Güd wrtr

We’re fellow travelers on a moonlit road through the night country,
where there’s never any rush hour.
—Frank Bruni, opinion writer, The New York Times

•••

The 3:45 a.m. email gets sent
like a flashlight SOS in the night—

three rapid flashes,
then three slow bursts,
then three rapid flashes—

not so much in the hope
of an immediate response,

but when one comes, we
find ourselves buoyed

by the life ring thrown
our way that can keep

us afloat if we grab it,
hanging onto the

we-are-not-alone-ness
of wakeful souls in the dark,

elation in receiving
proof from afar:

You’re awake?
I am, too.

You won’t remember this,
though your dearest ones will
someday show you old photos,

but on your first Easter you
did not hunt for eggs or have a basket,
though you were in a kind of basket

for a time—your happy place
backpack on your dad and your
grandma as she squirted

whipped cream on berries for
dessert. You made your own spitty
raspberries with your tongue

at your mom, and, did pushups
on the floor with George, the kitty,
and, after a very exciting day,

you fell asleep at last on your
grandpa’s lap as he peshed your
sweet face—much as

he used to stroke his little boy’s
cheeks not all that long ago.
We grownups sigh at all

the cuteness, at the realization
that it’s all going so quickly,
your babyhood. You have

brought spring in your sparkling
smile (two teeth buds blooming),
in your blueblue eyes,

in your ginger hair, and someday,
when you look at these photos
of the tiny you as we know you now,

we want you to remember
how much you were adored,
how much delight you brought us,

which will continue—we promise—
for all the rest of our days together
and beyond.

Who do you pray to when
you don’t believe in God?
she asks.

And somehow, jaw tightening,
you bite down on the blurt—
Whom!—the correction sliding
down your throat like sweet cream,

for you are no longer in teacher mode,
and your spine straightens, your
wings tucking discreetly between
your shoulder blades.

You want to say that belief has little
to do with the existence—or lack thereof—
of the divine, that a prayer doesn’t have
to be uttered to anyone, anything,
in any direction, to be acted upon.

It will be taken in, you want to tell her,
by what can’t be seen, absorbed into air
with her exhale of gratitude, transmitted
through the tree in the front yard whose
leaves have brittled in ungodly heat
or vanished with the cold.

Even her unspoken help me soars up
to the crow in that tree, issuing his own
prayer for something tasty to appear.

The simplest plea—voiced or not—
is heard and answered, you want to tell her,
though you don’t because that would
give away the ending.

She does not realize that she is the prayer,
that she, all by herself, is the light-bringer,
the breeze, the tree that only looks dead,
the bird winging away.

The crow, you tell her, as if you know.
You talk to the crow.

And for now, at least, she nods in—
if not belief—something that rises,
that, for the moment,
feels like trust.

Heya, little slug,

how’d you end up crawling
across a dirty, cat-footed
dish towel on the kitchen
counter this rainy night?

As if I don’t know,

Diego having wandered in all
soggy from a who-knows-where
nap, undeterred by wet or mud
between his toes,

to, yes, hop up on the counter
and front-foot it into the sink
for a drink—though, yes, he’s got
a tall cup of water, just cat height
on the floor. Apparently that’s for
daytime drinking.

I do not want to know, little mollusc,

what part of the cat you rode in on.
For now let me relocate you
outside into your natural habitat,
on some damp earth where you
might live another day to munch
your way through, say, leafy
detritus or a bit of tasty hollyhock.

Go ahead, you tiny composter.

It’s spring. Plenty of volunteers
to nibble out here, bobbling under
nighttime drizzle, this misty gift
of spring, like your slimy,
sluggy self.

Good Friday 2024

We’ve become
hallowed vessels of mercy
lined with grace
after being hollowed out
by the swift kick of departure,

imagining the vanished
beloveds poofed into
nothingness, when nothing
could be less true.

It happens, they try to tell us,
that they live on in particles
of light, in warmth radiating
from our nearest star, in
the ka-thump of our cracked
open hearts,

in the first blossoms
making their annual debut
after a long sleep, even in
the desperate dark when
it seems that every leaf,
flower, birdsong has died.

But there they are—floppy
wisteria earnestly purpling
the trellis as bright green
tendrils begin to decorate
bare branches.

