Güd wrtr

That’s the pisser—
the dilemma with no
easy resolution,

no good answer:
when to hold on,
when to let go.

We are a holding-on
species, reluctant
letter-goers,

especially when our
tender hearts
ache with loss.

We want this one
back, never wanted
that one to go,

the clench of grief
squeezing the woulda
coulda shouldas

of regret. Let us sigh,
pen little love notes
onto sticky squares,

and tuck them into
a handmade blue
urn, gently settling

the lid on top, and
sigh again, hoping
that with time,

the messages may
grow wings,
alight and find

their way to those
who need to hear
the I miss yous,

the I’m sorries,
the I wish I hads,
the I love yous,

the thankyou
thankyou
thankyous

that we can
never say
enough.

You left Wednesday, Marge, before
I could return Friday to take down details
of your 79 years for the obit.

You’ve been in hospice for only
two weeks, moved to independent
living less than a month ago, and

though I haven’t married your brother,
you’ve been the sorta sister-in-law I didn’t
know I needed for three decades now.

Yesterday, an hour before sunset—
the last one you would see,
as it happened—before your brother

and I left you half asleep on the sofa,
I asked if we might talk about details
for what I called “your after-story.”

“You can tell me to buzz off, if that’s
not something you want to do,” I said.
And you, under your soft, heated

blanket with its little red gauge
beaming, smiled and said, “Sure,”
and I asked, “Friday?” and you said,

“Sure,” as your brother and husband
talked quietly behind us. I’d brought
what turned out to be your

final batch of custards—just four
instead of the usual eight because
you were barely eating.

I hope you had part of one, that
some of your last bites on Earth,
what slipped down your parched

throat as your struggling heart
slowed and stuttered, were of that
smooth eggy-ness your mother

used to make, which you taught me
to make, along with your creamy
cheesecake, your late son’s favorite,

which I hope they have waiting
for you in your heaven. Where I’m sure
they’ve been readying your party

with all things pink—your color—
from balloons to streamers,
and a good traditional jazz band

you can dance to along with
a whole crew of your beloveds,
hands and hearts extended,

who’ve been expecting you.
I hope you heard your mother’s
gentle voice calling you

—Margery!—
summoning you from play
in the yard with your brothers,

Time to come home!
And you, beloved daughter,
sister, wife, mother, friend,

went, quietly,
as was your way,
eager to join the party.

•••

In memory of Margery Ann Schmidt Malekian Thompson
Aug. 13, 1946–Aug. 27, 2025

(and no, it doesn’t rhyme with “violets”*)

You want me to write a triolet?
OK, then, I’ll try.
Turns out it’s a fun game to play.
You want me to write a triolet?
Once I start, I might just do this all day.
Testing my wings, I find I can fly.
You want me to write a triolet?
OK, then, I’ll try.

•••

Now that I’ve written a triolet,
where do I go from here?
Diving into a virtual word bouquet
now that I’ve written a triolet.
So many themes I could portray—
maybe a love poem, dear.
Now that I’ve written a triolet,
where do I go from here?

•••

Well, then a love poem it shall be,
But for whom? Maybe for youm?
Avoiding clichés of moon or tree,
well, then a love poem it shall be.
Maybe toss in a hummingbird or bee
to make the little poem zoom.
Well, then a love poem it shall be,
But for whom? Maybe for youm?

•••

*In case you want to know…
The triolet (TREE-oh-lay) dates back to 13th century France
and is an eight-line poem with a lot of repetition and only
two rhymes used throughout. (And the plural really is
triolets, pronounced TREE-oh-lays.)

•••

(Thanks to Ellen Rowland for the prompt that plunged me into the triolet!)

Not that I ever mastered perfect parking,
much less parallel, although living in a city

all these years, I have gotten better. But I
find myself deeply annoyed one dark night

by the yellow flap of paper-that-is-not-a-ticket
waiting under my windshield wiper,

bearing a handwritten warning:
A vehicle may not be parked over a white line.

No, of course not, though mine is the only
car in this section of the condo complex lot,

a spot I frequently occupy, where the white
lines are so faint, especially at night, that

I cannot see them, though Mr. Security Guy
can. I have been known to get out of the car,

look for the lines, get back in the car, readjust.
I consider myself a courteous parker,

but this little yellow record of my “first offense”
hoists my hackles, bruises my feelings.

As the song says, They just keep movin’ the line.
So much shifting, all the lines becoming

more vague, increasingly wobbly, as we do,
until I fear becoming an old lady driver

who younger ones swear at. Maybe,
it occurs to me, I already am.

Driving home, the reprimand glaring
at me from the passenger seat, I find

myself behind a driver going 20 mph
in a 30 mph zone. I feel my misplaced

annoyance begin to rise as the little yellow
non-ticket catches the gleam of a street light,

until that unnamable something comes
over me, unseen hands pressing

my shoulders back where they belong,
swelling my belly with breath,

and my foot eases off the gas with
an exhale, a letting go, a settling,

finally slowing into the speed I am
apparently meant to be going.

•••

Listen to “They Just Keep Movin’ the Line,” sung by Megan Hilty
in the TV series “Smash.”

