Güd wrtr

(for Sue and Donna)

Two of us were born to my mother,
the other, next door best friend, to another mother,
who is now gone, but who was part of the village

that raised us all, we three aware of time
not so much passing as disappearing on a poof
of cloud scudding across hazy summer sky.

I cannot imagine my childhood without either of them,
me bookended by the tall one eight months older
and the blonde one younger by two years

and three months—each of those months counting
hugely when we were girls to advance us further
into the world, farther from the lakeside circle

where we grew. As neighbors, as Scouts, as band
mates, as carpool buddies—our mothers in bridge
foursomes, who drove the carpools and schlepped

kids miles into town, who fed us and kept us
clothed and nudged us to practice our instruments
and came to every band concert. Who made us

believe that we could do anything, be anything
we wanted. And we did. We are, each of us
60-somethings, so far from our 8- and 6-year-old

selves who met when one set of parents set
us down next door to the other, and three girls
met, one of them a solo act, probably never

dreaming she’d end up part of a trio, just as
the duet never imagined a third. But here
we are, my dears. Here we so blessedly are.

(for Deborah Meltvedt)

She’s embarrassed to ask, but my friend whose birthday
is nine days before mine is coming in near midnight
on a train from Fresno,

and, late night writer that I am, how can I not offer
to pick her up? Especially when she’ll be chugging
into the Art Deco train station in our city,

and, if I manage to snag a photo or two, there
could be a poem in it—something about friendship
being like a train with some hackneyed metaphor

that has stalled far down the track. But give me
a minute or five. Let me stand on this windy platform
waiting for her suitcase to arrive, my heart

smiling at my fine writing friend, my walking buddy,
whose presence lifts me in ways I can’t describe—
she herself a fine present and the first to wish

me many happy returns—as the clock ticks into
the wee hours of the day that commemorates
the completion of my 66th trip around the sun,

sending me into yet another wondrous year.

adverb: (as the copying of a text) letter for letter

•••

(for Gerry Colón)

I learned to type literatim,
hunting and pecking letter by letter,
as most people do,

in my case, on my parents’ small
manual Smith Corona, standard
black, elite type, which meant

that it was the smaller of the two
available typewriter fonts.
We preferred the elite—

more words per line or page—
and for us wordy writers, we
needed the condensed type

to get said what needed saying.
Though I took a summer school
typing class, it was Mrs. Colón

in Room 206 at Oakmont High
who got me up to speed on her
snazzy IBM Selectric, setting

me before the best typing
machine of its era, directing me
to retype story after story

by novice journalists onto half
sheets of newsprint to be driven
across town to typesetters

at the Press-Tribune, whose
super-speedy fingers transferred
those words into long, slender

columns that, once returned to us,
we delightedly ran through the hot
wax machine, then affixed onto

newspaper-sized sheets that
the P-T magically transformed
into Norse Notes, my second paper.

By then I’d retired my neighborhood
paper, though its name—the Granite
Bay Gazette—would live on at

another high school, born much later,
as I went on to toil at the college newspaper
and then a few others, along with

a magazine and an international
news service, typing, as Gerry Colón
taught me, literatim, pressing

keys on typewriters and typesetting
machines and later computer
keyboards one letter at a time—

accuracy always more important
than speed. Three typos per page
max, carefully fixed with penciled

proofreaders’ marks. I hear her
still as I type, the same questions
I would direct to my college

journalism students decades later:
Did you check the spelling of
the first AND last name? Just once?

Check again. You can’t be too careful.

When you walk among them,
they seems like they’ll be here
waving and bobbing their happy heads
forever, growing by the long dirt road
leading to the farm.

Like an LP you can play again and again,
the leggy zinnias and butterfly-winged
cosmos flutter on a blessedly cool
summer morning that you didn’t
expect after weeks of a bumper crop
of heat.

Nor did you expect all this loveliness
on U-Pick day amid the furrows
of the farmer’s crop—the tomatoes
and zucchini running so amuck
that they are pressed upon you
along with the stems you have
snipped as you walk the rows,
clippers and bag in hand.

