Güd wrtr

and turn again
as the path winds
under high fog,

under turning oaks,
leaves so recently green,
now goldening,

some with edges
tinged brown or
or dark-splotched—

the dark is coming—
but on this first day
of advent, each step

leading to new life,
I stop, look up at
the turning,

release what wants
releasing, even if I
can’t name it,

let my feet take
me to the center,
receive what wants

receiving and look up
into the light, the tune
alive in my head:

this little light of mine,
I’m gonna let it shine,
let it shine, let it shine,

let it shine

Let’s not forget to make things: bread, books, friends.
—Maya Stein, from “paper, scissors, glue”

•••

Wha’cha makin’ over there?
Flour and yeast for bread, sure.

Words and words and more words
for poems, for stories, of course.

Smiles and hugs and “wanna come
play?” for friends in the making.

Making friends is best of all.
You with me, me with you—

perhaps from paper, torn or cut,
decorated with colorful markers,

or brushes to dip into tiny pots
of solid pigments rendered soft

with water, just to play. And in
the playing, making happens,

nourishment for the heart,
uplift for the soul.

Small creations that turn out,
with time, to be treasures

treasured long after they
were made.

•••

(for all the friends in the long ago and the now)

My life, like a poem, is small and enormous.
—poet Maggie Smith

Enormous in that we all contain multitudes,
to paraphrase another poet,

contradictions, he mentioned, too,
as in living while dying,

or perhaps it’s the other way around,
as I walk in the open air

the day after the day of thanks,
continuously giving thanks,

as I do these days. I think of
Whitman celebrating humanity:

For every atom belonging to me
as good belongs to you.

Small, infinitesimal, the atoms,
the liminal moments of

in-between-ness, the half-awakeness
of trying to let sleep find me

in the house of my childhood,
dozing in the chair in the family

room near my mother, who
awakens every hour.

In the waning hours of this night,
of her long life, the veil is so thin

that each of us reaches through
to touch the mystery—

I and this mystery here we stand—

every breath a prayer of
gratitude, for this life,

for this time—even when
the body is not behaving as

it should, as it has. Even as
her exhaustion finds me,

I remind myself not to lose
the enormity of these moments,

of our shared atoms, these snippets
of grace that feel like a poem,

and to write them down.
Like this.

•••

Quoted lines from Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” from “Leaves of Grass” (1892 edition), a book published in 1855 that he kept editing and re-editing for the rest of his life.

(For the fam—those with us and not, living and not—with love and gratitude.)

Back in the day it was my mother
who, with her trusty Kodak, shot
the family pix for every Christmas

card—my sister and I posing in
some location she liked—until we
reached high school and began

directing our own photo shoots.
Then I picked up a camera
thanks to the boyfriend who

sold them at K-Mart in town,
and learned darkrooms
and newsrooms from college

to a major daily, later editing
photos for a magazine.
Not to mention picking up

a couple of nice photo guys
along the way. One of them
took our family photo today

on a carpet of fallen leaves,
our Thanksgiving meal waiting
to be served because the light

was finally right. And just
before that, the niece born
on my 29th birthday, now a

photography teacher, took
what she calls a cousin selfie,
a chunk of our fam together

in one place for a snapshot
of a moment—one of us
nearing the end, one of us

carrying new life due in
the spring, not to mention
so many departed loved ones

cramming into the frame,
no one knowing what’s
coming—but nonetheless

capturing this instant,
this precious now, which
poof! with the electronic

click of a simulated shutter,
grateful smiles all around,
is here and gone.

(for Mom)

When you get where you’re going—
and clearly there’s no way to know
where that might be, or even if there
is a where—we know that you’ll look
around and see who you might see.

Maybe you’ll have landed in an
eternal Sweet Adelines show
where everyone sings beautifully—
you and all kinds of ladies dolled up
in fringe and way too much rouge
and blue eye shadow.

With luck, you’ll find your favorite
chorus buddies there—Carolyn and
Gwen and Lil and Maddie, among
many others—and, without a thought,
you’ll fall into perfect harmony.

And, of course, we hope you might
find Father, bygones long gone,
just the love remaining, as with
your parents and sister.

And perhaps all the puppies and
kitties you raised and nurtured
and found homes for—some of them
at our house—will scamper to greet you,
along with your nursing school buddies
and high school friends and others you’ve
forgotten who’ve not forgotten you.

Maybe this is all fanciful human thinking,
like Julie who hoped she’d be assigned
to rainbow duty. Maybe you who dreamed
of star travel will become so many points
of light, energy zinging around the universe,
back to our elemental origins, what we were
before we were us.

No way to know, of course. But drop us
a postcard, or the universal equivalent,
once you’re bouncing around in mystery,
will you? We’d love to hear about
the view from your side.

Here on ours we’ll remember
you, think of so much we wish
we’d asked, eyes moistening every
time that we hear that other Dorothy
sing the song that brought technicolor
into your young world—

you over the rainbow at last,
you beaming in every time
that full spectrum arc
lights the sky.

(Hanalei pier, Hanalei, Kauai)

He stands like an old hand
at this, the slender whip of a rod
extended off the end of the pier,

a couple of weights keeping
the line taut, and, as we watch,
this 10-year-old from Utah

catches fish after fish. Small
fry flagtails shimmer silvery
when he holds up one wiggler.

