Güd wrtr

And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.

—Haruki Murakami, from “Kafka on the Shore”

•••

I barely remember the storm,
though I know it’s embedded
in my bones,

and in poems attest to unrelenting
grief in the immediate after,
but dear one,

to say that, even 23 years after
this day when I sat on the floor,
your coldcold foot

in my lap, realizing This is it,
what you knew was coming,
what I tried to ignore—

what stays with me is how
I felt shot out of a cannon
into that tempest.

my molecules scattered, and,
so slowly so slowly, reassembling
into a being that looked like me,

sounded like me, but was
irrevocably changed. How, then,
did that storm

fuse your molecules with mine,
settle you into my bones,
where we have

walked together ever since?

•••

In memory of Clifford Ernest Polland
May 21, 1952–March 18, 2001

(for Cliff)

On the 23rd anniversary of your last day on Earth
I walk through one of the prettiest parks in town,
the cemetery where we used to walk Buddy,
where I long imagined I would put you some day.

It didn’t turn out that way, of course.

But as I walk, I look for familiar names—

people I knew, people you knew,
people we worked with, dear friends
and slight acquaintances—

You all walk with me as the trees
begin to flower, and the bees tend
those blossoms.

The years of their deaths on markers
embedded in soft green always surprise me.
How can it be so long?

They rest here with thousands of others
as you rest in my heart now and always,

amene.

Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?
—Mary Oliver

•••

I see you there, taking shallow breaths,
as though your lungs can’t expand
to contain the wholeness of you.

But I think they can.

It’s your life, they’re your lungs,
but darling, I have watched you settle
again and again

for things you didn’t really want,
thinking that’s all you get, that the gods
who dole out the intangibles

—great love, scads of money, dream jobs—
passed you by, that you’ve gathered
the leftovers and made

a kind of life. And now, you imagine,
it’s too late. The decades and the losses
have piled up like last fall’s

leaves still mashed against the back fence,
and it’s spring now. Look up to the great
sentinel standing guard out there,

the one spreading wide its sculpted branches
with the tiniest buds preparing to pop
into baby leaves that promise,

every year, to grow into green flags bigger
than your hand. This season is all yours
to design to your specifications.

What will you make of it? What will you
gather in your arms just for you?
I know that you haven’t known

precisely what you want or, if you did,
how to go about getting it. But dear one,
listen: Breathe deeply,

exhale slowly and, with your whole,
far-from-small self, take one shaky,
trusting step into the unknown,

and begin again.

•••

(With thanks to Kai and Fia Skye—and, of course, Mary Oliver—for the inspiration)

that he is not doing well,
Diego, thinning and sneezing,
on the decline compared
to a year ago—

yet he still hops up on
the kitchen counter and
plops himself in the sink,
watching the goings on

of a sleepy house after
midnight, watchkitty
surveying the kingdom.
Lately he has folded himself

into a cat-shaped loaf
atop the stove, right in
the center on the griddle,
a new spot to sleep.

What is going on with
you? I ask, as he blinks
his silent response,
knowing that we are

looking toward the end
with two older kitties,
not to mention the elder
humans in the family.

I am not ready for you
to go, I say, because I
never am, not for any
of the four-footed ones

who’ve shared their
goofiness with me,
nor for the two-footed
ones either. As if

I have a choice. As if
I could keep them
sinking, blinking,
watching over me

forever.

(for Georgann)

You took me the first time
where we chuckled at the array
of clever gift items—
an only-in-Seattle thing—

and, since shopping was one
of our happiest outings (often
falling into the just looking sphere),
I cannot go through Sea-Tac

without stopping at Fireworks,
imagining what I’d buy to
surprise you. But this time, a few
bagged purchases in hand,

at baggage claim, late to pick up
my bags, in haste to make
my way to the ferry that once
took me to you, I left the

little bag behind. Realizing
my lapse only after whooshed
away by light rail, I sighed,
knowing you’d understand,

because, of course, you do—
you who are no longer you,
who no longer care about
gifts of the material kind.