Clouds skip like a flock of sky sheep
high in the wide-open blue, and you
pause at each of the farmer’s
philosophical signs planted carefully
along the long row of growth:

Cultivating your daily life:
Plant three rows of peas
Peace of mind
Peace of heart
Peace of soul

Plant four rows of squash:
Squash gossip
Squash indifference
Squash grumbling
Squash selfishness

Plant four rows of lettuce:
Lettuce be faithful
Lettuce be kind
Lettuce be patient
Lettuce really love one another

Out here—where the idea
is to clip flowers for others,
put each stem into a waiting jar,
then give it away—you embrace
the lettuce really love one another

idea, whisper it like a mantra or a
prayer as you tuck a merry zinnia
blossom into your peace of heart,
pledging to embody such generosity
on this day and every day of your
sweet, long-playing life.

•••

For Jill Batiansila and Cliff Wilcox, generous farmers extraordinaire in Elk Grove, California, and for the Together We Heal community.

•••

There will be another U-Pick day at Cliff Wilcox’s farm in Elk Grove, just south of Sacramento, on Saturday, Aug. 3, from 9:30–11:30 a.m. Tickets from $10–$25. Proceeds to benefit Together We Heal, a Sacramento regional nonprofit dedicated to those who are grieving. Information and tickets available in advance here.

(for Sue Butler and Antsy McClain, with love and thanks)

The light that gets lost
is blue at the edges,
the kind that, if you could
soar high enough,

you might see hugging
the curvature of the Earth
like a soft baby blanket,
wrapping this blue marble
in light that does not
touch you, cannot
touch you, but
holds you, nonetheless,

not as gravity pins you,
but much more gently,
the blue embrace
of something you can’t name,
that feels like being found,
like coming home,
a twinkling blue under
a star-filled sky.

I practiced it multiple times a day
from March on, after Mr. Rolicheck,
my eighth grade homeroom teacher,
commanded that I sing a solo at
graduation.

How did he know that I could sing?
He knew that I loved to write,
returned story after story with
the directive at the top: Again!

Usually with suggestions—
“Let’s hear them talk to each other.”
“Let’s see them moving around.”
“Locate them in a place with
just a few details.”

And I’d dutifully scribble a new version,
hoping to earn my first editor’s approval,
the one who told me, when I summoned
the nerve to ask why I had to do
so many rewrites,

“Because you, Miss Haag, have potential.”

I inhaled the deep voice on that talltall man
that pingponged inside my chest, eventually
finding permanent lodging somewhere
south of my heart, where belief took up
residence.

But sing? My parents were singers who
harmonized at the drop of a middle C,
barbershoppers that they were, who taught
my sister and me the lead and tenor
parts to their baritone and bass should
someone feel the need to sing a tag
around the dinner table.

I wanted to sing folk songs or pop tunes,
envied Karen Carpenter’s dulcet voice,
and so chose one of the hardest songs
in her repertoire to wobble out of my
larynx.

Who was the accompanist who fingered
the school’s upright piano as I rehearsed
after school? As Mr. Rolicheck and my mom
listened. “Getting better, Miss Haag,” he’d say.
“A little flat there, Janis,” she’d say.
“But you hit the high note.”

And when the fateful evening arrived,
my classmates and their parents crammed
into the tepid multi-purpose room,
me in my polyester yellow mini dress
minus the clumsy headgear that typically
attached to my braces (thank you, Mom).
Equal parts terrified and exhilarated,
I stood before my first microphone
and shakily sang,

Bless the beasts and the children,
For in this world they have no voice,
They have no choice.

I fixed my gaze over the seated heads,
looking at the tall man with the shaved head
standing at the back of the room, his eyes
closed, fingers of one hand at his chin
listening to his pupil with potential.

Light their way
When the darkness surrounds them;
Give them love, let it shine all around them.

And when I finished, he opened his eyes,
smiled and brought his big hands
together in a clap that caromed
around my chest, in that heart spot
where it resides still.

•••

(In memory of Robert Rolicheck, mentor extraordinaire)

Bainbridge Island, Halloween 2014

(for Georgann)

•••

He sees the path in the wall of green
before I do, veers onto it, and at
the other end of the leash, I say:
She takes you here, doesn’t she?

