Güd wrtr

After weeks of intractable fog,
after passing showers that grayed over Christmas

with occasional bursts of sunshine before
the next set of showers oozed in,

weather on the move at last, for the moment,
not a socked-in shroud of cloud.

At last, to walk outside on a clear night after
The Day to see, even in our well-lit city,

a few winking stars and a half cupful
of smiling moon on its way to the western horizon,

lifts my heart for no special reason
other than, despite everything,

this is still the season of joy,
and I am reveling in it.

And so it is Boxing Day,
the day after Christmas, and
here comes one of my angels,

the little frizzy, red-haired one
with her stubby wings,
flitting around at an odd angle,

listing to starboard,
as if she can’t quite achieve
a straight line, always tilted

like a quizzical hummingbird.
I move slowly amid the detritus
of present sorting and wrapping

as she zooms in closer, her laser
blue eyes narrowing for a better
look, and I realize that she might

be off kilter because she’s tossing—
is that red glitter?—while humming
“We Wish You a Merry Christmas,”

like some form of benediction,
which I suppose it is. I hate to tell
her, “That was yesterday,” knowing

that there are likely no clocks in
her part of forever. Why should
they care about time? Clearly,

this visitation, like other angelic ones,
is about receiving an unexpected,
glittering gift. As one of my

once-upon-a-time earth angels
liked to say, “A girl can never have
too much glitter”—though she can,

really—the stuff infiltrates everything.
All this takes maybe four seconds
before the angel zooms straight

for me, lips pursed as if she’s going
to let loose a whistle or deposit
a zinger of a divine kiss, when

the dazzle of all that glitter erupts
into a holy light show of volcanic
fountaining, sparkly pinwheels

spiraling (are those galaxies?),
and I stand there, mouth agape like
a shepherd who’s just been visited

by an angel and told to get moving:
There’s a miracle to see, darling,
and you don’t want to miss it.

(In memory of the late, great Nell Lester)

Of all the things you gave me as a child—
as Girl Scout troop leader, purveyor
of my favorite tuna and noodles,
oh, and not incidentally, mom to the girl
next door, my first/forever best friend—
I am gobsmacked by your plants
that have come to live at my house.

Your only child bequeathed them
to me after your passage into mystery.
She, who lives with a plant-eating cat,
could not house your indoor beauties.
I trundled home a dozen that had lived
with you for who knows how long,
determined to let them summer on
my deck and winter indoors.

And look—your Christmas cactus—
the sprawling, pinky white one—
is blooming its fool head off on time,
Right Before Christmas, which feels,
honestly, miraculous, if also a bit
show-offy.

And though you, in all your modesty,
would likely point out that you have
nothing to do with the timing of such
glorious blossoms, I am here to say—
as we often did as kids—Nuh uh.

Because, I figure, you must be in
the Heavenly Blooming Department,
green thumb gardener that you were.

And while I am an enthusiastic amateur
at best, I take my position seriously as
Apprentice Plant Tender Here on Earth,
knowing that these cotton candy blossoms
festooning your cactus in the darkest
part of the year is truly grace in action.

So I hope that all of you up there in
the Heavenly Blooming Department
hear my joyous exclamations and
delighted applause for this bit of
Christmas floral transcendence,
a job so very well done.

•••

(With love and gratitude to Sue Lester for sharing her mom with the girls next door.)

certainly flits about in pink,
wearing an apron, hovering
by a heavenly stove where
something smells, well,
heavenly.

Many of us sat at her table
happy to eat anything
she put on a plate, and
that has not changed, even
as the angel hung up

her last apron—perhaps
the Canadian one that said,
eh! Or a pink one with
cupcakes, or something
never seen in her earthly
existence,

a nifty little number in a color
unseeable by mere humans,
one that sets off her shimmering,
translucent—just look at them—
gorgeous wings.

•••

(in memory of Margery Thompson, Aug. 13, 1946–Aug. 27, 2025)

(for Maxi on our first anniversary)

Dude, I love the way you sleep around,
finding cooler spots in summer,
hibernating in the cozier places in winter—

though you have enough fur on you
to outfit two decent-sized chihuahuas
and still maintain your own warm coat—

currently tucked into the big closet on
a towel I brought home with you two
days after Mother drifted into mystery.

You walked into the cat carrier without
coaxing or a shove, much to our amazement,
as Donna and I sat with you on the carpet.

“They never do that,” we marveled, instantly
adding, “Thank you, Mother,” suspecting
her assistance from her new location.

I know that you didn’t want to leave the one
who rescued you years ago, and, believe me,
she didn’t want to leave you. But Dude,

you got me. It’s taken time to get used to me—
you one woman cat, you—and though
you will still not allow me to heft you

into my arms when standing, I can,
when lying in bed, you pillow-plopped
at my side, drag your sizeable bulk onto me,

patting you and telling you what a fabulous
feline you are. Mother said, “He’s easy.
You’ll love him,” even as she refused

to believe that she was dying. She knew
we’d be good together, the woman who
taught her girls about rescuing kitties

and puppies and finding them good homes.
So here’s to us, big guy, on our first anniversary.
And Ma, you could never hear this enough:

You were right. You were so, so right.

Feel how light they are, our lives.
—Liesel Mueller, from “Snow”

Snowflake light, crystal feathers falling weightless
from a cloud, but once earthed with their brethren,

these lives accumulate such weight as to sag roofs,
down power lines, snap tree limbs.

