Güd wrtr

I will hold to my heart the sight of a young man
with a garden hose on his late grandmother’s patio,

aiming a clear stream of water at his late grandfather’s
ski boat, which, ages ago, he drove across the lake

we thought of as ours, pulling our mother out of
the water on her single ski, then my sister,

a blonde streak who zipped across the wake like
an old pro in her first decade of life, and me,

slower to rise, a bit tentative, until I felt the wind
whipping my hair and the water bumping beneath

me, the closest I’ve ever come to flight. And by golly,
if that young man as a toddler wasn’t a sweet copy

of his grandfather, the boater, the skier, and even
now takes a similar stance as he washes down

the vintage ski boat that’s still got a lot of life in her,
as he and his lovely wife make plans to move

into the house where his mother and I were raised,
bringing new energy to the place, infusing it with joy.

And yes, he will take his grandfather’s boat out
on our lake again, the old man, I’m sure,

riding along, beaming with pride.

The term for a series of regular curves
in a river’s channel is a meander,

created when a river erodes the outer bank
and deposits sediment on the inner bank,

a natural building up and breaking down,
defining the edges of ricefieldswheatfields

tomatofieldsalfalfafieldsalmondorchards
walnutorchardspearorchardspeachorchards,

grateful recipients of the bounty of the great
Sacramento River and its tributaries

winding around and cutting through some
two million acres of farmland, not to mention

serving as homewaters for hundreds of species
of fish, which do a fair meander themselves,

Chinooksalmonrainbowtroutstripedbass
whitesturgeonAmericanshadsteelheadtrout.

The word itself comes from the Maiandros,
a river in Turkey that winds and wanders,

as rivers do, going about from place to place
without plan or purpose. Like this poem

meandering, as, in deep midwinter, I propel
myself back into summer, my feet rambling

a riverside path, eyes skyward, imagining what
the snaking waterway rimmed with trees

must look like to the hawk circling the blue,
taking in the meager humans so far below—

wingless, grounded, flightless.

While you are trying to work, by which, I mean type at a computer
because the poem is coming, and your mews has the idea that she needs
to be Right There, Right Now, which she never used to insist upon. For years
she rarely sat on your lap, but now Poki, skinny and bony, still nimbly jumps
into your lap as you type, watching your fingers with the same stare she’d
fire into the backyard ivy, hoping for rodentia to make a fatal move. She
comes to lie on you when you lie in bed, fitting her dainty self behind
a curled leg, which makes you smile. And now you’ve brought home
your just-departed mother’s Big Guy Cat who, though Poki hisses at him,
joins the two of you on the big bed—a respectful distance from the lady
of the house—so you again have a couple of felines who want to be On You,
which is endearing in winter, stifling in summer. And oh, here she is again,
back on your lap, just in time for you to reach over her perky ears to type
as she nudges your right hand for a pat. Because what’s more important
than patting the kitty? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Amen.

I found a stash of your rose quartz hearts
in the top drawer of what had once
been my childhood dresser.

You, like me, a collector of stones,
perhaps using them in your healing work.
Me carrying cool talismans in my pockets

along with smooth pieces of shells and
heart-shaped coral from warm ocean beaches.
After you died, I poured all those hearts

onto my dining room table, imagined you
giving them to clients who came to what
had been my bedroom where you’d

have them lie on the massage table
and hold your hands over them,
offering the energy of the universe

to pass through you. I wonder now—
did any of that benevolence adhere to
the cracks in your broken heart?

Did those lovely pieces of quartz
help what needed healing in you?
And was it no accident that I found

your leftover hearts, opening my own
tender chakra as I palmed each one?
That the unconditional love I

sought for so long had been sitting
in my childhood bedroom for years,
waiting for me to find it?

Now comes the resting
as the spiritual and corporeal worlds
come together beneath the big tree
of stillness and silence.

The boundary between worlds
has fallen away, dark and light
holding hands, and, in this interlude,
you easily slip into the then.

You may pause here for a while,
preparing to resume the everyday,
but this, too, is a gift of the passage,
this flickering hollow through time

when you, like the one who has
moved on, are held in the thin place
between heaven and earth,
between here and gone.

The once-upon-a-time, the long-ago-but-not-forgotten.
The one who taught me how to kiss and sing harmony to his melody
as he played the guitar. The one who really taught me how to kiss
and quite a bit more, and whose young man muskiness lingered
in his sheets, the ones I couldn’t wait to return to. The one who
taught me to juggle because he had to learn as a theater major
before he ran away with a circus. The ones who taught me
to process film and print photos in a red-tinged darkroom.
(And a bit more in the dark rooms, too.) The one who taught me
how to catch a softball, which my father tried to do, but could not—
though he did teach me how to jack up a car and change a tire.
The one who loved me on an inflatable raft in a river.
The one who taught me never to leave a clear glass in the sink
when your boyfriend is visually impaired, and to always, always,
replace the cap on the toothpaste. The one who married me.
The one who takes me to Hawaii and the California coast
because he knows how much I love ocean, and buys me
my favorite socks and feeds my cats when I ask, and
feeds me, feeds me, feeds me, all of which are ways
Guys Say They Love You. And oh, the one who, in third grade,
was not a proper boyfriend but was the first boy I fell in love with
after he pointed out the stain on the back of my dress
and gave me his cardigan, saying, “Maybe you could
tie this around you,” so the stain wouldn’t show.
The ones whom I have not properly thanked. Until now.
Thank you, my dear, good men. Amen.

