Güd wrtr

I don’t know why I say this to her,
as if she’ll understand what I mean—

as if I understand what this means,
aside from the rhythm-y rhyme—

but Poki has learned the difference
between chicken cat food in a can and

actual chicken, and, most of the time,
she’ll take off my finger for a bit of bird.

And why not? The real deal is always
better, right? For years I boiled chicken

breasts when the pets were ailing,
had upset tummies, gave Buddy

shreds of chicken and rice, which
he gobbled and then looked at me

expectantly, grinning his doggy grin:
More? There always was for him.

But cats are trickier. If not raised
with it, they’ll often sneer at real

meat—even tuna, which I thought
no cat would pooh-pooh. But, cats.

Poki has come later to chicken,
but now when I utter the magic

phrase, “bicken chicken!” she
issues her highest cry, the ones

kittens throw at their mothers
for food—this old cat, so skinny

and limpy now, the one sitting
next to me as I type, waiting

patiently for me to finish my
banana nut muffin so she can

lick the crumbs from its pleated,
papery skirt.

It is good to have an end to journey toward;
but it is the journey that matters, in the end.

—Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Left Hand of Darkness,” 1969

•••

And a good friend to do it with helps, too.
Someone who can carry you when you’re tired.

Someone who is up for the adventure of not
knowing what’s next.

Someone who make you laugh and who laughs
at your jokes—especially on the roughest roads.

And, if you are lucky, you may have more than
one someone to walk with, different ones

whom you meet along the journey. Not all
will stick around till the end. That’s OK.

They’re not all meant to. But hey, you’re
here now, traveling this bit with me.

Thanks for that, my wandering spirit friend.
Your presence is one of life’s great presents.

•••

For Rose Varesio on her birthday… glad to be one of your wandering spirit friends! (And to my other wandering spirit friends… thank you, too!)

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—’tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.

― Mark Twain, from “The Art of Authorship,” 1890, quoting his friend Josh Billing

•••

When the words aren’t coming—
when the right words aren’t coming—

when you’re searching for the lightning
and finding only the lightning bug, you might

find yourself singing the I’m-washed-up,
done-for-good, why-am-I-wasting-my-time

blues that make you think you’d have
been better off letting your grandma teach

you to crochet or develop some patience
for jigsaw puzzles, or anything that doesn’t

involve words or sentences or metaphor
or, heaven forbid, poetry—any of that

silly writer stuff. Go mow the lawn, maybe,
or walk the dog, if you have lawn or dog.

See if the sky looks dark enough for the potential
of lightning that—please, God—might strike

you (metaphorically, of course) with inspiration.
And if not, take yourself outside into the night,

and, if you’re in a place that fireflies also call home,
look for flashing dots of light that unmask

the soft-winged, bioluminescent beetles. On some
stormy summer nights you might luckily catch

lightning electrifying the sky at the same time
lightning bugs Morse Code their presence—

self-illumination to ward off predators, to attract
mates, to provocatively lure unsuspecting prey.

Lightning and lightning bugs in the same sentence,
light attracting light, for you to gently capture

and tuck into a glass jar, to study their little
flashlight selves blinking on and off, off and on,

before you release them into a poem.

•••

See fireflies (aka lightning bugs) in action in this lovely two-minute video,
“Firefly Experience—Summer Night with Fireflies (Lightning Bugs)”
by Radim Schreiber.

One bright morning
as I cut your hair on the deck
within sight of the ocean
whooshing its way into shore,

I stop, look up at the sound—
not the familiar call of geese,
but the whoosh of hundreds
of wings, dark arrows overhead,
migrating north along the
California coast.

Billions of birds make their way
up the Pacific Flyway each year,
and, unlike whales, which,
though huge, are much better
at hiding,

the geese, arrayed in three
ragged ribbons across a swath
of sky who knows how big,
catch our attention. We listen
for their calls that coordinate
their positions, that help them
navigate the impossible journey

that they, like us, make so often
over the distance of these lives.
And when we hear the ones behind
honk encouragement to the ones
ahead, we remember that they,
like us, take turns leading
and following, coaxing
and praising,

as we fly these long, familiar
routes to the places we
call home.

My mother tells me she found her first dead fly
in her wine glass last week.

“It’s fly-in-wine season,” she says to my puzzled
look. This as her happy azaleas bloom their
pastel heads off, and the pink dogwood shows
off in the front yard.

“Is this a spring thing?” I wonder aloud.
When I see flies zoom into my house, I know
it’s spring. Maybe it’s also fly-in-wine season.

My mother considers. “I don’t know,” she says.
“But recently, in the morning, I’m finding
a dead fly in the wine glass I left on the table
overnight.”

She wonders where they’re coming from,
if house flies are breeding inside her house.
(Possibly, notes Mr. Google, in any place food
is present, even drains and garbage cans.)
They’re also quick zoomer-inners through
open doors.

“They must have good sniffers,” I say, reading
that, sure enough, the little party crashers do.
Wine is a musca domestica magnet.

I imagine these short-lived flies breast stroking
their way in the wee small hours across
the tiny lake of Moscato in my mother’s
wine glass, sipping as they go.

