Güd wrtr

noun:
1. The quality of being true;
2. Something that is true: a universally accepted truth.

•••

A universally accepted truth,
much as amen means truly

or so be it. Which is the tricky
thing about faith—

not being able to prove truth
but having the quality of being

true. More truth-full, perhaps,
as in thou art with me,

you whom I cannot see
but who, when you lived

and walked and breathed,
were true to me, you loyal

and constant one. As you are yet,
a verity in my life—

you and you and you who have
vanished into mystery with

the gods and goddesses, the
angels and enlightened beings.

Can that be? Ah, yes. All of
you the forever faithful,

I still the beloved.
Truly. Amen.

Waiting for the hospice nurse to call back.

Waiting to see if Mom can sleep more than 40 minutes.
Waiting to see if the cramps ease up, the ones that feel
like labor pains, she says, though she hasn’t labored
for 64 years. Waiting to see if she vomits again.
Waiting as she empties, as she fills, as she empties,
as she unwinds this lifetime, as she comes apart.

Waiting for the hospice nurse to call back
in the house where our RN mom raised us.
I don’t remember the last dawn I saw here,
perhaps during college when I rose early
to make the commute to the big school
45 minutes away?

This second December dawn comes cold—
45 degrees on the thermometer outside
the kitchen window, where I stand at the sink
and watch the first car of the day curve up the hill
into the state park across the road,

where she and he used to drive the old Chevy
with boat trundling behind, two girls in tow,
bound for the lake that drew them here,
each taking turns steering us all across liquid
cobalt, our quartet skiing one at a time
into a summer’s evening.

I see us through the hazy almond veil of long ago,
a breezeless stillness, sandhill cranes chortling
to each other overhead, in the chill of waiting
for the hospice nurse to call. To make
a home visit. To bring something, please,
anything to help, to make it stop.

Nothing gold can stay.
—Robert Frost

How timely that you have
goldened in fall—

late fall at that—your
timing excellent

as leaf subsides to leaf,
each brightening day

a gift you dearly want
to unwrap. You are not

wanting winter. Neither
do we ever want the cold,

the waiting for warmth’s
return. But here we are,

you goldened, us with
you, holding Frost’s hardest

hue—as we are all held
with so much grace.

•••

(for Mom)

•••

Lines from “Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Robert Frost, published in his 1923 collection,
New Hampshire: A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes.

(for Mom)

Let her become salt water
rushing over sand, pulling, pushing,
energetic earth shaper, sculptor,

and let her heart take one great
last leap as the big ah-ha! seizes her,
the I-get-it moment, she who

dipped our baby feet in the sea,
who held us as we learned to trust
and float, who said Swim! and we did.

Let it come quick, like the brown
fox, the one that reliably jumped over
the lazy dog again and again

in typing class. Then let her climb onto
her big-tire’d blue bike with a good
book in the basket, and shove off

into the breeze of mystery,
pedaling hard, grinning as she
heads into what comes next.

and turn again
as the path winds
under high fog,

under turning oaks,
leaves so recently green,
now goldening,

some with edges
tinged brown or
or dark-splotched—

the dark is coming—
but on this first day
of advent, each step

leading to new life,
I stop, look up at
the turning,

release what wants
releasing, even if I
can’t name it,

let my feet take
me to the center,
receive what wants

receiving and look up
into the light, the tune
alive in my head:

this little light of mine,
I’m gonna let it shine,
let it shine, let it shine,

let it shine

Let’s not forget to make things: bread, books, friends.
—Maya Stein, from “paper, scissors, glue”

•••

Wha’cha makin’ over there?
Flour and yeast for bread, sure.

Words and words and more words
for poems, for stories, of course.

Smiles and hugs and “wanna come
play?” for friends in the making.

Making friends is best of all.
You with me, me with you—

perhaps from paper, torn or cut,
decorated with colorful markers,

or brushes to dip into tiny pots
of solid pigments rendered soft

with water, just to play. And in
the playing, making happens,

nourishment for the heart,
uplift for the soul.

Small creations that turn out,
with time, to be treasures

treasured long after they
were made.

•••

(for all the friends in the long ago and the now)

My life, like a poem, is small and enormous.
—poet Maggie Smith

Enormous in that we all contain multitudes,
to paraphrase another poet,

contradictions, he mentioned, too,
as in living while dying,

or perhaps it’s the other way around,
as I walk in the open air

the day after the day of thanks,
continuously giving thanks,

as I do these days. I think of
Whitman celebrating humanity:

For every atom belonging to me
as good belongs to you.

