(for Henry Alan Giel
from Great Aunt Jan)
So what do you think
of this world you’ve
landed in, tiny mammal?
These people from
whom you came caring
and carrying you,
propping you up,
their big, goofy faces
grinning at you.
You shining the light
of your sweet smile
on this space in time
that is yours to grow in,
to love and be loved in,
to call home
all the days of your
blessedly long,
joyful life.
I know you’re out there somewhere
Somewhere, somewhere
I know you’re out there somewhere
Somewhere you can hear my voice
I know I’ll find you somehow
Somehow, somehow
I know I’ll find you somehow
And somehow I’ll return again to you
—Justin Hayward (of the Moody Blues)
•••
Her mother gave her the name of her beloved
childhood doll—Susie—a name my best friend
Sue shortened to sound, well, less doll-like.
I’d never met Susie, the doll, and, to my surprise,
Sue hadn’t either. And to her surprise, after her
mother died, Sue found Susie tucked into a drawer
of Sue’s childhood dresser next to Sue’s childhood
bed in her mother’s house. Now, as Sue sorts
the lifetime of the woman who gave her life
as well as her favorite girl’s name, I have come
to help. I take each of her mother’s coats
from the closet near the front door, fold them
carefully and place them in a fresh box as the
Moody Blues waft from Sue’s phone, songs we
came to love sitting around a record player in
her parents’ guest room in their long-ago house
by the lake. We pause to look at her wedding china,
to touch her silverware, admire the photos
of Nell Buchanan Lester six months after she left
this place she called home. We hope she’s out there
somewhere with her people, who are Sue’s people,
too. And Susie’s, who, by all rights, is Sue’s older sister.
Both of them—plus me, the girl next door—
spent a sweet afternoon remembering the woman
who dearly loved her two Susies, who,
I have no doubt, is still holding them close
wherever she is now.
•••
for Susan Marie Lester
(Sue, Suz, Susie—by any name, the best best friend ever)
adjective: Having the same or coincident boundaries;
meeting at the ends; within the same boundaries.
•••
You created my boundaries before you
were aware of my presence deep
in your womb—
just a wee egglet bumped into
by Dad’s wiggly sperm and… boom!
Embryonic me, my perimeter
sheltered, nurtured, molded by and
in yours. One made two, inextricably
bonded in the early days of us,
from the moment of birth
the offspring working so hard
to separate from the architect
of its origin. But now—as you
navigate through your dimming
years, though you hope for
many more—I see our borders
meshing again. We are coincident.
We meet at the ends.
Here, let me take your hand—
not only to help you navigate
the shadowed curb or offer
small ease for what pains you—
but also to offer reassurance
as you must have given me
when, long ago, my tiny fingers
reached for yours, as I took my
first tentative steps through
the world into which you’d
delivered me, propping me up,
whispering,
Here, all this is yours. Isn’t it
beautiful? Isn’t this place
lucky to have you in it, too?
Are you addicted to your phone?
In the doctor’s office waiting room
a masked man leans over and says to his wife,
Some people just have to be on their phones all the time,
as I begin writing a poem on mine. With barely
a thought, I tuck away the phone and retrieve
notebook and pen from my satchel, realizing
that I must look to most people as if I’m
texting or hooked on social media or some app,
which, in a way, I am. But the word cascade
has begun. I imagine that people might think
similarly if they see me walking my neighborhood
talking into my phone—another addict, they might
scoff, which, in a way, is true. They have no idea—
as I did not—how this newfangled technology
allows for spontaneous creativity at odd times
without having to pull out pen and paper—
which also can be rude and obvious—
so a poet with words burbling from the brain
like fresh water falling over a rocky lip
can quickly capture them in a friendly receptacle—
before they splash into nothingness,
before they disappear into forever.
On my way to Mom’s, I drive into Beals Point
to admire the spectacularly full lake,
the water rarely so high that seeing
the vastness of blue submerging
granite outcroppings winked with mica
feels almost miraculous.
The flotilla of Canada geese looks happy,
a giant flock of fifty sculling toward shore
in a perfect line that my synchronized
swimming team would have envied.
They turn as if hearing a musical cue
into the curved arm of shore where I
stand like a coach watching their
performance, their black eyes and
matching velvet necks swiveling in my
direction. I know what they’re thinking:
human = food.
But I have come empty handed, and,
because I talk to pretty much every living
thing that approaches—walking,
swimming, crawling or flying—I say
most sincerely, I’m sorry I didn’t bring
you anything.
One tall fellow gracefully rises to his
feet in the shallows. Honk! he honks.
I hold out empty hands. Really sorry,
I say, and he flutters his feathered bottom
back into swimming mode. As one,
the flock moves on, looking, I presume,
for shores with good grass to nibble—
or perhaps more cooperative humans.
Later, after our Momday appointments,
she asks me to drive her into what, after
almost sixty years, I still think of as our side
of the lake lapping up the trees and boat
ramps of Granite Bay. Even from the car,
we see the flock—still fifty strong—
paddling the shoreline miles from
where they started that morning.
There they are! I say, delighted by these
residents, who, like me, might well be
the second generation of their families
to call Folsom Lake home,
who, if they are lucky, are taking in
this beautiful summer day on the
water with kin at their side—perhaps
the ones who taught them to swim
in these waters, who urged them not
to worry about how deep or how shallow
the blue, to trust that they will float,
held by forces they will never see,
but will support them all the days
of their lives.
