Outside in the dark,
before I turn on the light
inside the garage,
I stop in the chill,
listen to them chatter overhead,
geese on the move,
a large flock, not just a honk
here or there, but the avian
call and response, a chorus
of chortles and chuckles,
whispers of wings flying low,
unseen as they travel
through the young night,
my prayers for their
safekeeping—
for all airborne beings
everywhere—
taking wing to join them.
(for the California Northstate University medical students, class of 2025)
I set containers of gummy Xs and Os
mixed with jellybean hearts
on the tables where you will curl
over new notebooks and fresh pens,
you soon-to-be doctors
writing your art out.
“It’s all about the love,” I say to them—
the gummies and jellies serving as sweet
reminders—and to myself,
“You can’t blow it if you love them,”
as a wise writing woman once told me.
And now I watch you all take to the page,
some of you writing with intensity as a flurry
of words travels from heart to arm to hand
and out through gripped fingers. Some of you
write more slowly, as others pause to consider,
breathe, look up, before applying the pen again.
“The page can take whatever you have to put on it,”
I say. “Get whatever it is out of you and on to paper.”
What I forget to say is that this love infects you
and those around you in the best possible ways, too.
I want to hug each of you and say,
“Physician, love thyself—on the page and in life.”
I want to say, “Show the world the wings
you’ve grown, lifting,
and write your way home.”
•••
(The last stanza quotes two of my favorite poets: the Persian mystic Rumi
as well as the wise writing woman in the poem, Amherst Writers & Artists
founder Pat Schneider.)
(Thanks to Dr. Martin Rubin for inviting me to share the AWA method
with these 14 medical students, just part of the class of 2025.)
When I’m told to hum in a sea
of hummers, I think first of the birds
whose wings thrum the air,
of the delight when one flies into
my airspace and hovers like an
iridescent helicopter, rotors
whirring, before it dashes off.
And now, in this space of worship
on a rainy morning with hundreds
of my fellow humans, I hum,
eyes closed, absorbing the harmonics
of people unified in this moment,
putting subtle song into the air.
And now, there they are, humming along—
the ones who taught my sister and me
to sing harmony, I often joke, before
they’d let us sing melody, to fill out
the family quartet:
Daddy sang bass, Mama sang tenor
Me and little sister would join right in there
Singing seems to help a troubled soul…
It did help, and it does now,
reminding me that we are not alone,
that generations of loved ones still
surround us. And if I listen closely,
I hear him. I hear her. I hear little sister
joining the angels among us—
One of these days and it won’t be long
I’ll rejoin them in a song…
No, the circle won’t be broken.
There’s a silver lining behind every cloud.
Together, in this great human family,
listen to us hum.
•••
“Daddy Sang Bass,” music and lyrics by Carl Perkins
Well, hot damn,
if I’m not writing the final check
to the bank to make this old house
mine for real.
And all I can think of is,
Did you ever think you’d see this?
No, you did not, leaving the party
early, as you did, which I know
was not how you wanted it.
But look, sweetie. We did it.
Took me a few more minutes
than I thought, but now,
as I walk through our house—
where some nights I still awaken
to the soft pad of your footsteps
in the hall and the jingle of Buddy’s tags
on his blue collar—
I whisper into the dark,
knowing how close you are,
how thin the veil between
my side and yours,
thank you, I love you,
yipppeeeeeee!
thankyouthankyouthankyou.
How do we live so exposed,
like a roll of film that, once opened,
can no longer render an image?
The bare scaffolding of a tree, its
spidery legs no longer encased
in earth—how does it survive?
As we must—by sending a single
sturdy taproot deep into whatever
soil we can find, leaving some tender
parts vulnerable to what will come.
We must bear up under the onslaught
of too much—rain, sun, wind, betrayal—
leaving our outer limbs sore and blistered.
But look at this view—what’s flowing
or flying by, what comes to rest on us,
a stage for the living, what perches or preens,
rests or stands sentinel, keeping watch as
so much swirls around us,
peeled open as we are. Unveiled. Resilient.
I understand the need for some bucking up
in the dark times, the impulse to light candles
halfway between the winter solstice and
spring equinox—
the tradition of renewal in Candlemas
or Imbolc, as the seeds of spring begin
to stir in the belly of Mother Earth. Not
to mention that groundhog peeping out,
whether or not he sees his shadow.
Even in a place of mostly sunny winter days,
so come the dark ones, when the world turns
cold, and ice sheets our paths, ready to trip
us up. A time when tyrants rant, and tribes
become more tribal, when generosity of spirit
seems, like the leaves, to have vanished.
