Güd wrtr

I don’t know her name,
but I can’t miss the woman’s voice
in the row behind me

belting out the old spiritual
with the projection of one
who has sung on stages:

I’ve got peace like a river,
I’ve got peace like a river,
I’ve got peace like a river in my soul.

And by the second verse she’s
singing harmony as the congregation
embraces the melody:

I’ve got love like an ocean,
I’ve got love like an ocean,
I’ve got love like an ocean in my soul.

And that does it—having led
a pre-church labyrinth walk for
seven souls an hour earlier

on what would have been your
94th birthday, you who harmonized
at the drop of a sequined hat,

you’re making an appearance.
The thought flickers behind my damp eyes,
That lady’d make a good baritone,

which, of course, was the part you
sang in Sweet Adelines for 60 years.
I don’t know if you’re telegraphing

this thought, or if it’s because of this
lifetime as your daughter, but when I
sneak a peek at the happily singing

woman, she’s got icecap white hair
and wearing your favorite shade of light
turquoise, an earthly echo of you.

Tears trickling, I’m thinking, All right,
already, the visitations are very sweet,
but couldja squelch the tears in public?

I’ve got joy like a fountain,
I’ve got joy like a fountain,
I’ve got joy like a fountain in my soul.

At the end of the service, I turn and
introduce myself to—it turns out—Mary Ann,
saying how much I’ve enjoyed her singing.

She smiles, says, “I know you. You’re the labyrinth
lady. I’ve walked with you.” And I nod moistly
as we grin at each other in that moment of shared

recognition, of peace and love, and, yes, joy.

•••

You can listen to “Peace Like a River” (performed by Elizabeth Mitchell
on Smithsonian Folkways) here.

Three days before what would
have been your 94th birthday,
as I’m driving home with newly
pedi’d toes, relaxed and happy,

I pull up behind a waiting-to-turn,
arrest-me-red Corvette with
a shiny Texas license plate
that stops me.

N-R-G, it says, as I look through
the windshield of your former
NRG FLO Elantra. “Hi, Ma!”
I holler, as though you

might hear me, having to
stop myself before I wave.
Not your style—red or
the ‘vette—but I’ve

so rarely seen other NRG
plates that it feels like a
visitation. Who knows?
Perhaps in your new

incarnation, your energy flow
runs to red. Here in mine,
gratitude revs through me
once again, driving

your sweet ride in
which I drove you,
which you left to me,
to carry you through

the rest of my days.

•••

Happy (woulda been) 94th birthday to my mother, Dorothy Haag,
whose NRG, as she’d predicted, is still with us.

You are the perennially left out,
the ignored, the tromped on,

some of the hardest working
among us. And it’s the us

I want to embrace today of all days,
the us of the we, the people,

whose feet and hands and backs
ache from the work you do for us,

to feed your families. Yesterday
one of you labored over my

pampered, old white lady feet,
delivering a calf massage

that left me boneless. Mine
were only one of how many

pairs of feet you hunched over
and cleaned and painted

with the precision of a surgeon
in just one day? And though

my tips always raise your
eyebrows in surprise, I leave

knowing that it is not enough.
It cannot make up for what

is being yanked out of your
aching hands. We do not pay you

or thank you or care for you,
the tired, the working poor,

nearly enough. And now
the unkindest among us

are making it harder for you
to make it. My “I’m sorry”s

do nothing. But I am,
especially on a holiday

that purports to celebrate
liberty and justice for all,

so, so sorry. You, who are
never them, who are us,

who are we, the people,
deserve so much better.

Though I wouldn’t mind supporting the local
carrier pigeon racing club or youth sports or
the Urban League, I don’t buy fireworks.

The pop and snap and sizzle startle me—
always have—which makes me like the dogs
who prefer to hide when all the boom-booms

commence. And yet, what I’d give to see my
thirty-something father filling a silvery garbage can
with water and hauling it to the street,

just in case, keeping the hose nearby, too,
while sidelining another empty can for
spent sparklers and piccolo petes

and other screamers that he would
set alight as we kids watched from
a respectful distance (me with my fingers

plugging my ears). I loved to see him
hold a Roman candle aloft like the Statue
of Liberty, its brilliant flame highlighting

his goofy smile. Firework after firework
until the end of the show when he would
distribute slender sparklers—as many

as we wanted—to any kid who’d wander by,
and watch us carve our cursive names into
the night over and over until the little wands

poofed out and we tossed them into
the can with all the other dead soldiers,
as my father called them. Only years later

did I realize that he, as a young infantryman
in Korea, certainly knew soldiers who
died, was almost one himself, as

the purple heart in his top dresser
drawer—the one he never talked about—
attested, proving beyond a doubt

his loyalty to the land of the free,
the home of the brave.

fine (fee-nay) noun: the place where a piece of music finishes;
“the end” in Italian

•••

The house is really theirs now,
the sign with our name replaced
by a new one with theirs,

which is as it should be,
as my sister and I want it to be.
We no longer have keys

to the house where we
grew up, where our
mother died, and that’s

as we want it to be,
passing this place on to
our beloved next generation.

But oh, seeing the sign
with their name backlit
by summer light

near sunset zings
the strings of my old
heart, tenderizes me

in places I hadn’t
expected. It’s fine,
more than fine,

this place of finishing,
this place of beginning.
These are happy tears,

I swear.

(In appreciation of East Lawn Cemetery, Sacramento, California)

The cemetery of my heart
is not unlike the one I walk through
as if it’s a lovely park, which it is—
large, undulating with greenness
and tall pines, not to mention
a vast field of well-scrubbed
tombstones.

Having once, on a previous walk,
met the man hired to buff them up,
I now take an interest in appreciating
his good work. The in-ground plaques
bronze up from the grass like gleaming
license plates, and when alone,
I stoop to read them, whisper
the embossed names so they are still
held in someone’s mouth.

In the cemetery of my heart, I do not
bring stuffed animals or poinsettias
or decorate the graves of the beloved.
I prefer them unadorned, letting their
spirits rise as they will to populate
the dream of us mere mortals.

I do not expect visitations, but
now and again, after I return home,
his long-gone, musky wood shavings-
and-wet-dog odor curls into my nostrils.

It prompts me to say, as he used to,
when he’d hear my voice on the phone,
There you are! Indeed, there he is,
securely tucked into the cemetery
of my heart where others have
come to join him.

Whether they make themselves
known or not, I trust that they’re
threading their way through my veins,
tiny beloved corpuscles powering
this being I think of as me,

breathing as I walk
the land of the previously
living, the perennially blessed.

Why Sunday I don’t know, but I swear
that’s when I hear them panting,
their little green tongues hanging out,

especially in summer, when I check on
each of them and carry them to the sink,
place them on the pink plastic mat,

murmuring as if to the cat or dog,
Here you go, pouring water gently
over the violets’ dry soil, loosening it,

noticing as the little monstera,
whose cousins grow huge in Hawaii,
nods a bit, or as the heart-shaped

succulent expands as if on an inhale.
I carry the large cup to the anthurium
in the dining room, pouring a gush

of water around its base like a sudden
swell of rain. And then it hits me
with the force of a flash flood:

We did this together, he and I,
watering the houseplants on a
weekend evening before bed,

standing before the sink,
passing a cup of fresh water
between us,

all of us living things feeling
more hydrated, more alive
in the routine of that

mundane moment
I’d give anything to have
back again.

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.