Wet snow can contain twice as much water as
dry, which cannot be clumped into snowballs

or snowmen. The moments of our earthly
existences are like that—light traveling,

slowing and bending as it passes through
transparent flakes, bouncing into sparkles,

sometimes into rainbows. Light bending
is refraction; light bouncing is reflection.

And we, in these earthly guises, both
bend and bounce, collectively heavy,

but individually we fly, crystal clear—
especially at the end, lifting out of our

cumbersome bodies, nothing but light,
a whisper of air.

•••

You can learn more about Nathan Myhrvold’s ultra-high resolution photos of snowflakes here.

The light lacy and muted on her last day,
the year’s shortest, barely squinting
through a heavy curtain of clouds,
the impending goodbye looming.

She did not want to go,
though her body disagreed—
a brittle cocoon of her former self,
her breath butterfly faint.

I need to find some light, I said
on this day that held so little of it,
knowing that every one hereafter
would gain a minute of brightness
and warmth.

Go, said my sister, she the patient one
with the patient who had once been
our mother, feather light in the foreign bed
in the family room where we had watched
Ed Sullivan and the Wonderful World of Disney,
in the center of the house that grew us.

I’ll be back soon, I whispered,
and my sister nodded.

And, as I had done countless times
in my young years, I fled across the street,
over the split rail fence, down the path to the lake
where we water skied every summer of our childhoods,
walking toward the water, so low now it resembled
the river it originally was.

Overhead the gulls glided, some settling
on the still, dark ribbon of water,
the shroud of solstice over us all.

Go, I whispered, looking for more light,
which did not come,
tilting my head skyward to receive
the lightest of drops,
which did.

•••

For Donna

In memory of our mother,
Darlene Haag
(July 6, 1931–Dec. 21, 2024)

Behold this mystery:
even on a rough night

this peace that cradles us,
this love that loves us,

this tenderness
that comes upon us.

—Steve Garnaas-Holmes

•••

And now—after weeks of smothering fog—
rain.

The heavens loosen their grip,
a muscled wind whipping the trees,

hurling last leaves to thirsty ground,
beginning to wash us clean,

If this keeps up as predicted, we’ll be
sodden in a few days, wetter than wet

for Christmas. But this, too, is part
of the mystery of how peace can come,

the way tenderness arrives amid the most
turbulent times. Perhaps it has been ever thus—

we are simply living through this
blinking moment of these too-short lives,

reeling from the horrible, the violent,
the rampant hostility deserved by no one.

Yet somehow peace cradles us.
Love loves us. We are forgiven.

We do not understand it, are not meant
to comprehend it, only to see that

the better angels of our nature continue
to rise within us. And it is gentle goodness

that we wish to embody, our arms
overflowing with bouquets

of good will toward all.

You two look so happy in this photo
next to the phone in my kitchen,
with a tiny me on Father’s lap,
positively delighted by this
new person you had made.

Did you coo over me and tickle
my toes? Did you play peek-a-boo?
Did you swaddle and coddle
and sing to me and later
my little sister?

The mother we knew was
not a coddler. You said that
I cried and cried, pained by
colic, that I was fussy and
difficult to soothe, that Father
was better at calming me,
holding me close to his chest,
perhaps because he was warmer.

How often did you leave us
to cry it out alone in the crib?
“You can’t pick them up all
the time,” you said. “You can’t
let the baby be in charge.”

And I see the ghost of my
hand hover over the phone,
ready to dial the number
that was yours for 59 years
to ask, “Why not?”

You can’t spoil a baby with
too much love. My sister proved
that years later with her babies.
The task is to help that little one
carrying your DNA become
comfortable as an old soul
inside a new body.

Tell her how smart and capable
and thoughtful she will be—
as your second daughter did
with her daughter, as that
now-grownup daughter does
with her baby daughter.

“You are an independent woman,”
she says to her eight-month-old,
who grins at her mama.

What your two daughters
would have given, when you still
had words, to hear you say,
“I was so happy to have you girls,
delighted to watch you grow
into the women you’ve become.”

Do you hear the phone ringing,
Mom and Dad? Pick up, please,
each of you on an extension.
Let us hear you say, in voices
that ring inside us still,

“Hello, girls. We’ve been
hoping you’d call.”

Penmanship was once a status symbol—
the nicer the hand, the greater one’s
education, wealth, privilege.

And neat cursive handwriting became
what every teacher demanded of pupils—
the feminine slant or the upright masculine—

prompting the torment of many a student,
including my left-handed father, whose
own father went to the right-leaning

teacher and told her to leave his son alone.
He was just fine as a leftie, a defining moment
my father talked about all his life.

So, too, then, my sister was left to her
southpaw inclinations, though she, like
our father, is ambidextrous in many things.

And my mother and I, the right-handers,
suffered no illusions about how our
words looked on the page, nothing

fancy but mostly legible. Until a certain
point when penmanship starts to
decline along with the rest of us,

and we look around, bemoaning the
disappearance of cursive handwriting
being taught to younger folks,

who often can’t read our scrawls.
Whether that’s a lack of familiarity or
our own indecipherable chicken scratch

is up for debate. What matters, I tell
those who sit around tables with me
applying pen to paper, is that they

can, should they want to, read it aloud
so that we can marvel at what’s
been transmitted from gray matter

through the web of neurons to muscles
and joints and fingers, the miracle
of words coming through one intent

on capturing them, preserving
what they didn’t know they had to say,
delivered through the miracle

of sleight of hand.