Güd wrtr

For Roger E. Haag (Aug. 2, 1930–Oct. 8, 2004)

Every time I’m in his garage,
I’m searching for my father,
20 years gone today,

though I know his essence
remains tucked into every old
Skippy peanut butter jar shelved

in the sagging wooden cabinet.
He’s in there with the screws
and nuts, with bolts ranging

from tiny to so big that they
once ringed my small fingers,
a treasure trove guarded

by loyal soldiers still standing
at attention in precise rows.
Tough-to-open metal lids,

rusty and dusty, crown each
jar. I apply all my oomph,
as he would say, to open one,

and, before my fingers dive in
to explore the treasures inside,
retrieve just what I need,

I inhale him, long encased,
a little genie of a handy man,
a father waiting to be released.

(for Donna and Eric Just celebrating 40 years of marriage)

Look at your incredible adventures
spread out in snapshots,

from meeting in the college night band
that led to a first date and a second date

and then the yellowed clipping announcing
your engagement, all the way to the now of

you two grandparents holding Henry, the boy
you happily tote around on weekdays.

And in between a wedding and a first house,
then a second house, then a third, and two babies,

Nonen and Kebbin, they called each other,
who grew to be Lauren and Kevin,

and they married and became families
on their own, adding a Gerald and an Ashley

to the mix. And kitties and doggies and
fishfishfish in the tank, and band and choir

and Little League and friends and trips
to Europe chaperoning high school kids.

One of you teaching, painting, playing with clay.
One of you a traveling physical therapist.

hosting family gathering after family gathering,
celebrating birthdays and holidays and

graduations and weddings. Caring for the elders,
mourning those who moved into mystery.

You’ve done good for so many. You’ve done well
in every way. How fortunate are we who

revolve in your blessedly wide orbit,
a testament to love, a wonderful life,

indeed.

And it is not pretty. This trail
we love, so verdant in spring,
well trampled by late September,

most of its bright greens fading
into musty yellows, browning
around the edges.

The creek that hurried through
here in April now trickles gently,
water still on its way to the sea,

but far less of it in this dry season.
Even the vigorous poison oak
has burnished with age and

will soon drop its leaves.
This is one reason that fall
saddens us every year.

We know what is coming,
the inevitable losses we don’t
want to arrive. Others cheer

the flamboyance of wicked color
painting the sky, the trees
shrugging off their autumnal

sweaters. Winters, no matter
how severe, stretch in elastic time,
turn us inward, provide

space for incubation, for new
life to come. But look—even
now young sword ferns and

sprightly coastal dandelions
trim the trail. Let us cherish
those, along with ones who

have already gone, the missing
who have taken up the only
permanent residence they

are allowed—tucked into
our softened, open
hearts.

before the first good photo op appears
in my neighbor’s still-thriving flower garden

on another to-be-hot October day.
Because that’s what life does—

presents itself to us in all its flowering,
even amid sadness, loss, flooding,

but also in kindness wafting up
from tragedy’s muddy remains.

Here, half a block from my house,
a half dozen butterflies flit happily

among the still growing,
some of them soon to die, sure,

but others still in the full flush
of their vibrancy

as—if we are lucky—we will do,
too, all the way to the end.

•••

With thanks to Jen Cross and Louise Bierig for our writing time
together when this poem emerged.

How grateful I am
for all who have led me
through the fields of their hearts,
beneath the branches of their losses,
into the alleys of their wonder.

—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
from “We Are Told to Make Our Own Way”

•••

I cannot count the poets,
certainly not the poems,
that have led me through
the ravages of my own heart,
dropped breadcrumbs of hope,
beckoning with a crooked finger
down sweet-smelling paths and
rugged roads:

Follow me.

And I have, falling into lives that were
not my own, but felt, somehow, as if they
were—at least a little. Like diving into
a novel that plunges me into the deep end
of an existence that doesn’t exist,
except on paper, starting in a writer’s
mind and leaping into a reader’s.

Poetry sings in me, thrums me like
six strings and a good melody. For every
loss, poems have shown me the way
through, reminds me that there’s always
a way through, even when I can’t see it.

Poets built me into a poet, still learning,
forever reading and sighing, thinking,
I’d pay for that line, it’s so good,
some of them people I write with,
lucky me.

But they are my poets, as sure as Mary
and Dorianne, Billy and Marie, Maya and
Raymond, Lucille and Emily and Jane.
As Denise and Ellen and Kim and Naomi
are. As Galway is, and Mr. Merwin and
Danusha and Joy and John and Ada are.
As Rosemerry and Jack and James are.

I claim them as they claimed me
ages ago, embedded their poetic voices
in my cells, wound themselves into my
DNA, whispering words that fill me,
fuel me and follow me through the very
best and worst of times.

•••

(in honour of National Poetry Day in England)

(Word of the Day, Oct. 2, 2024)

for Diego

It’s what clouds do, pushed across sky
by wind, driven, often furiously,
by the hands of gods we can’t see.

Of course, we can’t—they’re gods.

