Güd wrtr

(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.

On a summer afternoon
we take a break from sorting,
Kelsey on the deck with eight
plastic bottles of vintage bubbles
that have lived in my garage
for decades.

“Are they still any good?” I ask.
Kelsey, much closer to her
bubble-blowing youth than I,
shrugs, then grins when I ask,
“You wanna test ’em?”

And so this young journalist—
soon to head cross country for
a newspaper fellowship, a woman
currently freelancing stories to
a number of magazines—gathers
the bottles, then sits on the edge
of the backyard deck blowing bubbles
with, I imagine, the enthusiasm
of her much younger self.

She assesses the blowing strength
of each plastic wand that comes
in the bottles (bigger is better),
and the bubbles themselves, to
our surprise, perform admirably.

On the same afternoon, in another
town, my sister and brother-in-law
blow bubbles for their year-old
grandson, text a photo of his
delighted face, his arms reaching for
the vanishing bits of soapy air.

It seems that bubbles last forever,
or at least for a long time—
that we are never too old to pull
out a plastic soapy wand from
a bottle, purse our lips and blow,

then watch the multitude of
shimmery bubble sandwiches
float momentarily, then silently
pop, leaving traces of magic—
and not a little joy—behind.

So these daily attempts
at poems are really
essays?

Or, wait—”essay” as verb,
to attempt, to put
to the test.

To examine. Sure,
doesn’t every poem
do a bit of belly button

gazing? A weighing
of considerations?
But that means

more time meandering
through my mind,
when what would

serve me better
is to step into the new
red shoes and head

out for a test walk—
even into a day
that may ultimately

end up hotter
than many of us
might like,

to essay what might
be seen in the greater
world, amid trees

awash in every
shade of green,
to soak up a bit

of the warmth
we pined for
all winter long.

The morning I pull up at the springs,
bring forth the empty gallons ripe
for summer filling,

the only people present are women
bearing all sizes of containers from
a quick glug to a water cooler’s

worth of Bitney Springs’ best.
Of course, it’s the women, I think,
the women at the well

collecting water for the thirsty
at home. I look for a man asking
one of them for a drink,

but I see no one but women like me.
We gather as strangers in a common
task at this font of living water

tapped nearly a century ago by
the generous couple for whom
this road is named. As I open each

empty vessel, position it under
one of three faucets, watch it fill,
a form of grace fills me, too.

And then, a truck arrives;
a man steps out with a single
small bottle. “Time to fill up!”

he jokes. We smile, and I
step aside—“here you go”—
so the endlessly running tap

that has filled what needs
filling for me becomes
his. He nods his thanks,

extends his arm, which
dampens with splashes
that quickly overflow

his container. Then,
eyes closed, he dips his
head back, drinks deeply,

replenishing, I hope,
quenching the profound
thirst of his soul.

is anybody’s guess,
my father used to say—

that, and Don’t count
your chickens before

they’re hatched. And,
he’d tease my sister and me,

Eat your vegetables—
they’ll put hair on

your chest. As little
girls, we’d protest,

Daddy! We don’t want
hair on our chests!”

Which made him laugh
and come in for the tickle,

wrapping his big bear
arms around us,

a connection we still
feel decades later,

sneaking peeks at
our chests, just to

make sure.

•••

(for Roger E. Haag, 1930–2004)

(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.