Small, infinitesimal, the atoms,
the liminal moments of

in-between-ness, the half-awakeness
of trying to let sleep find me

in the house of my childhood,
dozing in the chair in the family

room near my mother, who
awakens every hour.

In the waning hours of this night,
of her long life, the veil is so thin

that each of us reaches through
to touch the mystery—

I and this mystery here we stand—

every breath a prayer of
gratitude, for this life,

for this time—even when
the body is not behaving as

it should, as it has. Even as
her exhaustion finds me,

I remind myself not to lose
the enormity of these moments,

of our shared atoms, these snippets
of grace that feel like a poem,

and to write them down.
Like this.

•••

Quoted lines from Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” from “Leaves of Grass” (1892 edition), a book published in 1855 that he kept editing and re-editing for the rest of his life.

(For the fam—those with us and not, living and not—with love and gratitude.)

Back in the day it was my mother
who, with her trusty Kodak, shot
the family pix for every Christmas

card—my sister and I posing in
some location she liked—until we
reached high school and began

directing our own photo shoots.
Then I picked up a camera
thanks to the boyfriend who

sold them at K-Mart in town,
and learned darkrooms
and newsrooms from college

to a major daily, later editing
photos for a magazine.
Not to mention picking up

a couple of nice photo guys
along the way. One of them
took our family photo today

on a carpet of fallen leaves,
our Thanksgiving meal waiting
to be served because the light

was finally right. And just
before that, the niece born
on my 29th birthday, now a

photography teacher, took
what she calls a cousin selfie,
a chunk of our fam together

in one place for a snapshot
of a moment—one of us
nearing the end, one of us

carrying new life due in
the spring, not to mention
so many departed loved ones

cramming into the frame,
no one knowing what’s
coming—but nonetheless

capturing this instant,
this precious now, which
poof! with the electronic

click of a simulated shutter,
grateful smiles all around,
is here and gone.

(for Mom)

When you get where you’re going—
and clearly there’s no way to know
where that might be, or even if there
is a where—we know that you’ll look
around and see who you might see.

Maybe you’ll have landed in an
eternal Sweet Adelines show
where everyone sings beautifully—
you and all kinds of ladies dolled up
in fringe and way too much rouge
and blue eye shadow.

With luck, you’ll find your favorite
chorus buddies there—Carolyn and
Gwen and Lil and Maddie, among
many others—and, without a thought,
you’ll fall into perfect harmony.

And, of course, we hope you might
find Father, bygones long gone,
just the love remaining, as with
your parents and sister.

And perhaps all the puppies and
kitties you raised and nurtured
and found homes for—some of them
at our house—will scamper to greet you,
along with your nursing school buddies
and high school friends and others you’ve
forgotten who’ve not forgotten you.

Maybe this is all fanciful human thinking,
like Julie who hoped she’d be assigned
to rainbow duty. Maybe you who dreamed
of star travel will become so many points
of light, energy zinging around the universe,
back to our elemental origins, what we were
before we were us.

No way to know, of course. But drop us
a postcard, or the universal equivalent,
once you’re bouncing around in mystery,
will you? We’d love to hear about
the view from your side.

Here on ours we’ll remember
you, think of so much we wish
we’d asked, eyes moistening every
time that we hear that other Dorothy
sing the song that brought technicolor
into your young world—

you over the rainbow at last,
you beaming in every time
that full spectrum arc
lights the sky.

(Hanalei pier, Hanalei, Kauai)

He stands like an old hand
at this, the slender whip of a rod
extended off the end of the pier,

a couple of weights keeping
the line taut, and, as we watch,
this 10-year-old from Utah

catches fish after fish. Small
fry flagtails shimmer silvery
when he holds up one wiggler.

When I ask what he plans
to do with fish Hawaiians
call aholehole, he produces

a longer line, a bigger hook:
String ’em together and
Catch a bigger fish!

Ah, they’re bait then,
I venture, and he grins.
Yeah!

I feel sorry for the deaths
of so many aholehole
until I read later that locals

catch and fry them whole
in hot oil with salt, pepper
and garlic, and I want

to race back to the pier
and report this to the young
fisherman from Utah.

I’m sure he’s gone by now,
as is my older fisherman
who vanished long ago.

But I saw a bit of him today
in the boy with his silvery haul
gleaming in an orange

plastic bucket, delighted
in the catching, deftly
removing the barb

in each mouth. And I
hear my fisherman who
happily fried up many

a fish whisper, Good eatin’
there, Toots, as the fishing
boy rebaits his line

and drops it into a
glistening turquoise
sea.

•••

aholehole (ah-hole-ay-hole-ay): the Hawaiian name for flagtail fish