Güd wrtr

Up early (for me), I drive
her Hyundai to her town,
which long ago was my town,
which is this morning my town
again, to sit in a shiny showroom
near the $40K snazzy electric car,
which I will likely never acquire in
this lifetime, though I love the idea
of a gasless car, but at this point I can
only afford to pose with an arrest-me-red
hybrid Sonata, which, it seems to me, should
come with a keyboard ready to perform, oh, say,
Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, which, it seems
to me, should be included in the car’s repertoire,
that solo piano piece with its somber tones, one
of the first classical pieces I recognized, with
its deceptively simple opening adagio but as
complex as that cherry of a car chock full of
ingenious engineering most of us will never
understand. But if we refocus our perspective,
we might perceive ourselves in its gleaming
surface, which, it seems to me, is not unlike
looking at the glossy lifted lid of a grand
piano, its strings and soundboard
primed for action, ready to rev
up into another brilliant
masterpiece.

•••

You can listen to Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata (solo piano by Rousseau
with special effects) here.

Even the most ordinary, doe-brown
versions discarded by Canada geese
as common in this park as leaves.

My walking buddy does not ask why
I bend to pluck them from the path,
nor what I will do with the feathers,

which I appreciate, because, in truth,
I don’t do much—add them to the coffee cup
that sits atop an old manual typewriter

in my dining room, morning sun
coating their glossiness. In the cup
the quills flock together, their tips,

I imagine, could perhaps be whittled
into writing instruments, dipped
into an inkwell of liquid midnight

and applied to paper—every scratchy
stroke helping the poem to fledge,
to take wing, jubilantly, and fly.

•••

For Cindy Domasky and her beloved kestrel friends in Prairie du Chien,
Wisconsin. Watch the live kestrel cam here.

This face has the countenance
of every crone I have known,
the one I am becoming—

not the malicious, disagreeable,
sinister old woman, but one
who embodies wisdom,

inner knowing, intuition,
as all the crones I have ever
known have done for me,

guiding my younger self
through transitions, sitting
with me, urging me to go

inward, as I did and do now.
At my dining room table,
I sit with a younger woman,

listen, offer gentle words,
say with a knowing I’ve only
recently come to know:

It’s all about the love, my
dear, not about possession
or jealousy. Just the love.

You are adored, even when
you think you are not.
You are held by hands

you cannot see. You are wise,
you are smart, and you are
strong. You will only become

wiser and stronger. I promise.
I remind my own crone self
that hag springs

from the Greek hagia—
holy one—becoming an
instrument of the divine,

dancing to the reliable
drumbeat of my blown-open,
ever-healing, wise heart.

•••

With thanks to sculptor Debra Bernier for the inspiration.

On Memorial Day
the Artist in a Van parks her VW bus
on the sidewalk by McKinley Park
between the rose garden
and the tennis courts,

she and her mama setting up camp
chairs on the shady lawn,
the daisy-stickered van with its
cargo door wide open for walkers-by
like me to gawk at.

Three times I hustle by with a new
walking buddy, intrigued by the
casual display of block-print cards
peeking from two Thompson’s
cigar boxes. But, not wanting to
interrupt our in-motion conversation,
I keep going, thinking I’ll return,
aware that my best intentions tend
to wander like cats looking for
the just-right afternoon nap spot.

Hours later, to my surprise, I find
them still there, the Artist in a Van
on the lawn with her mama, a quilter,
outdoors enjoying the holiday.

“Sure, the cards are for sale,”
the Artist says, the proceeds to bolster
a Fair Oaks friend’s efforts to rescue
and rehome abandoned chickens.

I’ve read of this Good Samaritan, and,
as part of a team that did the same for
college campus cats, I’m happy to support
the fowl. I’m delighted by the Artist
in a Van’s kind heart, to stand and chat
about art and writing under an elder
sycamore’s leafy generosity,

and, on this glorious day of memory,
kick off summer by lingering
in the park, making new friends.

•••

With thanks to Ilsa Louise Hess, the Artist in a Van, and her mother Caroline.

May turns the home territory yellow,
spring green grasses giving way to
drying weeds the color of straw, our
nearly perennial state in this
golden state.

By mid-month only the poppies
continue to show off their bright
faces as the first wildflowers have
sped through their swift season,
emerging, flourishing, receding.

Nearly June, we miss those early
bloomers, grateful as we walk or
drive by for the blazing orange
reminders of our goldening place
under the sun.

I get the garage cleaned out and keep it that way,
not load it up with boxes that delivered stuff
important in the moment to my door? If I
get the back bedroom tidy of its full boxes
and bags of gifts and books and whatnot
so someone could actually walk on

Grandma’s pink oriental rug that, years ago,
I de-fringed, much of the fringe having
pulled out decades earlier? If I remember
how I came to acquire the pink rug—
was it Grandma’s, or do I just imagine
that it was?

If I’m able to clear out so much
of what I’ve acquired in six-and-a-half
decades that my house looks like Sonya’s
mostly empty one across the street before
her mind drifted away from her and she
went into care? If this place I consider mine
was easily turned over to someone who’d
sell it for nine time more than he and I
paid for it in the previous century?

