Güd wrtr

Two days after we fall back,
my little atomic clock by the bed has not,
stubbornly clinging to the saving
time that yields more light.

I have to set it on the windowsill
as it waits—like E.T.—scanning the skies
for the right craft to wander overhead
and connect. Then it will change.

If I try to force it back an hour,
it revolts, shifts back to the time
it’s known for six months,
reluctant to shove into the darkening,
these two months leading to
the winter solstice—

after which, we, like the sky,
begin to brighten a bit
more each day.

Well, Lord a’mighty/Great Spirit/
The Is/Universal What’s-it/

whatever/whoever you are—
I sure hope so.

The when is what makes mortals like me
itchy with impatience—

when will it all be revealed? If it’s at
the very end, in our final moments

between slipping from here to there—
wherever there is—what good does

that do us in these flimsy human
lifetimes? Wouldn’t a great ta-da!,

the pulling open of the curtain be more
helpful in the—oh, I don’t know—now?

Any information not covered in the
instruction book (which went AWOL

a long time ago, by the way) could perhaps
answer the big questions like,

How does the stoplight know to turn red
just as you approach? And what kind

of miracle keeps hummingbirds’ wings
beating 70 times a second?

That purpose of life stuff? Easy:
We’re here to live and grow in love.

(That, and flush, which might turn out
to be the best advice ever.)

What I want to know is how to
comprehend the incomprehensible—

how to, say, describe the color of a particular
sunset, given that each one is unique?

Like pebbles. Or grains of sand. Or,
for that matter, you and you and you,

who are not unlike, say, me, no matter
how some insist that we’re so far apart.

How to define the surprise of kindness
that washes over us like soft rain,

or the blessing of love bestowed or
the devastation of it withdrawn?

Or a moment in time after which
nothing may ever be the same?

Or quantify the joy that leaps at us just
before a child does, delighted by our presence?

How are we granted these eyeblink
lifetimes with a banquet of possibilities—

the good, the bad, the beyond-belief ugly—
spread out before us, and not remember

to close our eyes and say,
thankyouthankyouthankyou,

a hundred times every day we’re granted
on this incredible gift of a planet?

…punctured by a holiness that exists inside everything.
—Mark Nepo, from “Adrift”

Just now. That moment. The one where you
stepped away from the has to to give in

to the want to, when you got up from your
chair and went to the kitchen, and, instead

of refilling your cup, you put your hand
on the cool knob of the back door and turned.

Like Dorothy, you stepped into a technicolor
world, and that—that moment—was when

you were wholly whole. The moment now
when you’ve realized it—that’s holy.

Dear God, you think, let me hold onto that.
And you do, for an instant, before it—

like a hummingbird who has whirred
close to you, like every other holy moment—

that flits away
as it’s supposed to.

Leaves turn slowly in my neck of the woods,
which are not woods at all, but the streets
of the Capital City I call home,

which makes walking these days so colorful.
In parts more northerly and easterly
their autumn display has already peacocked

its way through the trees, but here it’s just
beginning. Every year, I find myself looking down
at my feet scuffing through leaf litter

that feels like treasure. Though we are far from
New England fall, geographically speaking,
our miniature version nonetheless provides

so much joy. Now I’m daydreaming
folks out with rakes, assembling leaf piles,
whether for the great claw to come along

and scoop up or to leave in a grassy place,
a decomposing pyramid of detritus-to-be,
just waiting for someone—

perhaps a small someone—to stand
back a ways, take a good running leap,
and jump in.

Let me say goodbye today.
Let me wish you well on your journey

before I get all teary and full of
would coulda shouldas

as we do when people we love
suddenly shove off for any

number of reasons. Or people
we don’t love in particular,

some we perhaps don’t know
well but we see often enough

that they feel like semi-
permanent fixtures in our

current existence. The older
Asian man at the gas station

who routinely bows when he
accepts my cash from behind

the counter. Susan, who cuts my
hair, or Eric, the pedicure guy,

who gives the best foot and
calf massage. The young woman

whose name I don’t know who
bags my groceries with engineer-

like precision. Former students,
thousands of them, whose names

have fled, but whose faces, some
of them, I recall—you in that seat

over there—who listened and wrote
things that I read and graded.

I hope I was kind. This human or
that one I pass on a walk,

especially the ones pushing
strollers with tiny mammals

inside, or those walking dogs,
sometimes equally tiny mammals,

often larger ones. I appreciate
the smiles, the wags. We are all

heading down the same path.
No one gets out alive. We’re

not meant to. But should you
head off into mystery before

I do, whether or not I remember
your name, let me say that

sharing this space with you—
one of the fixed stars in my

daily orbit—has been a gift,
whether I was bright enough

to recognize it or not.
So let me say goodbye.

Let me say thank you.

