Güd wrtr

Back in the pool shaped like
a champagne cork

at the beginning of a new year
in a place that’s usually summer-like

in winter, though this year cool
and rainy, the old souse of a desert

imbibing the liquid candy, doing
its best to soothe its parched self.

No matter. The pool is deserted,
the water warm under the gray

overhang far more welcoming
than the drenching storms we fled

500 miles north. After dark, I step
into friendly turquoise, my mother’s

favorite shade, later to sleep beside
a cone-shaped 1950s-style lamp

like the little lights she set on
each of her girls’ dressers.

I think of the ways her colors,
her mid-century era, live on here,

as I find her breast stroking
alongside me, both of us

at home in the old motions—
breathe, pull, kick, glide—

all the way to the deep end
and back.

(in memory of Captain Robert J. Schweitzer, U.S. Navy pilot,
who served from 1950–1974)

I did something today I haven’t done in years:
I stood, as requested by a speaker at an event,
and recited the pledge of allegiance

(trying to remember which hand crossed
my chest and where my heart is) at an
aircraft museum in the California desert.

I sat in the front row between my sweetheart
and a good friend who’d invited us,
waiting to see if they stood, hesitant to rise.

Like so many of my fellow Americans, part of
me feels that the flag of my country is no
longer mine, given that I and others like me

are considered enemies of the state, as
the current president refers to those of my ilk—
a progressive feminist Democratic poet

retired college journalism professor who
champions free speech and sees no reason
to ever ban a book or insist that women

must carry every fetus, intended or accidental,
into the world. In the end, I rose, too, feeling
the same get-with-it pressure I did as a kid

in sixth grade, compelled to recite the pledge
every morning before any education could
take place. Today the words choked out of me

along with tears for reasons I could not
have articulated in the moment. And later,
my eyes filled after my sweetheart,

himself a veteran, located the photo on the wall
paying tribute to American POWs—the husband
of my mother’s dear friend, a man we hadn’t met

but whose name we wore on metal bracelets,
my sister and I not quite understanding why,
who was released in 1973 after 1,896 days

in the infamous prison in Hanoi. A man who,
once home, lived nine months with his family
before dying behind the wheel of a car.

For him, I thought—and my father drafted and
sent to fight in Korea, along with so many others—
I stood and recited the long-buried words

that they must have said thousands of times
for their country.
And mine.

•••

We were moved to see this tribute to Robert J. Schweitzer
(one of 591 American prisoners of war repatriated in 1973)
on the wall honoring POWs at the Palm Springs Air Museum.

You can learn more about Captain Schweitzer’s career here.

(Palm Springs, California)

Descending the steps into the big hot pool
at the mid-mod condo in the winter-chilly desert,

I remember the baptism of these healing waters
two years ago, entering fevered and shivering,

only to have all symptoms of the Big Bad Bug
quelled at the end of that topsy-turvy time.

And tonight—having driven 500 miles south over
two days, hoping to bask under perennial sun,

instead meeting I-5 to splash over the Grapevine
to the 210 east to the 57 to the I-10 to the 111—

we feared that we wouldn’t land in time to collect
the key to our unit before closing, then discovered

that the key didn’t work in the gate and neither
did the four-digit code, only to be let in by a kind

but reluctant resident who balked at revealing
the correct code (“security breach, you know”)

till I wheedled it out of him. After all that, to eat
a simple, coffee-shop dinner across the street,

then hit the grocery store for milk and blueberries,
and—correct code seared into our shaky short-term

memories—retreating to our temporary abode
where we donned our suits, threw towels around

our necks, padding down the cactus-lined walkway,
and gently unlatched the (unlocked) gate to behold

the six-petaled turquoise pool, its steaming bubbles
beckoning under a night-before-full moon

meandering upward through a tall palm or three,
reminding us that all frustrations and aches

melt away in frothy water heated just right,
making every mile, every downpour worth it.

(driving south on Highway 99, New Year’s Day 2026)

I’m at the wheel, he’s riding shotgun,
shooting through the windshield
at the unfolding skyshow—

from swift-moving gray clouds
raining tiny pearl-sized drops
with tails wiggling up the glass

like overeager tadpoles,
then, swithin a couple of miles,
breaking into wide open blue,

the likes of which we’ve rarely
seen for months in our corner
of this vast central valley,

marshmallow fluffy cumulus
loping lazily overhead, sun so
bright we reach for our shades,

lower the visors, bless the
California climate for staging
such a variety show on a

New Year’s Day that earlier
soaked a Rose Parade for
the first time in 20 years

but leaves us natives agog
at the wonder of weather
marching by in perfect

formation, each floating
marvel worthy of our
most heartfelt applause.

•••

With thanks to the guy riding shotgun (aka Dick Schmidt)
for the photos and the title that prompted this poem.

