Güd wrtr

What if this is all we get of heaven?
—James Crews

As she lived her dying, my friend Julie
told me that she thought everyone
got the heaven they imagined.

Hers would be slathered in pink,
her favorite color, enjoy the just-right
temperature between warm and cool,
where she’d happily receive her
adored ones popping in for visits.

Heaven, I ventured, sounded
much like her earthly life.

Well, of course, honey, she said.

So if this is all we get of heaven,
my here and now works for me.
Though the greater world roils, I
find myself near the end of the day
writing inside my century-old house
with so much summer evening outside
that two men work in tandem to
dismantle a great length of backyard
fence, planting new redwood posts
into fresh concrete just before dark.

I walk outside to behold the
wide-angle view into the yard
next door, the embracing space
all the way to the alley—one man
spiraling an auger into the earth,
the other smoothing postholes
rimmed with fluffy dirt.

Isn’t this honest, sweaty effort
expended on my behalf surely
a divine gift, too?

Such caretaking by gentle men—
like my current beloved, as well as
my late father and long-gone
husband—who each performed
a thousand tasks, often unseen,
too often unappreciated—
on my behalf,

still working from their heavens
to make sure I have everything
I need—and so much more.

The old fence needs to come down,
which means this summer’s
over-the-top crop of morning glories,

literally spilling over the fence,
must meet an untimely death, which
kills a bit of something in me.

All day—not just in the morning—
light gleams down the throat
of each purple blossom,

generously sized and so happy
I cannot help but smile at them.
I have caused their early demise,

and I mourn them, wondering
how long it will take for them
to grow to such a mass that

they’ll overtake the new fence.
Years, I imagine, though if I long
for such purple majesty,

I need only to look across the yard
at the opposite fence where
the cousins of the departed

smother that surface, drip onto
the out-of-their-minds leggy ferns
that, with no help from me,

bend as gracefully as ballerinas
toward the grass. Their days
are numbered, too, of course,

as yours are, and mine, and those
of ones we don’t want to disappear.
But even in that trampled earth

where the new fence is rising,
glory lives and will make itself
known again. Just wait.

(for Kat Fleming, massage master)

You know how you feel yourself
levitating off the table a bit,

your body barely kept from
ballooning up to the ceiling

by her hands doing that thing
she does, her strong fingers

holding up the back of your
head along the occipital ridge,

so that whatever schmutz
you’re carrying drains like

fine sand onto the table—it
feels that way anyway—

and when it’s over, when you
have to somehow unstick

the melted you from the table,
reassemble all your parts into

the bony structure of you,
your satin self still drifting

somewhere near the ceiling?
That. That’s what her hands

do, somehow allowing you
escape the body that serves

as the garage for your soul
while planting you firmly

into the rich soil of yourself,
and you are so wobbly-grateful

afterward that the word
massage hardly covers it,

the bliss of being. Just that,
which is everything.

(for Marilyn Reynolds, above with Shelley Burns)

For the last time on your lawn
Shelley led us in Tuesday
morning exercise—

and though you weren’t there,
you were, because, though it’s
actually not your lawn

anymore, and you’re in new
digs across town, it’s still
your place to us.

You say goodbye,
and I say hello.

We wouldn’t be twisting
to the Beatles without a little
help from you, our friend,

who gathered us all together,
who invited us to your lawn
to exercise and lighten our hearts

during the worst of the worst
isolation most of us have known.
Today, Shelley at one point

urged us to tighten our
“feminine details,” which,
of course, made us laugh,

which, of course, made it
impossible to tighten our
girl parts for a bit.

I imagine that I was not
the only one thinking,
Feminine details!

Marilyn would love that.
And Shelley said to me,
You might need to use that.

And I said, echoing another
Beatles favorite, I will.
And I am, because honestly,

I do this Tuesday exercise
because of a little help
from all of you, my friends.

Here comes the sun,
and I say it’s all right.
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes.

Just as you never tell your children
which of them is your favorite
(they all are, right?),

you don’t reveal to the people sitting
around the table, writing their
art out,

that they’re your dream team,
the ones you want around the table
in heaven,

if there is a heaven. And there
damn well better be because I
want to land in a loft like this

with the just-right temperature
so I don’t have to adjust the A/C
on a summer morning

(oops, too cool… nope, too stuffy),
pulling out the space heaters,
layering up in winter.

Let there be no too cold or too hot
around the celestial writing table,
and let me write

there with the dream team,
unabashedly, among my favorite
writers and humans.

Lucky me to have fallen into
this place, this occupation,
these people quite accidentally.

Or is that how you made it appear,
you crafty word gods?
The ones who placed pens

in our hands, poised our
fingers over keyboards,
whispering, Go!

And we do,
oh, we so do.

I take the back way home after
an afternoon with friends in the town
that embraced me four decades ago,
one that I’ve never released either.

It’s high summer fruit season, and,
I suspect, that if I head north on
Pleasants Valley Road toward Winters,
though the thermometer’s spilling
over the century mark, I might find
some folks sitting on the edge of their
orchards with baskets of sweetness
for sale.