A good ten days later, after
I returned home, a surprise
email: We are holding
an item from your recent

trip that we believe may
belong to you. And I thought,
You companion spirits do
work in mysterious ways,

as I filled out the return form
for some kind-hearted souls
at an airline baggage service
who wanted to reunite us.

Fireworks arrived today,
flown by Fed Ex, not Alaska,
plopped on my porch
in a sturdy brown box,

which I opened, slightly
stunned—even as I beheld
what had been lost—
that these whimsical,

misplaced gifts could
find me. But then again,
you always do,
don’t you?

It is a pact within a sacred partnership: If you lose the way home, I will come for you. If I lose my way, you will come for me. If we are both lost, someone must find a way to outstretch a hand and come back to the heart.

—Alexandra Roxo, from “Dare to Feel: The Transformational Path of the Heart”

•••

Dear friend: I fear that
we have become separated
on the journey—

you so far ahead of me,
I lingering behind—or
perhaps the other way

round—that we cannot
hear the other’s voice or
detect familiar footsteps.

Of its own accord,
I feel my handless heart
outstretched,

remembering two
pulsing souls who, though
momentarily blind

and wordless, might,
I hope, be working
their way back

to each other, mistily
aware of a promise
neither remembers

making—
I will come for you,
I will find you—

calling as crows to their
brethren when they
have lost the beat

of another’s heart:
I am here!
Where are you?

I am here! There,
my friend, are you!
Here we are.

There are areas far out at sea where
it rains a great deal. Camus said
it rained so hard even the sea was wet.

—Jim Harrison, from “The Times Atlas” in “The Theory and Practice of Rivers”

•••

Most of us cannot see
far enough out to sea
where Rain adds to
Ocean,

which is Rain’s job,
after all, to replenish
Earth, along with Sun,
which prods

all things growing.
We look up on this
misty morning to
realize that

bare tree sentinels
watching over us
all winter seem to be
tentatively

greening with lacy
embellishments.
Dainty leaves
emerge

like us, blinking,
as Sun plays hide
and seek with
Clouds,

as once again,
Rain nudges us
wet upon wet,
into spring.

As my fella likes to remind me,
I’m surprised I have to tell you this:

If you think you’re having fun,
you are.

If you think you’re miserable,
you are.

Which would you rather be?

What about taking delight
in your blessedly fabulous

imperfection? And then
finding joy in the flawed bits

anyway, living lighthearted
just because you can.

(for Kevin Just, who is 34 today, with love from Aunt Jan)

(for Kathy Keatley Garvey)

The safest place for an aphid is on the back
of a lady beetle, which seems dangerous
for the aphid, given the lady beetle’s

voracious appetite for the little buggers.
There’s logic in hiding in plain sight,
just out of view of this predator—

a biter of people, an eater of aphids—
considered more of a pest than its
gentler ladybug cousin. But the little guy

riding shotgun doesn’t know that,
hitching a ride on a convenient conveyance—
two resourceful wee beasties

facing an infinitely precarious future,
fulfilling their roles as all creatures do
in the universe of things,

moving in tandem toward
an unknown destination
one tiny step at a time.

I bring home two bunches
of the unbloomed things,
slender green pencils with
just a hint of what’s to come

at the tips, their shrouded
crayon color that will, in
a day or two, fluff into hot
yellow skirts of daffodils,

trumpeting spring through
perky floral bullhorns. I do
this every year—squeak in
delight when they appear in

rubber-banded clusters. I may
have gone to the store for cheese
sticks and yogurt, avocado and
a turkey-and-apple sandwich,

but I cannot ignore the whisper
of a full bin of daffodils fixin’
to bloom, $2.99 a bunch.
Take ‘em home, add water

to a favorite vase, plop ’em
in and stand back. I swear
they unfurl in slow motion,
ruffle by ruffle as I watch,

a time lapse of blossoms
blossoming on the dining
room table, a forgotten
miracle I didn’t realize

I was waiting for.