•••

(Especially to the one who died six years ago today and who came back
and who walks with me still, Dickie Dean, the one who has my heart
for all time.)

Oak trees arcing to the sky. Little girls learning to climb them.
No sidewalks to roller skate on. Across the road a path leading
to the big lake called Folsom made from a river called American.
Our swimming spot: Granite Bay. Fool’s gold embedded in rock,
loose in the sand, perfect for pocketing. The wooden motorboat
that Dad and Grandpa made from a kit. Tucked into its bow
two big skis and two little skis. A red flag on a stick to hold up
while a skier waits in the water. Flying across liquid cobalt
on two skis. Then on one. New best friend next door. Following
her down the path for a little explore. “Training” Fluffy’s kittens
to use the cat box. Playing with Sherry’s puppies in the back yard.
Climbing my favorite tree next to the playhouse. Settling with
notebook and pencil into the cradle of trunk and two long-armed
branches. Looking around. Listening for birds. Waiting.
Writing down what comes.

Life is grace. Sleep is forgiveness. The night absolves.
Darkness wipes the slate clean, not spotless to be sure,
but clean enough for another day’s chalking.

—Frederick Buechner, “The Alphabet of Grace“

•••

What if, overnight, someone leaves
some big, fat sticks of chalk in pastel
pink and blue and green on your porch,

and, as the darkness lifts, you find them,
along with a washed-clean sidewalk
in front of your house? Everything

has been forgiven as you’ve slept.
You get to start over with every dawn.
How can you resist? You pick up

your little bucket of color and go
to that fresh slate. And, though you
have no idea what you’ll draw,

you apply some blue, then pink,
then surround it with green,
and soon you’re awash in hues

glowing, intensifying every minute.
Touch your toes. Twirl.
You made that. Stand back.

Admire what showed up,
aware that it may disappear
with the night. Then you can

make it anew tomorrow
and tomorrow and tomorrow.
Like life. Again. Again.

Lucky, lucky you.

First, no one in the throes of devastation
knows how to do this. Stand amid the ash,
the blown-apart detritus of your life and cry.
Sob hard. You must empty the contents of your soul
onto the ground where you once lived and loved,
where your grandparents once lived and loved,
where your parents did, too. Where you made
a home/children/pets/family. Wail. Swear.
Collapse into the ash of what was. No way
to know what will come. How you go on.
Just the tiniest glint out of the corner
of a teary eye that somehow you will.

Allow for the unfolding of something you
can’t see. Don’t call it faith. Don’t call it hope.
Certainly don’t call it love, though it might
arrive as the offering of a stranger’s hand,
attached to one who brings a blanket,
a warm cup of comfort, who sits with you
and says, Tell me about it.

And you do. The story gushing like water
from the hoses that didn’t arrive in time,
like flames rising. Tell it all, especially
the ugly parts. Cry more. Wallow.
Don’t be your strongest self.

And then, drawing a deep, new breath, stand.
One foot moves. Then the other. Then the
first foot. Then the second. And there you are
walking away, yes, but also walking toward
what you cannot see under an umbrella of blue.
The smoke is clearing. Inhale deeply.
This is what starting over looks like.

•••

(With thanks to our dear friend and amazing photojournalist
Genaro Molina for the use of this striking photo.)

The ones who have vanished
or seem to have. Or I love
those who are easy to love—
often the four-footed, furry ones
who seem to adore us for
no good reason.

I often love best the words that
others have put on the page more
than my own. Especially when
they read them to me, and I
fall hard for them as if they
were a longed-for crush
fondly holding out a hand.

Often I love you best, and I’ll
think this as you tell me a story
over a dinner of leftovers that
you’ve warmed up and served
as if you’d labored long over
oven and stove and made it
specially for me.

But I don’t say so because
you’re in mid-story, and I know
that I tend to interrupt,
impatient to hear details
that you’re not ready to give
or that you might not have.

And so I watch you speak,
remember to drink in the color
of your eyes and the way they
crinkle at the corners, smile
at your hair that’s at that
just-right stage between
haircuts I give you in
my backyard.

And I think how I do, in fact,
love you best and most,
even if I forget to tell you,
trying as I am to absorb
every word of this utterly
ordinary moment that—
though I may one day
want it to—
will never come again.