We look up at the trill of
a winged visitor, then we bend
to admire the sweet center of a
wide-open poppy, and another,
and another,

each a hallowed vessel
of mercy, lined with grace,
rimmed in light—whether
flowering or hibernating—
all that beauty ever with us,
singing, truly never gone.

•••

For the Together We Heal writers, who turn grief into artful words each month in Elk Grove, California. More information available here.

Leave your worries on the pad
beside the bed—maybe it’s on the bed
next to the cat curled into oblivion.

She can sleep. Why can’t you?

The pad, the journal, the page
can take whatever you throw on it.
It’s a sturdy thing, after all,

and once you’ve scribbled the
what its, whyfors and whatnots,
you can let go of them

and maybe, just maybe—you
can pat the sleeping kitty
and curl up, too,

the words waiting for you
tomorrow, should you want
to pick them up again.

We’d walk to the driveway next door
to wait on chilly mornings, be dropped
off there on getting-hot afternoons,

the hulking orange school bus creaking
to a hard stop, Mrs. Capps with her
iron-muscled forearm cranking

the big handle that opened the door—
not a very tall woman, but not someone
you’d want to mess with, she having

seen more of her share of every manner
of kid clambering on and off her bus.
And it was her bus, make no mistake,

that took us to and from Eureka Union
Elementary School, we rural kids
plunked down amid oak trees

and poison oak next to a big lake
where some of us learned to swim
and others to fish and still others

to skim over the deep blue on fat skis.
But school was a serious matter,
Mrs. Capps the first gatekeeper

to our early educations, wearing her
perennially arched eyebrows that
I still see some six decades

after I rode behind her, as I follow
the 21st century version of her bus
through a subdivision where many

of my schoolmates once lived.
I park a respectful distance behind,
trying to discern the profile of the one

driving, knowing full well that
Mrs. Capps is long gone to that bus barn
in heaven, but still.

She drove us and drove us and drove us
day after blessed day, and I bet none
of us ungrateful kids ever thought

to bring her a valentine or a cookie
or even thank her. I certainly didn’t.
Until now.

There is someone waiting for you…

Driving west to pick her up,
I look skyward at fat sheep-fluffy
clouds

bordered by wispy white ones
where a hazy angel shimmers,
wings outstretched,

a virga cloud of celestial droplets
against the blue.

There is someone waiting for you…

It is Easter week,
and she is sleeping more,
at this moment cocooned
in pure oxygen.

I am on my way to collect her,
but I cannot shake the vision
of angel vanishing into cloud—

not unlike the coyote I saw
earlier as I drove through
the park,

loping leanly through spring
green in the opposite direction,
then shrouded by foliage.

There is someone waiting…

We catch glimpses of what is
briefly shown, all of us walking
slowly toward what we can’t see,
every step moving us to
the next place

where someone kind,
someone caring,
waits for her, for him,
for me, for you.

•••

Inspired by “Someone” from “The Book of Rounds” by the October Project

Now that there’s something to see out there,
spring springing, bugs bugging, sky blue-ing,
I’m looking through windows that could

use a good wash—on my car, which all
of a sudden are bird-splatted. This didn’t
happen all winter. Now the fly-bys

decide to alight on the trellis over
the driveway, poised over the car,
sitting amid baby wisteria emerging

from their budded cocoons and merrily
letting go? I consider this as I look
out the kitchen sink window,

which is winter-coated in schmutz,
too high for me to wash without
a ladder, and I don’t do ladders.

So that makes me think of Ernest,
wondering if he’s still doing windows,
that blesséd man who wears my late

husband’s middle name as his first,
who has for years shown up on my porch
offering to wash all the windows

for a ridiculously low price. I always
pay him more than he asks, running
to the bank for cash. And when I return,

the crack of his lightning smile breaks
across his kind face, as Ernest says,
Thank you, ma’am, though he is

somewhere in my vintage, and I’ve
gently told him that he can call me
by my first name as I call him by his.

That’s what you say to ladies,
he once told me. And I imagine
the mamas and grandmas

and aunts in his family who
brought him up right, who
insisted on such good manners.

Thank you, dear sir, for all the years
of clean windows. May I ask
if you might shine them up again?

My friend Laura
told me about writing poems

on bathroom mirrors with
dry erase markers—

the rainbow ones being most fun—
so I’m giving it a try—

six new colors rainbowing
down my reflection,

no idea, as always, where
the words will take me,

which makes it so much fun.