Güd wrtr

(for my grandmother, Anna Marie Nyberg Haag)

My father used to say,
“Write when you get work,”
long before my sister

and I were old enough
to do so. It took years
before I realized that to

our father, raised as he was
during the Depression,
the sentiment was serious,

that work could be difficult
to get, to hang onto, and
when it happened,

it called for a letter to the
folks back home hoping
to hear from you.

Decades later, his mother,
on her manual cursive typewriter,
often ended her letters,

“Don’t forget to write,”
eager as she was to hear
from family spread out

farther than she would have
liked. My grandmother
was never happier than

when we all gathered in one
place, delivering squeezy hugs
so tight that the glass-faceted

brooch in the center of her
chest would pierce ours.
She’d feed us her best

Swedish meatballs and
good brownies, only to
have us scatter again

like dandelion seeds,
leaving her at her typewriter,
waiting for word—

any word at all—
to fall onto a page
and make its way to her.

Sometimes, love looks like small things.
—Former U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith

Like bringing the half gallon of milk,
though he didn’t ask for it because
you knew he’d otherwise have to dampen
tomorrow’s cereal with water.

Like him emailing the photos he took of you
making split pea soup to your mother
because it was her favorite and because
she—no cook herself—knew that you’d
inherited her preference for reading
over doing much of anything
in a kitchen.

Like the niece-in-law texting photos
of your mother’s lilac in bloom
a few months after her death,
perhaps returned as the butterfly
resting on all that purple.

Like your solo walk home carrying
your leftover burrito in a brown box
after breakfast with a friend,
and offering it to the woman sitting
on the curb who asked for a dollar,
then grabbed the box like a ring buoy,
opened it and, without a word,
took a big bite, grinning gratitude
that you didn’t require.

Love rests in the small things,
rarely in the big gestures—
driving a sister to the doctor,
calling the homebound relative,
feeding the neighbor’s cat who
shows up mornings on your porch
because, though he gets fed at home,
it’s more fun to eat out.

Like the poem that arrives in your
in-box with the note from the poet
reminding you that the smallest
kindnesses are proof that we’re here,
paying attention, that we care.

And oh, how much others,
if we have eyes to see,
so care for us, too.

How rivers and stones are forever
in allegiance with gravity
while we ourselves dream of rising.

—Mary Oliver

•••

If I must pledge,
let me do so while standing,
not with hand over heart,

but outside amid the greening,
gawking again at the show-off
hollyhocks rising like

full-skirted towers from
last season’s leavings. I whack
them to the ground each fall,

and they insist on returning.
Talk about allegiance.
Their pledge must drive

their exploding seeds out
of spent pods into the earth
with a teeny timer inside

that lets them know when
to do all that underground work
to start pushing toward

the sun. That’s how I want
to commit myself, quietly
going about the every day,

growing in the dark, looking
for light, but remembering
when it’s time to rest,

to dig in, to recharge
for the moments when
we get the call

to start all over again.

The kids whose house it now is
have no idea how the little
hummingbird got inside.

Perhaps it flew in through
open doors or screenless windows
amid all the renovation

transforming our mother’s
old place into theirs. Maybe
flitting into the hole in the eaves

that led it inside, and, trapped,
could not find its way out.
Or maybe it meant to stay,

not wanting to leave, not
intending to die, but in the end
falling to the floor in what

had been the library,
its busy wings stilled,
the infinitesimal heart

stopped, its iridescent
feathers like wee prisms
splitting light into rainbows,

still vibrant, as if it might
startle and stir before
zooming off into mystery.

On our first Mother’s Day
without her, her son-in-law
and her grandson unbucketed
two volunteer oaks from another
back yard,

planting them in a far corner
of the yard that was hers, where
my favorite oak once leaned, arms
extended, graceful as a dancer,

whose woody lap I crawled into
with notebook and pen to
scrawl early stories and poems,
the tree holding all I had to
give it, until, a decade later,
it collapsed, unknowingly
watered to death by our father
cultivating a green carpet of lawn.

