Güd wrtr

(for Donna)

Second from the left wall,
separated from my sister’s by a sink,
hers always so much tidier than mine.

Lately, in emptying those drawers,
she has pulled out the snarl of yarn bits
and hair ribbons and released them

into their hereafter, along with other stuff
I must have ignored when I left that house
in 1979, about to be a senior in college,

far more preoccupied with moving into
my first apartment and my duties as editor
of the college newspaper, certain that I’d

never live in that house again. And I didn’t.
Now, with our mother gone, my sister and I
tug the roots of our family tree from

every cupboard, every drawer, each one
a time capsule that elicits groans and smiles,
saddened and charmed in the remembering.

Here’s my pink hand mirror with its
girly flowers on one side, dusty but still
serviceable. And here’s an assortment

of barrettes, my favorite the leather peace
symbol with a stick through it that I poked
through my unruly blonde hair. Here’s

my retainer, looking like a creepy
wire-and-plastic bug, and a fine-toothed
yellow comb. The faithful Mickey Mouse

nightlight—always have a nightlight
in the bathroom, our mother insisted,
as I do in mine to this day.

What’s not there, long gone, is the piece
of binder paper on which I painstakingly
printed the times tables, 2s through 12s,

once taped to the wall next to the toilet,
to help me memorize them. Not my idea,
but, my father said, What else do you have

to do while you’re sitting there?
My two-years-younger sister stitched
those sums into her mind far sooner

than I, who still can’t tell you what 6 x 12
amounts to. But, as I said way back then,
I can write you a poem. Isn’t that better?

We have the best conversations now that she’s dead.

She’s become a much better listener.

I talk to her when I am alone in her house
sorting through her things. I try not to say,
“Why do you have so many…?”

Because there are so many… of everything.

I don’t think of her as a hoarder
so much as an archivist, if not a thoughtful one.
She’d just shove things farther back in drawers
or cupboards and closets and forget them.

So now my sister and I dig through the archaeology
of our childhoods, unearthing treasures long forgotten.

“You kept these?” I ask my mother, as I finger
two pink plastic curlers rolling around like puppies
in one of the small drawers in what she called
“the girls’ bathroom.”

She does not respond, and I know the answer.

She did not so much keep them as forget about them,
and it turns out that finding these old bones,
trinkets of who we once were,

might just be the greatest delight in this untangling of a life.

Hey, Ma, you know who else died
the same day as you? You’re gonna love this:
Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston,

the woman incarcerated as a child at Manzanar
during World War II, the one who later wrote
“Farewell to Manzanar,” her memoir that you gave
me in high school, calling it a must-read.

So I did, devastated to learn that this little girl, all of 7,
and her nine siblings, their mother and grandmother,
were imprisoned for the crime of being Japanese in
wartime. Her father, a fisherman, was sent to military
prison for nine months before he, too, came to Manzanar,
a hastily assembled prison in California’s Mojave Desert,
where they were held for three years.

“That was wrong,” you said, and even Dad agreed,
the guy who’d fought in Korea and had the bad habit
of referring to one of our school friends as “that little
Jap girl” because he couldn’t remember her name.
You yelled at him more than once, “You can’t call her
that! She’s Carrie!” He eventually caught on.

Years later I got to introduce Ms. Houston when she
spoke at the college where I taught. You loved the story
of how I gave her pieces of broken dishes that I’d collected
at the Manzanar dump site, ones that said “Tepco” on them—
the same brand of old restaurant dishes that Cliff’s family
used, plates and cups that he brought to our marriage and
lived in his grandmother’s china cabinet in our dining room.

When I gave her the shards of dishes wrapped in a soft cloth,
Ms. Houston put her hand over her mouth. Little stars of
tears glistened in her eyes. Then she hugged me.

“I’m so sorry that happened to you,” I said, adding that
you’d given me her book and said that I had to read it,
and I did. And it so infused me that for years as a
journalist (she’d been a journalism major, too), I sought
out former internees to interview, moved by their stories
of survival, which some of them rarely shared.