Someone asked,
Do you think he might’ve lived longer
if you hadn’t left him?
I didn’t say,
That’s the million-dollar question,
isn’t it?
I didn’t say,
Hmmm… I never thought of that,
not once
in the 23 years since he died
alone in the house he rented
in a small town
40 miles away from me.
No one has asked,
Were you happier
living separately? Never
divorcing because you felt
like family?
Just the unanswerable:
Would he be alive today
if you hadn’t…?
And as hot guilt creeps up
my skull, I feel him next to me,
as he often shows up,
hovering by my right shoulder,
not speaking, just smiling his
sweet smile,
bearded, as he was for so
many years, silently urging
me to look into his
soft olive eyes, where I will
see what he always gave me—
nothing but forgiveness,
nothing, in fact, but
You did good, Toots.
And I believe him.
not today but
some day, let it come
without warning,
say, as I walk
a sweetly shaded path,
coming to the first
of several gentle
packed-earth steps
placed by thoughtful
hands
and let the path
be bordered in late
spring green verging
on summer gold
under the most
ordinary of trees,
which, of course,
only appear
ordinary
and let ocean
sounds waft up
the path,
the lifeblood
of sea meeting
rock on which
generations of
sleek black birds
have courted
and nested and
raised young
and out there
over the deep blue
let a small
contingent of
pelicans dip
and glide
allowing me
to fledge
—you were born
with wings—
and at last
take flight,
joining them
in their journey
into mystery
Crow black
cascading down her back
like kelp massaged
by the sea
braids to her waist—
grown ‘em all my life,
she says to the hoots
of other Black girls
in my classroom
who pooh-pooh
that notion
hair’ll break it gets
that long—gotta be
extensions
Decades later
I stand on a trail
overlooking an
ocean cove,
transfixed by
by long swaths
of kelp curling
and uncurling
like noodles
and I see
Anastasia unfurling
her braids after
class one day,
opening them plait
by plait, letting
the tight curls
tumble down
her back
swaying like
seaweed
undulating
atop the
navy blue
all of it natural,
as real as it gets,
she tells the doubters
running their fingers
through her cascade
of curls,
the chorus of
the converted,
joy ricocheting
off classroom
walls—
Girl! This all yo hair?
Dayum!
This all yo hair!
Dr. Janis peers through the magical
machine that looks like a giant pair
of glasses on a swinging pole—
something Elton might have worn
onstage in the 1970s—
her eyes on the opposite side
of the device inspecting mine.
She’s done this for years, keeping
watch on conditions that, little by little,
darken and narrow my view.
Some can be helped; some cannot.
The eye, she tells me, is as plump
and translucent as a pearl onion
when we are young, allowing light
to easily pass through the dome-
shaped cornea that helps us focus,
through the pupil and the lens,
to land on the retina that turns
light into electrical signals, zings
them through the optic nerve
to the brain, which translates
them into images.
As our eyes age, she says, the supple
layers of onion harden and yellow,
making it harder for light to reach us.
As she looks deeply into my eyes,
I think of my aging layers of onion,
wishing that I might gently peel off
the crackly covering as easily as
slicing into a fragrant bulb to make
soup, somehow returning the pearly
onions of my youth to my ocular field.
No wonder I cry when I take apart
an onion, watching its tightly bound
sections loosen and fall on the cutting
surface. I weep as I inhale its aroma,
as I chop it into small pieces that will
vanish when they morph into soup,
becoming something I can no longer see
no matter how hard I look.
•••
for Dr. Janis Lightman, O.D., with much gratitude
•••
The magical machine that eye care professionals use to determine an optical prescription
is called a Phoropter, a device invented more than a century ago. It measures refraction
or how a lens should be curved and shaped to correct vision.
Even with the car’s A/C pumping
its little compressor heart out,
I feel my left arm burning through
the driver’s side window,
having left the cool coastline,
speeding just a little over
the I-5 limit north toward home
on the second century-plus
afternoon of the summer.
Next to me he says,
It happens, the one who is not
thrown by temps I deem too high
or too low. Get used to it, Janis,
which is funny from one native
Californian to another, one of us
a former lifeguard on a pool deck
that routinely hit 100. My idea
of a perfect summer day
is 90ish with a breeze.
But every degree over 100
feels like 5, and his Honda A/C
is not remotely keeping up its end
of a bargain it probably doesn’t
remember making, which to me is:
Cool when we need cool;
heat when we need heat
already.
Finally I give up, exit to locate
a chain diner with decent bathrooms—
but also, as it happens,
with struggling A/C.
Get used to it, I tell myself,
as if I’m not. Our hots are getting hotter,
our colds colder, and, as I first heard
from a high school biology teacher
in the early 1970s:
It just might be too late to turn this ship
around—this ship we didn’t build
but figured out how to ruin
in a century or so.
On days like today, I can envision
the ship of the world ending in fire,
not ice, which, as Mr. Ford said, might
not be a bad thing. Give the planet
a chance to recover once we humans
are out of the way.
Hit reset. Start over. Perhaps with new
beings who won’t be so greedy,
so dismissive, who insist it isn’t so,
who won’t be—please, climate gods—
like us.
Güd wrtr 