I imagine the man whose name has
filtered through the centuries—not
the master printer with his innovative

press, but that of Henricus Cremer,
the rubricator who inked red capital
letters onto delicate paper,

whose hands bound and inscribed
that Bible in August 1456. He could
not have known, nor could Gutenberg,

that the first run of 180 copies would
launch a great communications
revolution, sending extraordinary

amounts of written knowledge into
the hands of ordinary people, which
trickled through 502 years to a baby

girl born in a land of citrus and sunshine
(not to mention Disneyland), who would
grow into a writer whose father would

bring home her first printing press and
a mother who’d type the girl’s words
onto a stencil to make her first newspaper.

She had no idea about the great tradition
she was carrying on, had not yet learned
of Gutenberg or those who toiled to create

the famous Bibles, though she loved the heft
of thick metal type in her palms, individual
letters and numbers and pieces of punctuation

that, when combined, gave voice to the unspoken,
gave the gift of reading to those who
previously could not, and gave the power

of word after mighty word to mute paper,
which the printers in Mainz certainly did,
making book after book with their clever

minds and gloriously ink-stained hands.

Scorching is what it is, 105 this afternoon—
no biggie to desert dwellers basking
in 118—but most humans were not made

for such stupid hot temperatures.
And we’re getting hotter, thanks to
hotheads boiling over, which makes

my internal thermometer rise. To cool
down, I slip my feet into old flip-flops
that summer by the back door. I head

straight for the hose, remembering
long-gone days of filling the blow-up pool
for small ones who are now bona fide

grownups with their own kiddie pools
in their own yards. And before that, hot
afternoons at the high school pool,

climbing down from the lifeguard
tower to dunk myself, hat and sunglasses
and zinc oxide’d nose and all, then

hoisting myself up on the concrete lip
of the huge tank, emerging again into
the overhead sun while keeping an eye

on the gyrations of teenage boys off
the high dive. And now, hose in hand,
I do what we did at the pool—

spray my feet that practically steam
when drops hit them—before
training the stream on the thirsty souls

on my deck, eager for dampness to reach
their little blooming faces, their leaves
only slightly droopy. I swear I hear

their “ahhh”s—or maybe those
are mine—when the blessing of water
hits their rooty feet, just before

I squirt my own again.

the night before the big blue truck comes to swallow
the contents of the green bin, where the compostables
join thousands of early sycamore leaves browned
by summer,

I think, not for the first time, how could I have
forgotten those peaches I was so looking forward
to? And why did I leave them in the vegetable bin
with the past-their-prime green onions?

Peaches belong in a pretty bowl on the counter
so I’ll see them and eat them. Perhaps leaning over
the sink, or cutting them up to plop on yogurt,
or putting then in a bowl with blueberries.

After dark I set all five of the gooshy things into
a green compostable bag, along with the onions,
and walk them out to the green bin on the curb,
apologizing to the fruit for my forgetfulness,

shaking my head at my wastefulness. Then
I head back inside, open the fridge to find
the blueberries, sprinkle a handful atop some
yogurt, still thinking how good peaches

would taste. I add them to the grocery list
in my sieve of a brain, the cranial hard drive
so full that odds and ends, smiles and voices
I’d prefer to keep, spill out and roll away

like, yes, sweet, ripe peaches.

Though I am not a beet person,
I admire the color and shape,
the just-pulled-from-the-earthiness
aroma of the spherical roots
with their curly tails.

But when I touch the frilly leaves,
I see his hands on them, tugging
them out of inhospitable dirt.

Somehow he got them to grow
in our back yard, after trucking home
pickup beds full of “soil amendments”
smelling of rotting matter that he
promised would make the seeds grow.

And they did: Somehow he coaxed
gangly beans to crawl up the fence
and tomatoes to sprout, hanging
like red globes in wire cages
stuck in half a wine barrel.

He said he could help me learn
to love the flavor of heavy-as-baseballs,
deep crimson beets, which I didn’t,
though I told him I did.

Like the hops he boiled on the stove
to turn into beer, like the wine
aging in the basement, the handmade
pasta hanging in ribbons from
open cupboard doors,

I found myself gobsmacked by
this husband who somehow knew
how to help things become themselves
and make it look easy,

just as he did, I’ve come
to realize all these years later,
with me.

•••

(In memory of Cliff Polland, 1952–2001)

The delicate corpse
rendered in ivory
rather than its familiar

green, the mantis’s
praying days are over,
cradled in the veins

of a milkweed leaf,
which itself will all too
soon expire and fall.

We tend to quickly
bury or burn our dead,
or, in some cases,

strip them to the
essence of bone,
morphing from

cadaver to artifact,
allowing the living
to gaze upon

the scaffolding
on which our skin
selves once draped.

The calm of what
has passed, the beauty
that we may not

have taken the time
to admire when
this sculpture

lived and breathed.
Now we notice.
Now we remember.

Now we go on.

The man who said, Who loves me, loves my dog,
would have the name of one—and a saint at that.

On the day of Bernard’s death in 1153, we recall this
prolific writer of 530 letters and 300 sermons,

the man who said, Believe me, you will find
more lessons in the woods than in books.

Trees and stones will teach you what
you cannot learn from masters.

He also wrote, What we love
we shall grow to resemble.

May we resemble trees. May we
take on the characteristics of stones.

May we find that solidity within and feel
ourselves growing and bending with the wind.