She died at home, too, Ma, in Santa Cruz, the two of you
less than 200 miles apart, lifting off into whatever’s next.
And oh, how I hope that your two souls might’ve crossed
enroute, both of you in your 90s, both mothers of daughters,
both of you with stories to share.

The ones who stand there in ungodly weather—the rain, the sleet, the snow
of postal delivery folk, yes, but also amid the godawful heat and fumes
of all manner of heavy machinery spitting dirt and gravel and sand
and Lord knows what else. But they stand there in their hard hats and
orange vests and heavy work boots with walkie talkies and stop signs
on long sticks that they swivel to the side that says SLOW when it is time
for us to move along. And my fella and I cannot resist waving at them
as we drive by, and sometimes they wave back, and I hope that they
are well paid for what must be a boring but dangerous and important job—
like firefighters, like police people, like waitresses in rundown diners,
the ones who call you “hon”—though I bet they’re not. And some are,
indeed, flag babes with long braids flowing from under their hard hats,
and some are, indeed, fine looking fellows with handsome beards,
and some are regular Janes and Joes, and we drive by, noticing,
grateful that it’s our turn to proceed, never blaming them for
the waiting, whether long or blessedly brief. Because good heavens,
what a service, what a calling, pausing traffic for the safety
of those working on the surfaces on which we drive, another
kind of angel, too, thankyouverymuch. Amen.

If we could write one for her,
we might reach for a bouncy
beat, a major chord progression,

though in a slightly sultry tone,
because hers is the key signature
of joy. We could say that we

have gathered to listen, to put
our hands together in a rhythmic
prayer of gratitude, our palms

meeting as sound slips through
our fingers. We might add that
her voice twines around notes

arranged just so, breathing life
into the simplest do re mi
that she has taught so many.

So, do, la, fa, mi, do, re.*
(Sing it with me!)
So, do, la, ti, do, re, do.

Do, mi, mi.
Mi, so, so
Re, fa, fa.
La, ti, ti.

What a miracle, indeed:
When you know the notes to sing,
you can sing most anything.

And she does.
She so blessedly,
beautifully does.

Happy birthday, Shelley.

•••

In honor of my friend Shelley Burns—amazing jazz singer and exercise goddess—
for her birthday, Jan. 24, 2025.

*Bonus points if you recognize this series of notes from the song
“Do-Re-Mi” from “The Sound of Music.”

Can’t get enough I love yous,
sincerely delivered from ones
we adore, especially from
children or spouses,
dear friends, or the paw
and maybe a lick from
a favorite four-footed one.

Thanks is always nice, too,
and an I’m sorry from one
who had a thoughtless moment
does wonders.

But mostly we need to hear,
I mean you no harm, regardless
of where we hail from or our
skin color. We need to hear,
you’re safe, you can continue
to do your job, earn what you
need to support your family,
not feel threatened in any way
for simply being who you are
or whom you love.

We need kindness, not
threats. We need to be held
in light and with compassion,
as I hold you, wishing you well—
truly, I do, fellow human, you
traveling this path next to me.

Nice to meet you.
Let me give you a hand
along with a smile, maybe
sit for a bit. Tell me about you,
and I promise to listen with
a wide-open heart.

After a few more hours pulling books
topped with miniature dust bunnies off
her shelves and stuffing garbage bags full of
decades-old papersmagazinearticlesjournals
and lugging them to the driveway to heft into
my trunk a couple hours after sunset, I realize that
they are too hefty. One splits like a punctured
balloon, scattering a portion of what she’d read
and saved, top right corners creased, important
parts underlined or highlighted for reference,
meaning to come back to it later.

Something ruptures in me then, too—
everything disgorges in the dark—as I stand
stunned before I slowly begin to retrieve all
that has gone astray, weeping for the ending
that, for her, came too soon—for us, too late—
and I need to walk away from this detritus
of a life, just for a little bit.