Today Kevin dug the holes
in the mound where that old trunk
once rose, and Eric tucked in
the spindly trees as lovingly
as he once blanketed his own
babies—not unlike the newest
among us sleeping in her
auntie’s arms on the patio.

And we stood there, each of us
silently whispering, Grow!
in the spot where I thought
my tree would forever stand,
where I learned that love
is always a two-way street,

even when we think it’s not,
even when we can’t imagine it
being reciprocated by something
so large, so rooted, so silent.

Maybe it’s her chair space you’re holding,
the one she sat in at the table,
or the weary recliner that held her
when you could not.

Her space in the world seems to have
vanished, as she seems to have
drifted into the ether, but now,
she is all space, in every molecule
of air, in the softest of breezes
brushing your cheeks.

Like that. As you cannot see
the wind, you cannot see her.
But you can feel her passing by,
bestowing a true air kiss.

You do not need to hold space
for her. She’s doing that for you
every place, as she always did,
whether you recognized it or not.

Listen for her on the breeze,
swirling, whispering,
Nothing left but the love,
my dear, nothing but love.

He says upon waking, looking outside
to behold the day’s first light

on morning waves, soft clouds losing
their blush as the sun takes over,

revealing a ruler-straight horizon
separating the lightest sky blue

from the sea’s definitive marine blue
morphing into near shore deep turquoise.

“Another beautiful day,” he’ll say later,
even as we’re caught in a sudden shower

on the beach, taking temporary refuge
under a dripping hau tree, as we wait

for the precipitation to pass, for our
old friend sun shooting through clouds

to dry us. In truth, they’re all beautiful days,
these extras he’s been given—ones

I gratefully share no matter the weather.
So now, when I hear this bit of cheer

in his voice, even when he’s teasing,
my heart responds with every beat,

“Even more beautiful, dearest, because
I get to share this day with you.”

She’s the Hawaiian rainbow goddess,
and when she makes an appearance,
we take notice, tipped off by

soft drops of rain freckling our faces.
Simultaneously, we turn away from
the sun to watch this messenger

of the gods unfurl her full-spectrum
message—blessings of hope and rebirth
arching across the sky.

A rainbow, it seems, is a two-way street—
for mortals, a path to the heavens,
and, for the gods, a river of light

on which they may beam down
to Earth. So we stand grinning,
entranced by this anuenue highway,

a momentary glimpse of joy
in the form of simple sunlight
striking water droplets.

That she, a vanishing vision,
comes and goes so quickly makes
us treasure her all the more.

(for Donna Just in Lawai, Kauai)

Your last day here, mid-afternoon,
we go down to the flat lava rocks
at low tide, under a hiding and
seeking sun. In nearshore waves

we look for periscoping heads
rising to take a breath, inflate
the huge lungs before diving
again to nibble at limu

adorning the rocks like
sea lichen. We call out turtle
heads and flippers and tails,
and I see us as little girls,

blondes getting lighter
each day under the sun,
lake girls transported to
ocean, marveling at these

four long-lived creatures—
two smaller and two larger—
a honu quartet similar
to our own ohana.

One day we will just be two,
bringing us to stand here
on the edge of the earth,
looking to the sanctuary

of waves to find them—
the ancestors rising, breathing,
diving as they have, as they will,
forever.

(McBryde National Botanical Tropical Garden, Kauai)

I ulu no ka lala I ke kumu.
(Without our ancestors, we would not be here.)

And so here we are
in the great garden where everything
is encouraged to grow.

We, too, have grown where we were planted,
venturing into the greater world to take in
other species, trees with fruit that is new to us
but is ancient to this land.

None of us would be here if the ancestors
had not thought to plant us in fertile soil,
tend us as baby shoots, nurture us into
what we are today.

Once again, we thank the trunks from
which we came—mahalo nui loa—
with everything we are

and look to the new shoots
coming up after us,
on which we continue
to shower our everlasting love.