When I ask what he plans
to do with fish Hawaiians
call aholehole, he produces

a longer line, a bigger hook:
String ’em together and
Catch a bigger fish!

Ah, they’re bait then,
I venture, and he grins.
Yeah!

I feel sorry for the deaths
of so many aholehole
until I read later that locals

catch and fry them whole
in hot oil with salt, pepper
and garlic, and I want

to race back to the pier
and report this to the young
fisherman from Utah.

I’m sure he’s gone by now,
as is my older fisherman
who vanished long ago.

But I saw a bit of him today
in the boy with his silvery haul
gleaming in an orange

plastic bucket, delighted
in the catching, deftly
removing the barb

in each mouth. And I
hear my fisherman who
happily fried up many

a fish whisper, Good eatin’
there, Toots, as the fishing
boy rebaits his line

and drops it into a
glistening turquoise
sea.

•••

aholehole (ah-hole-ay-hole-ay): the Hawaiian name for flagtail fish

For nearly a week
LOVE stood on our beach
(the one we feel closest to),

and every morning I’d walk
out there and say, “Hi, LOVE!”
Often I’d see people pose

next to LOVE and point
their phones at themselves.
I offered to take photos

of more than a few couples
and one family of four who
happily took me up on it—

“We never have pictures of
all of us!” the mom said—
And I felt tingly, doing

my bit for LOVE, imagining
for a moment that the world
was built on tenderness,

not peopled entirely by
the stingy and the mean,
many of us on this little

stretch of sand delighting
in one man named Dennis
and his driftwood artistry.

On our last evening on
island, my love and I
walked to our beach to find

that LOVE had vanished,
been dismantled—poof!—
its parts strewn in the sand.

And to my surprise, I wept.
LOVE had survived six days
of high tides and rain.

Who would do such a thing?
And he who loves me
walked down the beach

ahead of me as I lingered
and tears fell and clouds
gathered minutes before rain.

“Look,” said the one who loves
me, pointing to the sand
where someone had traced

a heart with a steady finger.
And nearby, another.
“Love’s still here,” he said,

“just in another form.”
And when the rains came,
drenching us, we stood

and looked at the mountains
that rivet the attention
of so many who, like us,

feel attached to this beach,
clouds ringing the peaks
like silvery lei.

And we waited for the sunset
as love washed us clean
before sending us on our way,

as it always does.

Babies, for starters.
Sure, people write books about
the tiny mammals, but yours didn’t
pop out with a personalized
Baby Home Repair Manual tucked
under its arm, did it? All that crying…
how do you fix that?

Hearts, because they’re all the time
getting broken—or certainly creased
and cracked—and again, no how-to
for your model, though medical folks
have some ideas about how to fix
them mechanically. That doesn’t
help our floundering, love-ravaged,
hurt-feeling’d pumping engines.

So we are left to realize how
much can’t be repaired even when
we desperately want it to be—
cruelty inflicted by the thoughtless
or the downright mean-spirited,
not to mention the anguish of
watching those heading off into
the we-don’t-know-where,
trudging toward the other side
where we on this side can’t yet go.

That we’re the ones who must stay
behind clutching all our broken bits
spins our struggling minds. Perhaps
each of us was issued a nifty instruction
booklet before we landed in these
bodies, and we’ve just mislaid it,
or put it in a safe place that
we’ve forgotten.

So, optimists that we are,
we keep hunting for the manual,
wishing someone would deliver
a new one special-overnight-hurry-up-
express, in an easy-to-open box
with very clear directions
in large print:

Begin here. Step one...

You can’t walk on the beach
on this island in the middle of
the sea without tripping over love.

Between LOVE spelled out in
driftwood on one beach and big ol’
ALOHA on another, it’s just

lovelovelove, which is, you decide,
the universe’s way of nudging you
to get the message as it strews

heart-shaped, wave-sanded pieces
of once-living sea invertebrates
at your feet. Because love really

is everywhere if you just have
eyes to perceive it. Right there,
on surf-smoothed sand,

see that big ol’ coral heart?
Pick it up, why don’t you?
Carry it with you for a time,

study its peculiarities,
its funny divots and quirky
bumps, then quietly leave it

for someone else to find.
You can walk away from love,
but baby, it’ll find you again.

You bring it with you entering
this life; it’s what you leave
behind as you depart.

Just as the waves never stop,
your essence never evaporates.
All that’s left is the love.

Life would be a mistake,
the window says,

as if I need reminding.
Apparently, I need reminding.

And standing in Ching Young
Center in Hanalei, clouds ringing

the tops of mountains behind me
like moisture-laden lei, as I read

the golden-arched words, I think
of my painterly brother-in-law,

the retired art teacher, who most
days puts pen and ink or watercolor

to paper. Or the dear friend who hosts
musicians in concert at her home

in the hills. Or the tropical garden
where my fella and I are happily

ensconced, most every tree
wrapped in orchids blooming

their fool heads off, thanks to a
devoted, green-thumbed woman.

Life in any form is no mistake—
it is the art that surrounds us

if we have eyes to see it. It is
the art in us, if we have the will

to make it, the patience to play
with it, to not insist that it be

good, just done for now. Like
this poem, a bit of sloppy

wordplay that fell out of me
onto the page and—

no accident, this—
made its way to you.