What if I could plan it just right so that
I’d leave the place, if not squeaky clean,
less cluttered than it is now? As spare
as a zen meditation space or the plain
church I once saw in a Hawaiian jungle
holding only a rough koa wood altar,
empty candleholders and four small
pews. If we could simplify our existences,
lighten our load just before we make
the leap to hyperspace, or whatever
form of heaven we imagine?

Me, I’m aiming for a celestial library
with soft chairs for sitting, every
book imaginable for reading,
God (or whatever her name turns
out to be) the eternal librarian,
humming over my shoulder,

Have you read this one, honey?
I think you’ll love it.

…poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes,
they are sleeping… What we have to do
is live in a way that lets us find them.

—Naomi Shihab Nye from “A Valentine for Ernest Mann”

•••

If I take off my shoes
and tuck myself into bed,
might poems awaken,

peek their little syllabic heads
out from the insoles and decide,
now, now it’s safe to emerge?

And might different poems
sleep in different footwear?
Haiku in sandals, perhaps,

because three lines are
easy to hide even in such
an open-air environment?

Sonnets, well done ones,
might rest in more elegant
soles—nice heels—while

dirty limericks might feel more
at home in f***-me stilettos
or hang-loose flip-flops.

In any case I’m leaving
several pairs in my bedroom
tonight—the wider tennis

shoes more friendly to
bunions, the soft slippers
that cuddle older arches,

the favorite sandals with
rubber toes to guard against
stubbing. I want to see

if the poems in the bottoms
of my shoes walk in their
sleep, maybe hop up

on the bed and drape
themselves, like the old
cat, along my side,

warm and comforting,
leaving behind a trace
themselves,

in lines that might
beg to be written down
come morning.

The last time we made our way
through the airport to visit the spot
where he fell, his heart seizing in
a kind of arrest he’d never imagined,

we found it glassed-in and utterly
devoid of human life. The day he
collapsed, we stood, boarding passes
in hand, near the end of the line

at Gate C1, tired and happy after
a fortnight on an island we loved.
There was no sense of confinement,
no transparent box then—

and thank goodness. It allowed
two strangers—one a firefighter,
one a nurse—behind us to reach us
quickly, drop to their knees

and begin the work of trying to save
a life, which, we later learned, rarely
works in these cases. But, with the help
of an electrical heart-starter,

as we came to think of the magical,
life-restoring device, it did.
A few years later we couldn’t make
our pilgrimage to the precise spot

that changed our lives forever.
But we stood nearby, still in awe
of death and transfiguration,
a hard restart that utterly remade us,

stunningly giving us more time
together—a gift,
I often remind myself,
not to be taken lightly.

I could not get warm. Or comfortable
on the pullout chair that passed for a bed.
But I got to be there—they didn’t send me
away, so far from home, him in the bed,
resurrected on an airport floor after
the cardiac arrest killed him. He returned,
blinking, startled, having no idea where
he’d gone.

I got to be there, hospital-chilled,
stepping outside periodically to soak up
a smidgen of tropical warmth, walking
downstairs to the basement cafeteria
as soon as it opened to buy green tea
and Spam musubi, taking it outside
on the lanai, to bask like the geckoes
in some of the day’s first rays.

I got to be there in the middle of the night,
patrolling the halls, me and my half-numb,
flip-flopped feet, searching for the tall
rolling cabinet cradling blessedly warmed
blankets smelling like bread out of the oven,
ones I gratefully pulled to my chest
like a swaddled infant, then walked
back to his room and unfolded one,
then two over him,

open parachutes floating down
to his sleeping form, tucking them under
him, then wrapping two others around
me, lying down on the hard surface,
closing my eyes to wait for the next kind
soul to arrive and check to make sure
that one of us in Room 207
was still breathing.

•••

With thanks to Deborah Bayer of Amherst Writers & Artists for leading the online Write Around the World session that prompted me into this poem.

And our deepest mahalo nui loa always to Pamela Foster of the AED Institute, Salesi Maumau and Claudio Alvarado, to Chris Ohta and the Hawaiian Airlines staff, to the remarkable medical team at Kaiser Moanalua Hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii, and the many friends who rushed to our side during and after Dick’s hospitalization in January 2019.

•••

Not all of us are present
the last time we exercise
with Marilyn on her front
lawn—

our energetic leader away,
others otherwise engaged—
and nothing is spoken
about this moment

as Amy leads us through
leg lifts and bicep curls,
toe rises and all manner
of stretches.

But we are struck by
the poignancy of our
oldest member who
will move in a few days

to new location. We
toast each other with
fresh squeezed grapefruit
juice in mini paper cups.

We hug goodbye, tamp
down emotion clinging
like dew on the long grass
on this perfect spring

morning—couldn’t find
one better—while on
the lawn behind us
Marilyn’s Love Wins

sign still stands. Because
it does. Love Still Wins
(hers and that of so many
who’ve rallied to help),

and we good humans
are proof of that, no
matter how fast or how
far we move, no matter

where our travels take us.