Our very life here depends directly on continuous acts of beginning.
—John O’Donohue

It’s an invitation, an opening,
like so many that have been offered,
a portal into, yes, the uncharted,

but when has there ever been a beginning
that did not require a wee bit of daring?
Whether your heart is ready or not,

here it comes—the surprises, the possibiles,
no matter how much you resist them.
So dear one, listen:

Breathe deeply, exhale slowly,
and, with your whole, courageous,
far-from-small self,

take one shaky, trusting step
into the unknown,
and begin again.

Glittering under the final
sparse rays of a winter day

near the end of a year,
rising above it all helps change

our perspective on the place
we think of as home,

as the Nisenan have done
for thousands of years,

basking in golden light long
before this city began its life

in the rush to gold, bordered
by the spine of a river that

shares its name with this place—
something sacred, a mystery,

a solemn oath—this River of
the Most Holy Sacrament,

viewed from on high, moving fast,
ocean bound a hundred miles

downstream, the true home
from whence we all came

and where one day
we will all return.

•••

The Nisenan are a group of Native Americans and an Indigenous people
of California from the Yuba River and American River watersheds
in Northern California and the California Central Valley.

—Handbook of North American Indians

•••

(With thanks to Hector Amezcua, ace drone pilot and Sacramento Bee photographer,
for this stunning aerial photo of our fair city—looking west over Tower Bridge
and the Sacramento River into West Sacramento—at sunset on Dec. 27, 2025.)

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Wherever you go, there you go.
Thanks, best wishes and more

•••

These subject lines truly are from my in-box over the past couple of days. Maybe you’ve gotten some of these, too—or ones like them. Each one could be a writing prompt, if you’d like one!

Thank you for reading my poems and, when you feel moved to, liking them and commenting on them. I love every response and am grateful to you all as these daily poems have made their way into the world for the past three years and (about to be) two months.

As we used to say in the old typing-on-paper newspaper days of the previous century, “More TK.”

More to come.

Happy new year.

I completely understand.
I don’t want people knocking on my door
trying to sell me something either.

But listen, what I have for you
is something that you can’t pay for,
even if you wanted to.

I have for you a poem of the day,
though I understand from the wince
and the head shake that you

may consider yourself someone
who doesn’t like poetry,
who doesn’t get it,

who would rather listen to
a hundred leaf blowers in a
raucous symphony

than listen to a minstrel poet’s
humble offering on such a
glorious day. But bear with me.

It’s a love poem.
And here’s the secret:
They’re all love poems,

whether they seem to be about
the inconstant sun or the morphing moon,
whether they’re celebrating

a season or mourning the dearly
departed. And as another famous
foursome once poetically crooned,

Can’t buy me love
everybody tells me so
Can’t buy me love
No, no, no, no.

So here it is, a poetic offering
for you from your friendly
neighborhood poet

because we can all use a little
unsolicited love, can’t we?
Yes, yes, yes, yes.

•••

With great appreciation to The Beatles for “Can’t Buy Me Love,” here in a remastered
2015 version sounding as fresh as the day it was recorded.

When you paused for a poem
it could reshape the day
you had just been living.

—Naomi Shihab Nye
from “Every day as a wide field, every page”

•••

As you move about the place you call home,
lines come to you unbidden,
snippets of conversation remembered
or imagined as your soapy hands
massage the spoons,
rinse the morning’s cup.

Bits of a nursery rhyme your
grandmother recited to your little self
roll through as you pull wet clothes
from the washer, heft them into the dryer,
or, in good weather, pin them to the line
outside to flap like prayer flags
under a sunny breeze.

Lyrics from songs, some you haven’t heard,
much less sung, in ages, leap in the attic
of the mind where music lives
as you take up the rake, humming,
your shoulders embracing the swing
and the pull.

On a walk, at the grocery store,
allow the poetry of the everyday
to reshape it. Tune into the shoosh
of the last of the leaves crunchy underfoot.
Admire the winter citrus stacked just so
in the produce aisle—the oranges,
the lemony yellows, the particular
limey greens.

Pause. Lean in and inhale.
Let the lines come to you.

They might be yours.

The old muscles complain, we all say,
but they, as it happens, are among
the many things that need stretching,

especially at the end of a year that
has required our hearts to resist
the urge to contract as we witness

such hard-heartedness among those
we had hoped might find their
Grinch-y hearts expanding.

And so we must stretch and stretch
again to keep supple that which
tends to tense at news of such

hateful acts, such meanness. So
we extend a leg and bend, trying
to loosen the tight hips,

unkink the knotted muscles
caressing our spines, rise on our
toes to strengthen the calves,

and gently, so gently, tilt our
heads to one side and roll them
slowly, so slowly, listening

to the crackle-pops of our
loosening infrastructure,
hoping to release stuck spots,

sending deep exhales of
compassion into these bodies
of ours, and into the world

at large, with great helpings
of lovingkindness, our own
tiny bit of resistance.

•••

(for Shelley Burns and the exercising women with thanks and love)