Güd wrtr

You may have to break
your heart, but it isn’t nothing
to know even one moment alive.

from “Any Common Desolation,” Ellen Bass

•••

Looking at the baby on her 11th day in the world,
you think, as everyone does, looking at such
pink perfection: Perfect.

Because she is. You don’t want to let your wayward
mind rampage into the what ifs or the inevitable
sorrows that come with having a heart,

so you land on one word: Alive. What a thing to be
made of egg and sperm, to be carried inside another
human for nine months, to emerge, to live a life.

Maybe because you’ve recently watched your own
mother dwindle to her end, listened to her final
breaths, that you now study the tiny nose

on this new one and wonder, not for the first time
about an infant, how does she breathe out of that
tiny thing? You keep adjusting the blanket

she burrows into like a newborn koala, hoping
this bald jellybean is getting enough oxygen, when,
a dozen days ago she wasn’t breathing air at all.

Her little heart will break one day, and you
so want that never to happen, but you know that
it is what these lifetimes hold, whether

we break our own or someone does it for us,
often unintentionally. Your own mother surely
did not mean to break your heart. But still.

You think, again, not for the first time: It is so
something to be born into a body, into aliveness.
It is so not nothing.

Even with the heartbreak, just being here
might be the biggest something
of all.

Spring mornings I like to step outside,
look up at the trellis over the driveway,
admire the lavender clusters of wisteria
hanging like ornaments of spring,
fleeting as they are.

The delicate petals have fallen
on the windshield of my late mother’s car,
the tiny cups gleaming like bleached
shell fragments on dark sand.

I attempt to capture the image on the device
in my pocket, catching myself in the reflection,
along with leaves above that can no longer
restrain themselves, enthusiastically
joining blossoms that, within days,
will become memory.

As does spring every year.
As do the reflections of those
no longer embodied
shining up at me.

And as I close my eyes, inhaling deeply,
their echoes resonate into this breath,
and the next, and the next.

Instead of hoisting a sign with millions of others,
we drove into the foothills to hang paintings
that had belonged to a dearly departed beloved
for her daughter, to spend time
in remembrance.

We waved at those holding signs on corners
in the small towns along the way, cheered on
those standing shoulder to shoulder
atop overpasses.

Instead of gathering with thousands
outside our state’s Capitol, that day
we also delivered homemade custard
to another beloved in the hospital,
a tiny thing for sure.

But we can do no great things,
as Mother Teresa said.
We can only do small things
with great love.

So we did. And so we do.

Dear Mrs. Lester,

You will be happy to know, I think,
in these months of greening that we
mortals think of as spring, that your dear
daughter—the child you produced primarily,
or so I imagined, to become my best friend,
the girl next door—sent me home with five
of your houseplants that she has been
tending since you passed into mystery.

That daughter has had, as you surely see
from your vantage point, much to do
in the wake of your departure, and besides,
she has a kitty who likes to eat houseplants,
and, as you also know, having raised
a veterinarian and worked for some, too,
much of the greenery we love is not good
for kitties.

So I—the girl next-door, one of your troop
of Girl Scouts, a kid who found refuge at your house,
to whom you fed tuna and noodles, the greatest
food discovery of my young life—volunteered
to provide a home for these orphans.

You were, after all, the person who taught
your daughter, who then taught me, to identify
the first sprigs of wild radish on the hills
by the lake that bordered our neighborhood
and our lives.

From you, we learned about yellow poofs
of wild mustard, the tall, stately purple lupine
and, best of all, the brodiaea more commonly
known as blue dicks rising high on their
slender wands, topped with clusters of tiny
lavender flowers—often the first to bloom,
the first to disappear.

Every spring when I see these familiar friends
beaming in unexpected places—near poppies
and vetch and so many other growing things
whose names I have yet to learn—I think of you.

As I will when I find the just-right places
around my house for your plants.
I promise—Girl Scout’s honor—to faithfully
water them and look up their names,
though I will always consider them yours.

With gratitude and love,

Jan

It’s not about Sunday
or any day, really,
it seems to me, one

spectacularly unqualified
to postulate on such
divine matters.

Nowadays I find the sacred
in the everydayness
of every day,

in simple acts of
contemplation as we
move through our days,

looking at the world
with wisdom and
wonder,

as in the archaic sacre,
to consecrate, to make
something an object

of honor. Like the Sunday
I noticed the miniature
crimson daisies

beaming under spring
sun at the old cat, who,
nearing her end,

sat quietly, gazing
into them, as if they
had much to say to her,

and her to them,
which, of course,
they did.

Even now that
she’s gone,
they still do.

You were born with wings.
You are not meant for crawling, so don’t.
You have wings.
Learn to use them and fly.

—Rumi

First, we have to land in these bodies.
We think we landed ages ago, at birth,

but really, we often fight this incarnation thing,
as humans seem to do. We want to be here,

but we don’t. We don’t want to die, but we do.
Is a puzzlement, as the Rodgers and Hammerstein

song goes. So to survive we must find ways to
land healthily, kindly, thoughtfully in the frame

we were given. We must give up disparaging ideas
about this garage for our souls—yours is fine.

So’s mine. Better than fine, this fuselage that
supports our parts and carries us through life.