Then I look for moments of lightening,
ever-present signs that kindness has not
gone dormant. I light candles, inhale
the compassion shown to me by so many,
seen and unseen, living and not.
I try to find the halfway point between
here and gone, to do something for someone
else this day, a bit of benevolence
to let someone know that they—
like me, like you—
are not alone.
•••
Feb. 2 is, indeed, the halfway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. Not only is it Groundhog Day (if the groundhog sees its shadow, so the theory goes, then there are six more weeks of winter; if not, spring is on its way), but it’s also the time of the Japanese Lantern Festival and the Chinese Spring Festival.
The second of February also prompts the celebration of Imbolc, a pre-Christian festival that blessed the spring planting for the coming year while celebrating the return of the light. Candlemas, with its Christian roots, was once a time when priests would bless candles to be used in homes the rest of the year.
Most important, Feb. 2 signals that the light is steadily returning, winter is on its way out, and spring will soon return.
•••
Nightly we travel back and forth
on a gentle ancestral river,
swimming together in warm
water—no rapids or rocks in sight—
those who’ve come and gone
lending me their insight.
They do not speak, but they
smile, hum, wink, as if we share
secrets, which, I suppose, we do.
And though I want to ask questions—
so many questions—I float with
them, faces up, humming,
each of us moon-kissed,
soaking up blessing after
blesséd blessing
shining down on us.
(for Deb)
As the first daffodil
pops up its brave yellow head
on the second-to-last day of January,
the sign in her yard that she planted
the first time still proclaims:
• Black lives matter
• Women’s rights are human rights
• No human is illegal
• Science is real
• Love is love
• Kindness is everything
And I remember my similar sign,
wonder where’s it’s got to—
did I tuck it away or let it go,
thinking it was no longer needed?
Imagining—silly me—that somehow
we’d solved all those thorny issues,
knowing better, of course,
but not wanting to admit
how we still have such a long way
to go, how now, again, more than ever,
we need those signs, not just
stuck in our yards, but plastered
in our hearts and minds,
lovingkindness the order of every day,
each of us looking out for us all
because, truly, there is no them.
(for Donna)
Second from the left wall,
separated from my sister’s by a sink,
hers always so much tidier than mine.
Lately, in emptying those drawers,
she has pulled out the snarl of yarn bits
and hair ribbons and released them
into their hereafter, along with other stuff
I must have ignored when I left that house
in 1979, about to be a senior in college,
far more preoccupied with moving into
my first apartment and my duties as editor
of the college newspaper, certain that I’d
never live in that house again. And I didn’t.
Now, with our mother gone, my sister and I
tug the roots of our family tree from
every cupboard, every drawer, each one
a time capsule that elicits groans and smiles,
saddened and charmed in the remembering.
Here’s my pink hand mirror with its
girly flowers on one side, dusty but still
serviceable. And here’s an assortment
of barrettes, my favorite the leather peace
symbol with a stick through it that I poked
through my unruly blonde hair. Here’s
my retainer, looking like a creepy
wire-and-plastic bug, and a fine-toothed
yellow comb. The faithful Mickey Mouse
nightlight—always have a nightlight
in the bathroom, our mother insisted,
as I do in mine to this day.
What’s not there, long gone, is the piece
of binder paper on which I painstakingly
printed the times tables, 2s through 12s,
once taped to the wall next to the toilet,
to help me memorize them. Not my idea,
but, my father said, What else do you have
to do while you’re sitting there?
My two-years-younger sister stitched
those sums into her mind far sooner
than I, who still can’t tell you what 6 x 12
amounts to. But, as I said way back then,
I can write you a poem. Isn’t that better?
We have the best conversations now that she’s dead.
She’s become a much better listener.
I talk to her when I am alone in her house
sorting through her things. I try not to say,
“Why do you have so many…?”
Because there are so many… of everything.
I don’t think of her as a hoarder
so much as an archivist, if not a thoughtful one.
She’d just shove things farther back in drawers
or cupboards and closets and forget them.
So now my sister and I dig through the archaeology
of our childhoods, unearthing treasures long forgotten.
“You kept these?” I ask my mother, as I finger
two pink plastic curlers rolling around like puppies
in one of the small drawers in what she called
“the girls’ bathroom.”
She does not respond, and I know the answer.
She did not so much keep them as forget about them,
and it turns out that finding these old bones,
trinkets of who we once were,
might just be the greatest delight in this untangling of a life.
Güd wrtr 