Güd wrtr

(Word of the Day, Oct. 2, 2024)

for Diego

It’s what clouds do, pushed across sky
by wind, driven, often furiously,
by the hands of gods we can’t see.

Of course, we can’t—they’re gods.

The same ones who, I hope, received
him gently today when he could no longer
race like wind from front yard

to back, to burst in through the pet door—
Mrrraw!—declaring himself present,
the old pisshead, prone to

inappropriate elimination, as the vets
call it. And may the gods forgive me
for my irritation with his three

pissy events in three days—one on my
bed—for not realizing that his kidneys
were failing, how dehydrated he was.

I’ve been here before.

The Big Dumb Boy Cat loved to drink
water from sinks and showers for years.
I was looking, always, but I did not see.

Now hit with a whoosh of windblown
spray, I feel the scud blow by as
there he goes, on to the next—

blessings on your journey,
godspeed, you sweet doofus—
Mrrraw! I love you, too.

(for Gail and Amy, with our thanks)

While you two cavort around Greece
(isn’t that what one would do there—
cavort?), we, your exercise buddies,

continue our Tuesday morning
sessions in your backyard. It is
the end of the growing season,

but produce still hangs in
surprising profusion—the fat
grape clusters dangling

like musky purple ornaments,
the green peppers still perky
on their vines. The sprawling

basil runs leggy wild, the bees
still helicoptering from one long
violet stalk of flowers to another,

some angling seductively
groundward. I gravitate toward
the ’maters, kinda weary,

mostly finished. Ah, well,
I must’ve missed them. But wait!
Look up! Tiny red globes gleam

like dangly earrings on a circular
display rack, some still green,
but many ripe for the taking,

which is what you’ve directed us
to do in your absence. We bag-toting
ladies go to our cars for empty bags

to harvest all we like. Anara reaches
high for a pomegranate; Shelley’s
fond of the basil and green beans—

she’s already nibbled a sweet pepper—
and oh, and the grapes. Catherine
plucks some peppers, among other

treats, as does Laurie, who also
liberated some grapes and still has
a butternut squash from last week’s

harvest destined for soup. Joanne:
tomatoes, green beans, peppers,
and one overhanging pomegranate

from the neighbor’s tree. Later,
your photos beam into our phones
from yours in glorious Greece.

I text you and your farmer wife
an image of tomatoes brightening
my green colander, messages from us

all trickling in, we, your exercising
women friends, appreciative of
your kindness that appears in

so many generous forms.

Now’s when people really start to look
weary with heat—and no, it’s not a
desert heat or the moist kind that leaves
you sweaty all day and night.

It’s just garden variety Northern California
hot stuff, and though so much of the country
has fallen into, well, fall, we here are “enjoying”
temps into the mid- and upper 90s.

And yes, while 100 degrees on the first day
of October seems excessive for what used
to be called Indian summer, which had
nothing to do with native people and

everything to do with racist monikers,
I digress. While I, too, like so many of my
fellow citizens, wish the sun would dial
it back a bit, these days of musty warmth

require my presence in the yard, hose in
hand, giving the last of the heroic hollyhocks
a good squirt, as they nod to the persistent
roses on their too-leggy stems. They’ll all

be gone soon, and the yard will look wan
and pale, bleached of color like the winter sky.
And then, on those days when my toes
never truly get warm, I’ll long for the last

hot, breezy afternoons of endless summer
when I stood in the yard in my lavender
flip-flops, watering faithful plants as well
as my feet, watching a single bee busily

going about its day job, quite ignoring
my admiring gaze, having no idea
what’s coming our way.

(for Jill Batiansila)

Sometimes you make a new friend
who attaches themselves to you

like feline Velcro, who settles in
for a good nap with its purr

on high throttle so that you cannot
bear to peel the little one off

your chest, remembering,
perhaps, your babies doing

something similar, sleepily
clinging like small sloths

to their mothers, trapping
you in the best possible way,

inspiring your eyelids to
thicken and fall. Love shows

up like that more often than
we realize. We have only to

pick it up, allow the embrace,
to relish the snuggle when it is

so sweetly offered.

(for Peggy Price-Hartz in Aiken, South Carolina)

I don’t know why you had to leave sunny Spain,
but I imagine that now, sitting in the dark
after a hurricane has whooshed through
your part of the world, you must be
longing for the azure waters and skies
of the Mediterranean.

You texted some of your beloveds that
you’re fine, though you, like millions
of others, are without electricity.
You said that you have what you need.
That neighbors with generators
have charged your devices, allowing
communication with the greater world.
There is, you add, the worrisome
concern about the large tree in
the backyard, but mostly, all is OK.

And I imagine that all over Aiken,
as in so many other places lying
prostrate after Helene did her worst,
you are all deep in aftermath. Flooding.
People killed by falling trees.
Cleanup has barely begun.

Not much you can do but wait—
with your single propane burner,
you can’t even cook for folks,
as you love to do.