So I let my feet steer me down the sharply
sloped driveway into the inky street and
look up into the night. I locate Orion’s slanting
belt high above the eastern treetops, thinking,
wait—the easiest of all constellations to identify
hangs high in the southern sky this time of year,
arrowing, as that belt does, toward bright
Sirius lower in the heavens.

Pulling from my pocket the magic device
with the nifty star app and pointing it skyward,
I realize that for most of my life I would’ve sworn
that this stretch of road and the parallel path
to the lake head east, toward the foothills
and beyond to the Sierra.

But, I discover, not so. When I’d stand
here a half century ago, cooling off after
doing battle with my mother or bidding
a boyfriend a tender goodnight,
I’d been looking south.

The reorientation stops my tears
as my eyes clear and my ears pick up
a small flotilla of geese overhead, calling,
as they do, turning all that sadness
into wonder, no matter the direction
of my gaze.

Whaddya mean, you didn’t know you were looking?
Of course, you’ve been looking. All your life you’ve
been looking.

It’s in freepin’ neon, for heaven’s sake.
Or someone’s sake. Maybe yours.

How should I know what it means? Angels don’t
know everything. It’s your sign. Let this be a sign
unto you. Maybe not a babe wrapped in swaddling
clothes… but those don’t come along every day.

And if it’s a burning bush, you may have another
problem. You might want to go look for a hose.

But not all signs are dramatic. Perhaps it’s
the tickle of breeze on your cheek as you emerge
from the car into the day, just as you begin the walk
to the store. Maybe it’s the smell of a long-gone
loved one as you walk in the door.

Doesn’t matter. It’s for you, this sign. All you need
to do is smile, hold it to your breaking-open heart
and breathe. Let it sing to you.

Then listen. Like this.

The holy disaster is a beckoning. Come.
Enter the fire of love and let it remake you
again and again.

—Mirabai Starr

I’m not looking for the sacred,
the holy, but it finds me unaware,
which is why, later, it occurs

to me that what shivered like
failure, tasted like disaster,
turns out to be an opening,

a beckoning toward the fire
that will anneal me, to first heat,
then cool me,

make me less brittle. In that
strengthening comes a softening,
a translucent spirit that

reshapes me in love, that nudges
me into humble forgiveness
of self. Come, whispers

the wintering sycamore,
naked for the moment. Stand
beneath me. Together we’ll

leaf into our newest selves,
offer shade to those who
think they’ve just happened

to walk by.

(ah-sin-duh-tin): The omission or absence of a conjunction between parts of a sentence.

(or why I love the word-a-day gems that arrive in my in-box)

•••

I learned the word long ago from a wicked good
grammar teacher in college who threw chalk at people

in class who had the temerity to answer incorrectly,
a fancy word that years later I tried not to throw

at my students like chalk because who needs that kind
of punctuation intimidation? No one, that’s who.

But having forgotten, I believe, a good fifty percent of what
I used to know and teach, when the word leaped into my

in-box, I thought, I know that word; it has something to do
with conjunctions—those nifty linking ands, buts, ors, nors.

I have not forgotten the editor I worked for who insisted
that it confused readers not to toss an and into a simple series.

And though I lobbed I came, I saw, I conquered (Caesar’s
perfectly lovely asyndeton) at her, she would not be moved.

I inserted an and in my sentence but read it silently without.
Sometimes intentional omissions smooth a repetitive rush—

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…—

even as they leave us breathless, a beating heart of rhythm,
a living thing that moves with determined intention:

…it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness,
it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…

And oh, how we need the hope, the light, the belief
amid the incredulity, the darkness, the despair.

Let us rise, even in the season of darkness,
always rise, into the light.

•••

(It was the best of times, it was the worst of times… and …it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity… lines are from the beginning of Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities.” )