you carry with you
a kind of mantra—not much longer—

counting the hours till dawn,
peering out the window for the first
suggestion of morning that signals

relief in the form of someone who
will arrive with gentle reassurances
that, even when solo, you are not alone.

That the someone might not be embodied
does not matter. In fact, when she arrives
on the wings of first light, shell pink

morphing into soft tangerine, though
you cannot see her, you will feel her
hovering near the one you are tending,

quelling fever, brushing away pain,
delivering rest to the restless.
And when you feel a gentle touch

on your brow, when, from between
your shoulder blades, she untucks
the wings you’ve grown,

fluffing them like a gossamer veil,
you remember that you, too, are doing
the work of angels who appear

when the deepest dark begins
to lighten, bringing ease to the uneasy,
love to the difficult to love,

and oh, blesséd peace, which you
feared had fled, but now you see—
as if for the first time,

as if it has just been given to you—
cradled in the center of your
freshly unfurled palms.

(for my grandmother, Anna Marie Nyberg Haag)

My father used to say,
“Write when you get work,”
long before my sister

and I were old enough
to do so. It took years
before I realized that to

our father, raised as he was
during the Depression,
the sentiment was serious,

that work could be difficult
to get, to hang onto, and
when it happened,

it called for a letter to the
folks back home hoping
to hear from you.

Decades later, his mother,
on her manual cursive typewriter,
often ended her letters,

“Don’t forget to write,”
eager as she was to hear
from family spread out

farther than she would have
liked. My grandmother
was never happier than

when we all gathered in one
place, delivering squeezy hugs
so tight that the glass-faceted

brooch in the center of her
chest would pierce ours.
She’d feed us her best

Swedish meatballs and
good brownies, only to
have us scatter again

like dandelion seeds,
leaving her at her typewriter,
waiting for word—

any word at all—
to fall onto a page
and make its way to her.

Sometimes, love looks like small things.
—Former U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith

Like bringing the half gallon of milk,
though he didn’t ask for it because
you knew he’d otherwise have to dampen
tomorrow’s cereal with water.

Like him emailing the photos he took of you
making split pea soup to your mother
because it was her favorite and because
she—no cook herself—knew that you’d
inherited her preference for reading
over doing much of anything
in a kitchen.

Like the niece-in-law texting photos
of your mother’s lilac in bloom
a few months after her death,
perhaps returned as the butterfly
resting on all that purple.

Like your solo walk home carrying
your leftover burrito in a brown box
after breakfast with a friend,
and offering it to the woman sitting
on the curb who asked for a dollar,
then grabbed the box like a ring buoy,
opened it and, without a word,
took a big bite, grinning gratitude
that you didn’t require.

Love rests in the small things,
rarely in the big gestures—
driving a sister to the doctor,
calling the homebound relative,
feeding the neighbor’s cat who
shows up mornings on your porch
because, though he gets fed at home,
it’s more fun to eat out.

Like the poem that arrives in your
in-box with the note from the poet
reminding you that the smallest
kindnesses are proof that we’re here,
paying attention, that we care.

And oh, how much others,
if we have eyes to see,
so care for us, too.

How rivers and stones are forever
in allegiance with gravity
while we ourselves dream of rising.

—Mary Oliver

•••

If I must pledge,
let me do so while standing,
not with hand over heart,

but outside amid the greening,
gawking again at the show-off
hollyhocks rising like

full-skirted towers from
last season’s leavings. I whack
them to the ground each fall,

and they insist on returning.
Talk about allegiance.
Their pledge must drive

their exploding seeds out
of spent pods into the earth
with a teeny timer inside

that lets them know when
to do all that underground work
to start pushing toward

the sun. That’s how I want
to commit myself, quietly
going about the every day,

growing in the dark, looking
for light, but remembering
when it’s time to rest,

to dig in, to recharge
for the moments when
we get the call

to start all over again.

The kids whose house it now is
have no idea how the little
hummingbird got inside.

Perhaps it flew in through
open doors or screenless windows
amid all the renovation

transforming our mother’s
old place into theirs. Maybe
flitting into the hole in the eaves

that led it inside, and, trapped,
could not find its way out.
Or maybe it meant to stay,

not wanting to leave, not
intending to die, but in the end
falling to the floor in what

had been the library,
its busy wings stilled,
the infinitesimal heart

stopped, its iridescent
feathers like wee prisms
splitting light into rainbows,

still vibrant, as if it might
startle and stir before
zooming off into mystery.