The same ones who, I hope, received
him gently today when he could no longer
race like wind from front yard

to back, to burst in through the pet door—
Mrrraw!—declaring himself present,
the old pisshead, prone to

inappropriate elimination, as the vets
call it. And may the gods forgive me
for my irritation with his three

pissy events in three days—one on my
bed—for not realizing that his kidneys
were failing, how dehydrated he was.

I’ve been here before.

The Big Dumb Boy Cat loved to drink
water from sinks and showers for years.
I was looking, always, but I did not see.

Now hit with a whoosh of windblown
spray, I feel the scud blow by as
there he goes, on to the next—

blessings on your journey,
godspeed, you sweet doofus—
Mrrraw! I love you, too.

(for Gail and Amy, with our thanks)

While you two cavort around Greece
(isn’t that what one would do there—
cavort?), we, your exercise buddies,

continue our Tuesday morning
sessions in your backyard. It is
the end of the growing season,

but produce still hangs in
surprising profusion—the fat
grape clusters dangling

like musky purple ornaments,
the green peppers still perky
on their vines. The sprawling

basil runs leggy wild, the bees
still helicoptering from one long
violet stalk of flowers to another,

some angling seductively
groundward. I gravitate toward
the ’maters, kinda weary,

mostly finished. Ah, well,
I must’ve missed them. But wait!
Look up! Tiny red globes gleam

like dangly earrings on a circular
display rack, some still green,
but many ripe for the taking,

which is what you’ve directed us
to do in your absence. We bag-toting
ladies go to our cars for empty bags

to harvest all we like. Anara reaches
high for a pomegranate; Shelley’s
fond of the basil and green beans—

she’s already nibbled a sweet pepper—
and oh, and the grapes. Catherine
plucks some peppers, among other

treats, as does Laurie, who also
liberated some grapes and still has
a butternut squash from last week’s

harvest destined for soup. Joanne:
tomatoes, green beans, peppers,
and one overhanging pomegranate

from the neighbor’s tree. Later,
your photos beam into our phones
from yours in glorious Greece.

I text you and your farmer wife
an image of tomatoes brightening
my green colander, messages from us

all trickling in, we, your exercising
women friends, appreciative of
your kindness that appears in

so many generous forms.

Now’s when people really start to look
weary with heat—and no, it’s not a
desert heat or the moist kind that leaves
you sweaty all day and night.

It’s just garden variety Northern California
hot stuff, and though so much of the country
has fallen into, well, fall, we here are “enjoying”
temps into the mid- and upper 90s.

And yes, while 100 degrees on the first day
of October seems excessive for what used
to be called Indian summer, which had
nothing to do with native people and

everything to do with racist monikers,
I digress. While I, too, like so many of my
fellow citizens, wish the sun would dial
it back a bit, these days of musty warmth

require my presence in the yard, hose in
hand, giving the last of the heroic hollyhocks
a good squirt, as they nod to the persistent
roses on their too-leggy stems. They’ll all

be gone soon, and the yard will look wan
and pale, bleached of color like the winter sky.
And then, on those days when my toes
never truly get warm, I’ll long for the last

hot, breezy afternoons of endless summer
when I stood in the yard in my lavender
flip-flops, watering faithful plants as well
as my feet, watching a single bee busily

going about its day job, quite ignoring
my admiring gaze, having no idea
what’s coming our way.

(for Jill Batiansila)

Sometimes you make a new friend
who attaches themselves to you

like feline Velcro, who settles in
for a good nap with its purr

on high throttle so that you cannot
bear to peel the little one off

your chest, remembering,
perhaps, your babies doing

something similar, sleepily
clinging like small sloths

to their mothers, trapping
you in the best possible way,

inspiring your eyelids to
thicken and fall. Love shows

up like that more often than
we realize. We have only to

pick it up, allow the embrace,
to relish the snuggle when it is

so sweetly offered.

(for Peggy Price-Hartz in Aiken, South Carolina)

I don’t know why you had to leave sunny Spain,
but I imagine that now, sitting in the dark
after a hurricane has whooshed through
your part of the world, you must be
longing for the azure waters and skies
of the Mediterranean.

You texted some of your beloveds that
you’re fine, though you, like millions
of others, are without electricity.
You said that you have what you need.
That neighbors with generators
have charged your devices, allowing
communication with the greater world.
There is, you add, the worrisome
concern about the large tree in
the backyard, but mostly, all is OK.

And I imagine that all over Aiken,
as in so many other places lying
prostrate after Helene did her worst,
you are all deep in aftermath. Flooding.
People killed by falling trees.
Cleanup has barely begun.

Not much you can do but wait—
with your single propane burner,
you can’t even cook for folks,
as you love to do.

Still, you’re getting words out into
the ether that make their way to us.
Your last transmission from the dark
said that you were sitting on your porch
looking up at the night sky.

So, trying to guess what your sky
must hold, I step outside to take in
the dark of my well-lit city that used
to be yours, too bright to see stars,
much farther north than your corner
of the planet.

But I’m drinking in starlight
at the same time as you, my friend,
wishing you daylight’s return,
grateful that your sun
will rise before mine.