Güd wrtr

I understand the need for some bucking up
in the dark times, the impulse to light candles
halfway between the winter solstice and
spring equinox—

the tradition of renewal in Candlemas
or Imbolc, as the seeds of spring begin
to stir in the belly of Mother Earth. Not
to mention that groundhog peeping out,
whether or not he sees his shadow.

Even in a place of mostly sunny winter days,
so come the dark ones, when the world turns
cold, and ice sheets our paths, ready to trip
us up. A time when tyrants rant, and tribes
become more tribal, when generosity of spirit
seems, like the leaves, to have vanished.

Then I look for moments of lightening,
ever-present signs that kindness has not
gone dormant. I light candles, inhale
the compassion shown to me by so many,
seen and unseen, living and not.

I try to find the halfway point between
here and gone, to do something for someone
else this day, a bit of benevolence
to let someone know that they—
like me, like you—
are not alone.

•••

Feb. 2 is, indeed, the halfway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. Not only is it Groundhog Day (if the groundhog sees its shadow, so the theory goes, then there are six more weeks of winter; if not, spring is on its way), but it’s also the time of the Japanese Lantern Festival and the Chinese Spring Festival.

The second of February also prompts the celebration of Imbolc, a pre-Christian festival that blessed the spring planting for the coming year while celebrating the return of the light. Candlemas, with its Christian roots, was once a time when priests would bless candles to be used in homes the rest of the year.

Most important, Feb. 2 signals that the light is steadily returning, winter is on its way out, and spring will soon return.

•••

Nightly we travel back and forth
on a gentle ancestral river,
swimming together in warm

water—no rapids or rocks in sight—
those who’ve come and gone
lending me their insight.

They do not speak, but they
smile, hum, wink, as if we share
secrets, which, I suppose, we do.

And though I want to ask questions—
so many questions—I float with
them, faces up, humming,

each of us moon-kissed,
soaking up blessing after
blesséd blessing

shining down on us.

(for Deb)

As the first daffodil
pops up its brave yellow head
on the second-to-last day of January,

the sign in her yard that she planted
the first time still proclaims:

• Black lives matter
• Women’s rights are human rights
• No human is illegal
• Science is real
• Love is love
• Kindness is everything

And I remember my similar sign,
wonder where’s it’s got to—
did I tuck it away or let it go,
thinking it was no longer needed?

Imagining—silly me—that somehow
we’d solved all those thorny issues,
knowing better, of course,
but not wanting to admit

how we still have such a long way
to go, how now, again, more than ever,
we need those signs, not just
stuck in our yards, but plastered
in our hearts and minds,

lovingkindness the order of every day,
each of us looking out for us all
because, truly, there is no them.

(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.