It does not bother her if a bit of nature
drowns in her glass—”wine alcohol inhibits
the growth of germs,” I read. Plus, wine
is antibacterial, and, should they get that far,
stomach acid can kill any number of germs.

Honestly, at 92 and going strong, she’s been
known to remove the fly and continue sipping.

But the mystery remains: Why now and for
so short a season? What tiny timer inside
dogwoods and azaleas triggers such a
profusion of blossoms with such brief lives?

We puzzle on that a while, hoping once again
for reincarnation. Not as flies, of course.
Fortunate humans, if we have any say in it.
There’s so much life we have not yet gotten to.

Let’s see your rain dance, baby.
C’mon, honey, give it all you’ve got.
Don’t worry if anybody’s watching,
Do your thing, don’t give it a second thought.

—Antsy McClain, “Rain Dance”

•••

Because weather on our coast travels west to east,
the drops that fell on us there this morning—

dampening ocean and sand and meadowsful
of new irises and poppies—seem to have followed

us 150 miles home. And the rain that pelts
us inland near sunset, I imagine, has traveled

all day over hill and mountain, slipping into this
great central valley, wetting us all over again.

This hardly seems fair, secondhand rain
drenching us once more, but, on the other hand,

we in our perennially parched state always
say how much we need the water. Let me

tip my head back to the cloud-shrouded
evening sky, open my mouth to receive,

not complain, practice a little gratitude
instead of annoyance, maybe put on

my new violet rain boots, go find a fresh
puddle with drops polka dotting its surface

and have a good stomp, a splash or two,
this white-haired gal rain dancing with

childlike delight just before night
sets in.

•••

For Antsy McClain, whose birthday is today—HBD2U, Antsy!

You can hear Antsy McClain sing “Rain Dance” here.

•••

Antsy McClain and the Trailer Park Troubadours will play the Sofia in Sacramento, Saturday, April 27, at 7 p.m. Tickets available here.

I was hoping that the 26-second video that goes with today’s poem, “Water in conversation with other water,” would appear at the bottom of the email you received with the poem. Apparently it did not.

To see the video at the bottom of the poem on my website, you can click here. Or you can look at the previous email and click on the title of the poem, “Water in conversation with other water” or the GüdWrtr logo at the top. Either will take you to the website where you can read the poem and see the video underneath the poem.

Thank you for being a subscriber to GüdWrtr. I appreciate you!

Jan Haag

We stop to watch from the bluff-top trail
as down on the rain-soaked sand

two children work to carve a channel
to convince water falling over nearby

rocks to snake gracefully into
rising surf. They work so hard

at what nature does all by itself—
water seeking itself, water in

conversation with other water,
which we hear walking by creekside

arteries that whisper in some places,
gurgle in others, prodded by gravity,

unimpeded by debris, hurrying
down its self-prescribed channels.

All water has a single destination—
it all becomes ocean eventually—

as do we, rushing at times,
burbling, meandering at others.

Even on a chilly, rainy day, drops
leaching from clouds onto beach,

two children delight in runoff
working its way to the sea,

water seeking water, all of it
so naturally becoming one.

Because stories are spells; they change things. When they hook us and reel us into their magic, they change us. It’s stories that will save us, in the end. Not just the stories we read or tell, or the stories we want to be in, but the ones that live inside us and the ones we live inside.

— Sharon Blackie, Hagitude

•••

You ask what I do in the comfy chair,
laptop in lap, for so long, deep into
tonight-becomes-early-tomorrow.

In the dark they arrive without
distraction, the ones who people
this story written in fits and starts

for more than a decade, who’ve
never really left my mind, who
seem as deeply embedded

in my soul as any dead loved one,
though these beings have never
breathed, except in my imagination

where I see them walking, hear
them talking like old friends. This
is a novel still trying to be born,

and I’m in the last trimester, the
ready-to-push stage, putting the
finishing touches on their lives,

revising for the third time,
which feels like doing math
(and I don’t math), checking

ages and hair colors and details
on a wonky timeline back and forth
from the 1950s to the 1970s.

And when they are delivered
unto the world, they’ll no
longer belong to me, as any

parent can tell you. With luck,
they’ll make friends who’ll read
about them, decide how to

feel about them, and some of
those people will tell me how
they feel about these fictional

characters, who, with luck,
will become real to others,
not just me.

•••

(for Caro and El and Lil and Ma and all those in “Three Sisters Antiques,” whom I thank for coming)

The capsized ones float on the incoming tide,
moving them toward sand and air,

where, had they not already died,
they would soon out of their element.

And as I walk the tideline, the cobalt
sailboats of the by-the-wind sailors

tilt starboard and port, cast ashore with
so flattened spines of beached purple

urchins—the worst hair day ever.
Yet the air sparkles blue as the wind

rises into the sun high overhead at
twelve o’clock. And on the beach

two young mothers with four toddlers
between them chat as their offspring

dig in soft sand, chirping like birds,
calling to each other like the gulls

and crows overhead. Come see
what I found! What else might

we find? Their sails flush with
breeze, they set off into waters

that will, with luck, carry these
young sailors into the rest

of their forevers. May they
encounter only fair winds

and following seas; may they
be welcomed home by their

beloveds every time they
come ashore whether or not

they arrive laden with
treasure.