•••

For All Souls day, thinking of all the souls of our
companion spirits, the dear departed.

I don’t like to, but…
Oh, why not?

But first I gotta math,
and I don’t math,
so what’s 356 times 2?

I calculator, though,
so… 712?

That’s, well, not
nearly as many as
some poets who’ve
put up their verses
daily for many years.

But as of today, this is
my 713th daily poem.
Two years!

And as another
everyday poet I greatly
admire says,

They don’t have to be good.
They just have to be done.

And if you think they’re
not good enough,
lower your standards.

It’s the practice that counts,
the not holding back,
just lettin’ ’em emerge,
not thinking about anything

but getting the words
on the page before they fly off,
as they can so easily do,
into some other

lucky poet’s head.

•••

Thanks to Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer for her terrific example of her
many years of daily poems and the encouragement to others like me.

For Sweet Adelines, it’s all about
the show, and there they are,
the whole chorus, every woman
costumed for Halloween,

singing their hearts out, Mom
in her witch’s hat pointing
skyward, her plastic crooked nose
hanging from black glassless frames.

Kiss today goodbye,
the sweetness and the sorrow.
Wish me luck, the same to you,
but I can’t regret what I did for love…

She cannot stand unaided, her
hands on the walker’s rubber grips,
eyes forward, seeing so little,
but singing her heart out:

Look, my eyes are dry—
the gift was ours to borrow.
It’s as if we always knew, and
I won’t forget what I did for love…

She sang at three performances
last week, blending her baritone
with other women who feel like
like family—barbershoppers all,

harmonizing the world with a song,
ringing chords with such heart
it makes me weep halfway across
the large room. She lives for this.

Gone—
love is never gone,
As we travel on,
love’s what we’ll remember…

As long as she’s singing, she’s here,
enveloped by those who’ve slipped
into that great chorus in the heavens,
dear faces she envisions, voices she

still hears from the days when she
stood shoulder to shoulder with
her dearest friends who together
harmonized the world with a song.

Kiss today goodbye,
and point me toward tomorrow…

No matter how many tomorrows,
each day quickly turning into
another yesterday, may she join
them in song here or there.

Love’s what we’ll remember, indeed.

You, more recently in my life,
never knew him, but let me
show him to you:

Here he is, dark hair shot with
early white, hunching slightly
over the kitchen counter,
chopping onions, carrots,
something, making things,
making food. For me.

There he is—well, his long legs—
sticking out from under
the old Porsche he’s restoring,
and when I ask if he’d like
a sandwich, he says no,
“But a beer would be great.”

He makes his own, though he’s
an equal-opportunity kinda
guy. Any beer will do.

“Hang onto it,” he says.
“I’ll be done here in a bit.”

And I wait to see him slide out
feet first on the roll-y thingie
he uses under cars, the former
Coast Guard mechanic, forever
tinkering,

if not with an engine,
then at the table saw
figuring out how to make
the Arts and Crafts-style
recliner he saw in a catalog,

or lugging home grapes
in autumn, ready for mashing,
for fermenting, for wine to come,
or boiling hops on the kitchen
stove, the aroma filling the
whole house.

My heart still sees him there.

We know that the timeline of grief,
of each mourning for specific beloveds,
does not fit on a graph or chart, certainly
is not linear. And, after all this time,
it is far from fresh, his absence.

But you didn’t get a chance to know him.
You would’ve liked him, I think.

There he is now—kneeling by
the mower in the back yard,
tinkering, checking, raising his
head to find me across the grass,
flashing his wide grin,

as happy to see me
as I am him.

•••

Today is the 40^th anniversary of Cliff Polland’s “valve job,” as he called it, the replacement of his aortic valve, which gave him another 17 years of life.

She who made us two,
we are now three
of the four who used to be.

He, gone these two decades,
who taught her to skim over water
on first two, then one, ski,

and, after we came along,
they put us in the boat
he made with his father

and, after nudging us through
every Red Cross swimming level,
put us on skis behind the boat, too.

His boat still sits in the garage,
which we all still think of as
his, waiting.

One day, we two will put
that boat in that lake
across the road from

the house where they
raised us, and one last time
we will put the two of them

together in the water
that baptized us all.
Amen.

on to the next
in to the breach
unto the horizon
just out of reach

over to the side
in view of the sea
nearby lies you
next to lies me

between or betwixt
because of, you say
under or over
apart from the fray

during & after
alongside we go
amid all the laughter
around, to & fro

before you, just me
after you, we two
until the end, even beyond
together we do

•••

Remembering that a preposition, as some folks like to say, is anything a cat can do,
they’re also little connecting words that show direction, usually used before a noun or
pronoun. You’ll find a lot of them in this poem because I love me some prepositions!
Once a grammar teacher…