Güd wrtr

The last time we leapt like this
many of us could not imagine
leaping again, much less for joy,

stuck as we were at home,
forbidden to see, let alone
touch, others outside our

bubbles. Four years down
the road, we find ourselves free
to roam about as we please,

walking, dancing, leaping, living
these lives for which we find
ourselves ever more grateful,

this freedom of movement
a gift we hadn’t known
could be rescinded—

this extra day also a gift
of catch-up time, not least
for Leaplings, who celebrate

the day of their births once
every four years. So leap already.
Take a big running one,

if you can, over, say, a ribbon
of water. Land with your two
(or four) good feet squarely

in the next month, marching
toward a new season, with, yes,
a jaunty spring in your step.

•••

With thanks to Sue Reynolds, James Dewar and Whiskey, for their hospitality
and gracious hosting of this California visitor last fall.

(Granite Bay State Park, Folsom Lake, California)

Walking on half-sand, half-rocks
usually underwater, I do not expect

to find—peering at rock bits of
crimson-ribboned crystals

and mica-flecked granite—
a small elephant on its side,

pressed into fine grit, its
trunk curling high. A mini

archaeological find, its intact
gray form compels me to

gently dig it out, brush it off,
wondering how it got here—

if it fell from a child’s hand,
part of a treasured collection—

imagining it both wet and dry
as the lake rises and recedes,

as it does every season, covering
and uncovering what has been lost,

what is waiting to be found.

which is what I hope we’ll have
when I get to your place

which is, I imagine, no place
in particular, which is why

I hope beyond all hope
that there’s still some you

in that place of no place
and there’ll be some me,

too, and even if we don’t
have arms or bodies,

a close, I’ve-missed-you
hug will feel like all the ones

we shared embodied,
all the ones I’m missing

now.

1. Yes, they have red on their wings, but they are not red-winged blackbirds.

2. Only breeding males look this glossy, this fancy, all spiffed up for the ladies.

3. They may sing in the dead of night, but they don’t have the same lovely voices as their red-winged cousins.

4. They’re found in marshes and adjacent fields.

5. Once they bred in immense colonies in natural freshwater wetlands of California’s Central Valley.

6. In the 19th century flocks could consist of hundreds of thousands of tricolored blackbirds.

7. Their numbers—like the birds themselves diving for insects—have plummeted.

8. Since then the population has declined from several million to fewer than 200,000.

9. Because so much of their marshy habitat has been lost, they are endangered.

10. Because they now often nest in fields where grain is grown, harvesting can destroy tens of thousands of nests.

11. But hope is the thing with feathers, after all, and birdfolk report seeing tricolored blackbirds flying in weed-filled fields set aside by farmers.

12. Take these broken wings and learn to fly.

13. All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to arise.

•••

Thanks to Sir Paul McCartney for the best blackbird poem/song ever.

You can see a one-minute video of a recovering tricolored blackbird colony in a weed-filled Central Valley field here.

And you can learn more about Merced farmers working to enhance the tricolored blackbirds’ habitat featured in “Dairy Cares: Protecting California’s Tricolored Blackbird.”

•••

(the 18-foot-tall troll of Bainbridge Island)

•••

(for Terri Wolf)

She’s a storyteller, Pia,
sitting in a forest glen
on an island where
someone I loved
once lived.

My best friend,
writer/storyteller,
would admire curly-
haired Pia sitting
serenely amid
the trees,

a sweet smile on her
face, her large hands
ready to embrace
anyone who steps
into them.

Which I do as
another writer/
storyteller friend
takes a photo of us,

we story spinners
here and gone,

wide-eyed in wonder
as this whimsical
being, sitting quietly,
holds so much
peace in her gentle,
giant hands.

•••

Pia the Peacekeeper lives on Bainbridge Island, Washington, and was built over seven days in August 2023. She’s made entirely of recycled materials by Danish artist Thomas Dambo, who has done more than 100 giant troll sculptures around the world. She is one of six Dambo sculptures in the Pacific Northwest.

You can watch a two-minute time-lapse video of her construction here.

