(for Dickie)
“Now we’re here,” he likes to say
once we’ve arrived on island,
usually when we step out of
the forced air of plane
and into the thicker breath
of green and seastuff.
Or sometimes when,
as soon as possible,
I make my way across sand
to put my feet in warm ocean.
Or when we figure out what
to order for lunch based on
a favorite dessert. Because
this place, more than any other,
teaches us again and again:
Life is short. Don’t wait.
Absorb all the sweet stuff
you can.
(for the dancers of the Merrie Monarch Festival)
They look like floating clouds
wearing yellow lei, the dozen
wahine of He’eia dancing
nahe nahe—gently, delicately,
as they say in the islands
where I will fly in the morning,
paying tribute to the goddess
of snow in the place where
so many talented dancers have
competed in recent days.
I have sat before the small screen
deep into the night watching,
sometimes weeping at aloha
in motion, tributes to Hawaiian
family and teachers—
ohana and kumu—
by the men and women—
the kane and wahine—
whom I will carry as I fly,
looking out the window,
watching the storytelling clouds
dancing so high in the sky.
I mean, really, I wouldn’t be sitting here
on a Saturday morning,
having shlepped snacks and prompts
and, heaviest of all, me out of bed
to sit at one end of this four-table
rectangle and put my fingers to
the keyboard earlier than they’re
used to if it weren’t for you.
I mean, really. I do it to watch you
all write, hear you scratch on a page
as though your lives depend on it
(which, in a way, they do),
so focused, spinning syllables and words
and random punctuation through the air
like confetti, which falls upon me,
on everyone. And, it lands on my skin.
If I stick out my tongue, I taste it, swallow it,
the best of you becoming part of me.
I swear, if someone looked at our DNA,
we’d share some of it, the kind funneled
into a category marked “writer.”
Which makes us deeply related.
Your essence lives in me, is what I want
to say, in the best possible way,
and yes, I’ve told you this before,
and I’ll tell you again because
I mean, really.
•••
(For all those who write with me—in the actual loft or the virtual one—
with my love and gratitude. And, as always, to Katie McCleary, who
created the lovely space for writers and gave it to me.)
Soft kitty cry,
I reach out a hand
touch the soft, smile, sigh.
When he cries, I hear
her voice answer him from
her place in the firmament:
Maxi, I’m here.
This, now, is how
she appears to
both of us.
•••
(for Mom)
This old dog loves to learn
new tricks, squirelling away
newly acquired facts
like, well, you know,
not caring about mixing
metaphors or other
annoying rules. Like today,
reminded by my favorite
bug writer/photographer
friend writing about
Valley carpenter bees,
aka teddy bear bees,
that, in the words of an
esteemed entomologist,
“Boy bees don’t sting.”
That’s right up there
with “Big girls don’t cry,”
in my humble estimation,
so now I’ve got that earworm
(to use a nifty science term)
buzzing around my brain.
Who knew that the blond,
fuzzy boy bees with green eyes
are not only dreamboat
carpenters but also great
defenders of the nests as well
as doing their part with
female teddy bear bees
to make baby teddy bear bees?
Another reason not to fear
flying blond teddy bears because,
now I know (sing it with me),
“Boy bees don’t sting.”
•••
If you need to hear this (and you know you do),
give a listen to “Big Girls Don’t Cry” by Frankie Valli
and The Four Seasons (1962). Songwriters: Bob Crewe
and Bob Gaudio.
Good night, sweet ones,
as you head into the dark.
Oyasuminasai—wishing
you restful sleep, as they
say in Japan.
Buenas noches to your
yawn, to your mind
curling around itself
readying for rest.
Buonanotte, whisper
Italians, as your
lashes kiss each other
and settle into sleep.
Oíche mhaith,
they say in Ireland, as
you try to wrangle your
tongue around it:
eee-ha wah
Or, as they say in Jamaica,
Gud nite, boonoonoonoos,
darling one,
Gud nite.
Some people like to build boats in the basement.
I like to do things to food.
—Julia Child
Bless me, Julia, for I have stepped
again into the kitchen where I have
few natural gifts,
and though I am not tackling any
of your greatest hits (still working
up the nerve to attempt
your French onion soup), I have,
in recent weeks, made five batches
of custard, and dazzled the man
in my life by showing up in his
kitchen with ingredients chopped
and ready to sizzle in the wok
for chicken stir-fry. Forgive my pride
in carrying off this simple meal
reasonably well (the chopped
Brussels sprouts were a nice touch,
if I do say so myself), but I count this,
along with my friend Lisa’s split pea
soup that my mother loved in winter
and my grandmother’s brownies—
ideally not consumed together—
as one of a handful of kitchen
accomplishments (besides
opening umpteen cat food cans
over many decades). You who
dropped a whole turkey on the floor
(“well, that didn’t go very well”)
and picked it up and kept going
on live television remind me
that food failures happen,
that we laugh and start again.
And if I keep this up, I might
get brave enough to try your
Quiche Lorraine, the secret
of which, you said, was cream
in the custard, and, oh, Julia,
custard I can do.
All this light on Easter,
as so many wish for
and don’t have,
along with warmth
and tenderness and
blossoming things.
But hope, even under
a waning gibbous moon, 🌖
is also given this day,
every day, really,
to all beings everywhere,
not least, dear one,
from me to you.
Did I ignore the words
starting to ticker tape
their way across my brain,
imagining that I could
collect them later?
When, in fact, they would roll
away like spilled jellybeans, and,
needing to walk onto the next thing
and the next, and the next,
I could not go back and retrieve them.
Now, in the midst of running errands,
between the pet food place and the bank
and the sandwich place and the grocery store,
I sit in the parking lot and dictate
what is showing up, having no idea
if it is any good or not.
Not caring, really, just mindful
that it is almost Easter,
and jellybeans have been strewn
in front of me,
and, after all these years,
I have finally figured out that
the only sin is to walk by all those gifts
and not pick up at least a few bits
of sweetness.
To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.
—Mary Oliver
This is my work in the world—
walking where spring has greened
the many waist-high grasses
and thickened the bracken and
sent up the tall spiky milk thistle
and the propeller-like wild radish.
I stroll really, often pausing mid-step
to bend and peer at something
blooming like an eager teenybopper,
its petals shimmying in a just-right
breeze. And though I may have
a glimmer of its name buried
in the overstuffed filing cabinet
of my brain, that’s not what’s
important. I snap its photo
anyway, wanting to capture
the whatsits at its peak, sparkly
and young and full of life—
as we all are for a time.
I remind myself to pay attention
to the tiniest of everyday miracles
because what better work
is there than to walk through
the world and acknowledge
the lovely ones, whether we
know their names or not?
Those who likely see
themselves as the most
ordinary of living things,
but whose very existence,
however fleeting, blesses us all.