A few miles down the road I see
the hand-lettered sign—Apricots!—
as I drive past, hang a U-ie to return.

I join two farm women under an oak
older than all three of us put together,
mother and daughter both well seasoned,
red-cheeked and cheerful, selling ’cots
pulled from their trees a dozen yards
behind them.

I ask how long the family’s been ranching,
and the farm wife chuckles. “Forever.
Married in a long time ago.” She shifts
on the walker that doubles as her chair
and shoots a thumb over her shoulder
toward her husband, a third-generation
rancher standing in the orchard, looking
up at his crop hanging like hundreds
of miniature suns amid so much greenery.

I introduce myself, say I used to work
for the paper in town long ago, name
my husband who did, too. She squints
and shades her eyes with a hand that,
I imagine, has picked its share of fruit,
not to mention capably dealt with
all manner of chores.

She blinks in recognition, asks,
“He a tall, dark-haired photographer?”

And when I say, yes, he was, I feel him
pop in as her eyes brighten. “He took
our picture, put us in the paper more
than once.” She pats her daughter’s hand.
“You remember him. Handsome fella.
He still livin’?”

And when I say, no, her face falls.
“I’m so sorry, honey,” she says, as if it
happened yesterday instead of 23 years
ago in the tiny town I’m soon to drive through.
I thank her, ask the price of an overfull basket.

“Eight dollars,” says her daughter, offering
a bag to receive the ripe fruit.

When I proffer the bills, the farm wife
takes them and holds my fingers
for a moment. Our eyes smile at each
other as we think of husbands—mine
hovering nearby, as he does, hers still
hard at work well into his later years,
who looks my way and raises a hand
in greeting. I wave back and thank
the womenfolk, already talking
to new customers who’ve just
pulled up, as eager as I for
a sweet taste of summer.

•••

(With thanks to Jim and Deb Moehrke,
Vacaville friends for more than 40 years)

I hear that the Pedrick Road fruit stand
has cherries for a dollar a pound,

and instantly, I see myself in the car
heading down there, though

I have perfectly good cherries
in a bowl within reach.

But not for long. It’s June,
cherry time, and they’re falling

off the trees like rubies in this
season of plenty. I forget about

cherry lust every year, but it
hits me like a hot flash as

the temperature crawls toward
the century mark this solstice

weekend. All I want is that
firm succulence, a hint of

tartness deep and indulgent
in the mouth. I pop one in,

swirl it like merlot before
taking the first gentle bite,

uncoupling pit from fruit,
pursing lips for a hearty

ptooie! as the joy of cherry—
summer’s blessed bounty at last—

blossoms on my happy,
happy tongue.

about my favorite kind of light,
blueblue end-of-day sky,

wisp of cloud
paintbrushed in icing

slightly starboard
of tree tip, I admire

the sun on its longest day
starbursting

into a halo so perfect
it looks airbrushed—

which, whisked by wind,
it is.

Komorebi, the Japanese
call it—sunlight leaking

through leaves, beams
piercing shadowed

foliage like arrows on
this glittering solstice.

Call it summer, baby,
and oh, let it shine.

You, who have been split open
by love or loss or both,
somehow still stand,
though you have no idea
why.

You wonder if this gash,
reopened far too many times,
can possibly heal—
perhaps with divine sutures—
so that one day you’ll barely
perceive the trace of a scar.

It seems impossible
to your hollowed-out self,
but, dear one, trust us—

healing happens in the shadows
where there is always a little light,
even if your weary eyes can’t
perceive it.

What has enriched you—
and, yes, opened you
in joy and grief—
can one day fill you
again.

In fact, it already has.

•••

With thanks to Debra Bernier at Shaping Spirit for the inspiration! You can find Debra Bernier’s work here.

(for Nikki and Annie, remembering
their Gotcha Day, June 20, 2016)

•••

I fall into a bit of China
at the dumpling place in my
American city, across the street
from what used to be the newspaper
where my fella worked 40 years
and I spent three, the brick edifice
now a silent, hulking ghost, its spirit
hovering on the edges of our
consciousness.

Not unlike the trip I made with
Nikki to Changsha and Guangzhou
to fetch a girl named Joyful Purple Dragon
in her too-small wheelchair, rendering
Nikki an instant new mama, who’d
also toiled at the brick ghost 6,600
miles from the ancient land of ghosts.

Nikki, who’d lived there for a decade,
who introduced me to all things Chinese—
not least to chrysanthemum tea, the pale
floating flowers blooming in steaming
water cradled in a small, heavy iron pot,
which I’m delighted to find with dumplings
in my city, exactly eight years after Nikki
and Joyful Purple Dragon, became family.

This child who, even then, was also
called Annie, now squired around in
a snazzy purple chair, now a 15-year-old
American Chinese girl who still loves
to have her nails painted, who still loves
pink, who, if she could speak, might
tell the story of her long journey, who,
if she could swallow, might sample
a dumpling, sip some chrysanthemum
tea as her mama and I did in
her homeland,

whose ghosts surely live in her,
too—only the kindest ones, I hope,
her ancestors keeping watch,
offering protection and love as
this brilliant girl wheels through
her marvelous, miraculous life.