Or perhaps it’s the other way around
as I follow the shaggy wag of the aging
blond boy whose paws have already
picked up detritus of the woods,
the leavings of seasons underfoot,
foliage that has let go and drifted groundward
as it does every day in the grand forest.

In a few hours little ghouls and superheroes
will take over this island, making their rounds,
knocking on doors, but here, now,
the only costumed one is me, the visitor
from a dry land masquerading
as one of the rain people in a plum coat.

Mushrooms display their jaunty caps,
frilly mosses wear their everyday frocks,
brightening the wet wood they cling to.
Though some trees still sport dulled yellows
and crimsons, I inhale green with every step.

I wish she was walking with us,
though her big dog does a fine job showing
me the way. Today is a down day after
yesterday’s up day. This is how it goes.

For every up there is a down.
After preparing a place for me, fetching
me home to her island, she sleeps
in her bed plump with pillows
under the soft duvet, the small gray cat
at her feet, the window opened just enough
to let in the green and the patter of rain—
her favorite sound in all the world.

She continues to teach me patience,
about resting when the body can’t continue,
about bearing illness with grace,
about love in the form of a big
blond dog on the floor by her bed,
his feet clean and dry, sound asleep,
waiting for whatever comes next.

You are a part of me I do not yet know.
—Valerie Kaur

•••

Hope begins with understanding—
or, at least, the willingness to listen,

understanding that understanding
may come later—or not—

but in listening, truly listening,
setting aside our uniquely human

tendency to immediately render
a judgment, at least in our heads,

if not our hearts, we might find
the merest bit of connection,

the possibility of common ground,
even with those who seem or think

or appear to be utterly unlike us.
Hope—yes, the thing with feathers

that never stops singing the tunes
without the words—

is the bird trilling its generous
music behind all the noise.

If we quiet ourselves, listen with
patience, understanding may

fly in, too, which may be the most
hopeful gift of all.

They’re the same age,
my fella and this prez,

rocking a similar snowy
fringe and kind blue eyes—

not to mention the classic
public-service-is cool aviators.

My fella (an old newsdog who
photographed a prez or eight

in his long career) says he can’t
imagine how this prez keeps

the always-on-the-move schedule
that he does, seeing as how my

(long retired) fella really cherishes
his senior afternoon nap time.

But after 36 years in the Senate,
the veep gig and now as

the big cheese, as this prez
makes way for the next

generation of a younger,
possibly female prez,

my fella applauds this prez’s
decades of public service

that have led to this big
time-to-go-Joe moment.

And, saying that he hopes
this prez will get to tuck

into some quality snooze
time in the near future,

my fella heads for a little
sofa lie-down, a guy who

truly understands the
wisdom of a power nap.

It turns out that
wildebeests are gnus, and
gnus are wildebeests,

great, hairy African antelopes
resembling muscular cows with
curved horns, but wearing bushy
beards and manes accenting their
charcoal-striped outfits that
collectively makes a wildebeest
a gnu. And vice versa.

That improbable combination
of body parts prompted a
wordsmithing actor* to coin
a new collective noun,
making news of a group of gnus—

an implausibility of gnus.

Before that, they traveled simply
as herds, but now the largest of all
antelopes carries a clever appellation
for these wandering vegetarians
of the Serengeti.

More than a million of them join
hundreds of thousands of other
ungulates in the planet’s largest
migration from plains to savannah.

Look at them go: the zebras,
the gazelles, the wildebeests.
And look at what stalks them:
hyenas, lions, crocodiles.

Not all of them will make it.

So much wildlife on the move
that the great columns of gnus
can be seen from space, a stream
of migrants compelled to make
their way over the sea of desert
on a well-traveled route from
one territory to, with luck,
a place where the convoy
can land—

in a stomping ground that
feels something like home.

•••

* The wordsmithing actor/television writer/author who coined the collective noun “an implausibility of gnus” was James Lipton in his delightful book, “An Exaltation of Larks.” It contains more than a thousand collective nouns, some of which Lipton invented. Lipton was perhaps best known as the dean emeritus of the Actors Studio Drama School at Pace University in New York, and the creator and host of the television series, “Inside the Actors Studio.” He died in 2020 at age 93.