Still, you’re getting words out into
the ether that make their way to us.
Your last transmission from the dark
said that you were sitting on your porch
looking up at the night sky.

So, trying to guess what your sky
must hold, I step outside to take in
the dark of my well-lit city that used
to be yours, too bright to see stars,
much farther north than your corner
of the planet.

But I’m drinking in starlight
at the same time as you, my friend,
wishing you daylight’s return,
grateful that your sun
will rise before mine.

I am here to nudge a dozen women who’ve set
anchor around a small moorage of tables

into writing about grief. And they do. And, if they
wish, they read. Tears spill; tissue is passed.

But under the table, sitting closer to my feet
than usual, Benji snuggles into my sandals,

and I, flattered, find myself sneaking peeks at him,
lowering a typing hand for a doglick, then returning

it to the laptop where I take notes on what
the writers have put on the page, what I will give

back to them as memorable, as strong, as delightful
or moving or powerful or whatever other adjective

I can come up with. Though, looking down into
those sweet brown eyes and scruffy ruff of our

most buoyant member, the only word that
floats on my tongue is adorable.

And she placed its open face
down on the mustard cushion
before she rose to a magnificent
height that I envied
as I watched her walk away.

I flirted with the Who is she?
story taking shape in my head,
but the more insistent question
was What is she reading?

That being the fingerprint
of a human who loves books,
as she must, I figured, given
the ease with which the spine
splayed and the well-thumbed
pages relaxed, awaiting her return.

If, say, she was reading Woolf,
did that legendary lighthouse
shine into her as it did for me?
Or could she be exploring
a collection of Emily’s poetic
gems, finding precious nuggets
that she’ll gather and carry
with her all her days?

But I project too much.
Honestly, I wouldn’t think less
of her should she be deeply sunk
into a ho-hum mystery or a
sweaty bodice ripper—if they
still rip bodices in romance
novels.

Mostly I like her because she
left her book open to mark
her place—in the pages and
in this space—to signify that
she will reappear and sink
her tall-girl self into
the mustard cushion,
pick up her book
and disappear,

as devout readers do,
into a somewhere that’s
as alive in her mind as she,
fictional character I’ve created,
is in mine.

When I am alone on the trail above the sea,
I think none of these things.
But once I’m home, treading sidewalks
over city streets this is what runs
through the ticker tape of my brain:

My right ankle feels sore… Is that plantar fasciitis?

Oh, wait, now it’s my left knee. What’s that about?

Siren coming down J Street, cars pulling over,
boxy red ambulance on its way to assisting.
Sending love and kindness to helpers and those
who need help.

Let’s cross 38th Street—dog walkers ahead…
a small white poodle and a tall standard model,
people chatting, dogs sniffing. Don’t want
to trigger a bark fest, though I wouldn’t
mind a doglick or two.

Around the corner: man on a ladder,
electric drill in hand, affixing needed
support to a fresh redwood fence.

Early Halloween decorations—
plastic, skeletal hands sticking out of dirt—
one flashing a thumbs up, another pair
forming the shape of a heart.

Dead rat on sidewalk. Ewww.

Veering onto 40th St. to wave at
Chuck and Lindsay‘s house, thinking of them
at my 10:30 a.m. enjoying their evening
in Aberdeen.

Now the right inner knee twinging.

Yesterday, three days into fall,
the thermometer topped out at 100°.
This morning all of 65°.
So it goes.

I do love a good poem walk,
simply the observer, the reporter,
dictating as I go into a tiny
electronic notebook in my hand.

After years of struggle, words and phrases
arrive in my head and fall out of my mouth,
my monkey mind on hold for the moment—
such a delight. Every time.

Oh, look, acorns courtesy of a neighborly
live oak strewn on the sidewalk, fat ones,
and nearby their haphazardly tossed caps.

I pick up three, pocket them,
walk on.

(verb: to bask in the sun)

Cats mastered this eons ago,
having passed on the lizard-like
quality to all felines ever after,

which is why, on the hottest
of days, like these at the front
end of fall, you may find

a clowder of cats apricating
in full sun, basking as if
plugged into our cosmic

energy source, which,
of course, like us,
they are.

Just this:

A bowl of Anahola Granola with
plenty of vanilla yogurt atop it,
sprinkled with fresh blueberries.

My jug of tea for drinking
and a soft cushion for sitting
on this deck as the glory of

an at-last sunny morning dawns
and a ruler-straight horizon
neatly separates sky from sea,

a thin ribbon of distant fog
keeping a respectful distance.
This is what I carry with me—

the peace of the Pacific, named
for a calm patch that Magellan
sailed across our nearest ocean,

a blue water view from Casa Pacis,
house of peace, within earshot
of waves meeting earth, eons

of weathered grains of quartz
and fragments of shelled
creatures morphed into this

fingerprint of sand unique
to this beach, on this stretch
of sea from which, they say,

all life on our planet originates.
Even me—here,
just like this.