You can learn more about Pia the Peacekeeper and the other PNW trolls here,

No matter how far you rome,
there’s no place like pome

And though I can’t rhyme for spit,
I try to find a way to work in:

—foam
—loam
—chrome
—Jerome

even
—Styrofoam

And then I can’t stop:

—climbing the dome
—fingering the comb
—meditating with om
—writing this tome

thinking of home*

•••

* Because, it is said, “Home is where the cat(s) is (are).”

the date approaches
though it hasn’t announced itself
yet

and with every sunrise you think
you haven’t done enough
learned enough

loved enough
you haven’t fully embraced
the complexity

the richness
wrapped up in this brevity
of a lifetime

and you have questions
whether by happenstance
or inspiration

that are slow to form
stutter on your tongue
hardest to spit out

oh, the beautiful questions
to which you’re beginning
to suspect

you’ll never have answers
no one can answer
but you’re willing to try

to ask them is
to see the world shining
like the gift it is

glittering in its sun-
wrapped ribbons
dangling from the

merciful
immortal
sky

•••

for Sue Reynolds

I sit in the hot tub—
marinating as healing—
eyes lifted skyward

watching great
nimbostratus nudged
along by gusts unseen—

who can see the wind?—

and along she comes
mottled gray as angels
sometimes are

arms outstretched
umbilically tied
to a trailing cloud

tugged along
in her wake
I follow her

northerly progress
scudding over tips
of wintering pines

until she merges
with another
clump of cumulus—

we are all one

she whispers—
as if I, tethered
earthling, need

the not-so-veiled
reminder that
disappearance

contains appearance,
the barely visible sign
of the never truly gone

It is all very well to survive the abundant months of the spring and summer, but in winter, we witness the full glory of nature’s flourishing in lean times.

—Katherine May, from “Wintering”

•••

And so I winter, here in a place where they have winter,
unlike my place, which has, at best, a half-pint version,

except in times of great drenches, which continue to
cut swaths through my home turf two states south,

while up here in the mizzle of the Pacific Northwest,
winter lands mostly gray and chilly, except for the day

of my arrival when it lived up to its rainy reputation.
It is, it turns out, a good place for wintering. To quell

throbbing head and straining throat brought on
by the Big Bad Bug, I go commando in the hot tub

twice a day because the last round of this virus
taught me that a good sit in sultry water

can quell symptoms enough to make one
feel downright normal. Even in winter.

Now I relish the quiet—birds at the feeders
go about their business with so little fuss

it’s as if someone switched off their voices.
Meanwhile, the greater world conducts its

missions: a submarine under heavy escort
by weapons-laden destroyers, accompanied

by a tug and small guideboats, lumbers
up the canal outside my window, where

eventually, I’m told, it will submerge and
head into the darkness of the coldcold sea.

Which makes wintering on land so much
more appealing, waiting for what I can’t

control to pass, oddly content, watching
muted light dance softly on ship-generated

wake, noticing tiny greening bits arising
on the brown-tipped butterfly bush, as,

high up on their patient, slender branches,
the alders must be sprouting similar buds,

me down here, marveling
that I’m here to see it.

(for Terri Wolf, fabric artist extraordinaire)

Issac Newton never envisioned a color wheel
like this: yards of fabric folded into neat squares,

lined up horizontally on seven shelves, slender
volumes of possibility nestled together in a

full-spectrum rainbow—red, orange, yellow,
green, blue, indigo, violet. Two more shelves

of patterns, top and bottom, call to Terri
as she pauses, runs her fingers over ones

that call to her, looking for the next right
piece. Amid such a wealth of material,

I ask, how does she choose? It’s like
finding the right word for a poem, she says.

You pull something out, unfold it,
consider it, refold it, tuck it back.

Eventually, the right one chooses you,
though perhaps not in that moment.

Sir Issac, who figured out the color
spectrum in 1704, arranged the hues

in a circle to show which follows which,
and which complements which,

a man who understood the permutations
of in between, of locating, say, the just

right shade of blue, as Terri finds in a piece
of cloth before her. She will cut it, stencil

tree rings onto the fiber, sew slender
strips reminiscent of alders wintering

outside her large studio window onto
the new square, which will become

a quarter of a larger square. If I look closely,
the scent of sleeping trees rises with

words embedded in the textile alders’
trunks, forming a tiny found poem:

leaves dance in delight,
joy awaits with morning,
shine light for all to see.

may meaning shower
pure love on you—
precious, beautiful life.