We must learn to speak nicely to it, treat it
and our other parts kindly, especially ones that

yammer at us, frustrate us, pain us. So yes,
let’s get quiet and let the belly go soft, and

the breath, too, perhaps go outside on a day
like, say, today, when the world is ripe with

green and spring springing. Maybe put on
shoes, if we can, and walk in our corner

of the earth. And if not, to sit in sunshine,
if we can find it—and here’s a tip: We can

always find it, even on the rainiest, snowiest,
cloudiest of days. We close our eyes and find

ourselves high above the clouds, as we do
when we fly—in planes or with our own wings—

where there is always sun or clear dark,
where there the forever sky stretches beyond

this blue marble of a planet that is ours
for the duration, which is as long as we

are fortunate to live in these sturdy,
fragile, remarkable bodies, the very things

that make us humans so imperfectly perfect.

•••

With thanks to my wise woman friend / Amherst Writers
& Artists facilitator Holly Holt for the prompt.

(for Rosie)

Would mean that you, hatchling,
would have pecked your way our
of your shell and emerged,

wet and wondering, into a warming
world, into a flush of green fluttering
its leafy fingers, shielding you

as you grow. It would mean that
you know this thing humans call
spring from your perch

on high, with parents bringing
wiggly worms and bugs to feed you,
keep you safe in the nest

they constructed just for you
until it is time to leave,
to use those wings

with which you were born,
the ones you’re barely aware of,
the ones you will stretch

and flutter like the leaves,
practicing, until the moment
you find yourself plunging

into nothingness called air,
until lift finds you, you being
of flight, of glide, of landing

and taking off again, you, baby bird,
which is what it is to be born
into spring with wings.

•••

With thanks to Ellen Rowland for the prompt and the link
to this incredible dance by the I Am Force dance troupe
(choreography by director Chehon Wespi-Tschopp)
to this Max Richter’s interpretation of Vivaldi:
“Four Seasons Reimagined: Spring.”

(for Margery Thompson)

I first made your mother’s custards
for your mother some 26 years ago
in her last year of her life—

her faithful recipe neatly inked
onto the 3×5 card that you gave me
after she died. Easy, you said.

I, one of the cooking impaired,
asked my best friend how to scald
the milk, which is when she—

a good cook herself—delivered
one of her funniest lines:
How do you feed yourself?

Not with scalded milk, I retorted.
You patiently explained the simple
process, and I delightedly presented

my first custards in your mother’s
1950s milk-colored Pyrex cups to her,
which she praised as if I had brought

her Baked Alaska (what alchemy
it must take to bake ice cream!).
Her eyes closed as the first spoonful

reached her mouth—just as yours
did today when I delivered a pink cup
of custard to you in the hospital,

the very definition of comfort food
from your mama through me to you,
her adored daughter, who has

fed me and friends and family for
decades, who has taught me more
than a thing or two about food.

And as I stood next to you of little
appetite, watching your face fold into
into contentment as you savored

every bit of custard, spooned the
little pink bowl clean, I confessed
my haphazard application of

cinnamon on top. In between bites,
you, my cooking coach, gently suggested
how to avoid clumping the next time,

which made us both grin, knowing
how eager I was to head back
to the kitchen and give it a try.

Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors,
there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night.

—Rainer Maria Rilke, from “Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke”

•••

If they were cars, they’d be pulled over for doing
60 in a 25 mph zone, these arrest-me-red flowers
ablaze with show-offy cheeriness. They pop up
with look-at-me-look-at-me insouciance, like
a pretty girl in a fuchsia frock at the dance,

and you want to hate their cheekiness,
their unearned confidence, but really.
How can you ignore their reckless blooming?
How can you not stop, bend and reach
out a hand, tell them how gorgeous they are,

flash your own lovely smile back at them?

(for Popoki)

There was rain in the night
just before dawn when I tiptoed
into the kitchen to peek at her
sleeping in the cardboard box
she had chosen near the back door.

I had lined it with towels easily
laundered, now that accidents often
happened, and there she lay,
a perfect kitty spiral, her tail
hugging the circumference of her
skinny self, not awakening as usual
when she heard my footsteps.

I have known for a good year that
two of the important females in my life
were on their way into mystery—
my mother, a too-thin version of herself,
who went in December, and Poki,
who had been losing weight
but eating like a horse.

For some time I had a feeling about
what was ailing her, but because she’d
long been the cat-turned-tiger at the vet’s,
I was reluctant to subject them to her
understandable outrage at such indignities
as being poked and prodded
in places no cat wants to be.

For years a now-retired veterinarian
had treated Poki at home, this easygoing
cat who never failed to use the litter box
properly, which she recently started
overshooting and leaking wherever she sat—
a sign I recognized.

I’ve done this a lot—
seen the two- and four-footed beloveds
to their ends—but I never want to
make the call. Though I do.

After the rain washed the sky clean
and the sun emerged, I let Poki out
to stroll the driveway for a last look
around her queendom. She sat and
closed her leaky eyes, basking as she
has done for sixteen years, as my
own filled, too, both of us
soaking up so much spring,

Then I tucked her unprotesting self
into the soft carrier and took her to a kind
veterinarian born and raised on Maui
who instantly understood—Popoki,
the Hawaiian word for cat—

and together we sent her off
with our aloha and the lyrics
by a Hawaiian queen in our heads:

One fond embrace
A ho’i a’e au
Until we meet again.

•••

Mahalo nui loa to Dr. Kourtney Kaya Lee (the Maui girl-now-Sacramento-veterinarian)
for so kindly ushering Poki into mystery, along with the always kind staff at Sacramento
Animal Hospital. I appreciate your terrific care of my animals over the decades.