Güd wrtr

Penmanship was once a status symbol—
the nicer the hand, the greater one’s
education, wealth, privilege.

And neat cursive handwriting became
what every teacher demanded of pupils—
the feminine slant or the upright masculine—

prompting the torment of many a student,
including my left-handed father, whose
own father went to the right-leaning

teacher and told her to leave his son alone.
He was just fine as a leftie, a defining moment
my father talked about all his life.

So, too, then, my sister was left to her
southpaw inclinations, though she, like
our father, is ambidextrous in many things.

And my mother and I, the right-handers,
suffered no illusions about how our
words looked on the page, nothing

fancy but mostly legible. Until a certain
point when penmanship starts to
decline along with the rest of us,

and we look around, bemoaning the
disappearance of cursive handwriting
being taught to younger folks,

who often can’t read our scrawls.
Whether that’s a lack of familiarity or
our own indecipherable chicken scratch

is up for debate. What matters, I tell
those who sit around tables with me
applying pen to paper, is that they

can, should they want to, read it aloud
so that we can marvel at what’s
been transmitted from gray matter

through the web of neurons to muscles
and joints and fingers, the miracle
of words coming through one intent

on capturing them, preserving
what they didn’t know they had to say,
delivered through the miracle

of sleight of hand.

(for Clifford, who married me 42 years ago today)

You’d boil hops on the stove in a huge stew pot
of your grandmother’s, one big enough to
bathe a baby in, she used to say,

and we’d laugh, imagining your 6-foot-4 self
baby-sized, small enough to fit. It never
seemed possible. Other times, you’d make

your own pasta using the chrome press
with the handle, turning out long ribbons
of dough that you hung over the old open

cabinet doors, their redwood innards
surprisingly deep and dark even after
70 years. In the kitchen that always

felt more like yours than mine, you
poured the juice of pulverized grapes
given to you by growers whose photos

you’d taken for the newspaper into green
wine bottles. Later, you’d affix homemade
labels with the dog’s face on them

and trundle the bottles to the basement
for aging. Though you did not age beyond 48,
some of your bottles are still down there.

I’ve never had the will to bring them up
to the kitchen that has been solely mine for
24 years and dump what must be undrinkable.

I had the kitchen remodeled after you vanished
into mystery, chiding myself that we should
have done so sooner, you being the one who

used it so well, me using it to open a lot of cans
of cat food. But I make soup now and my grandma’s
brownies, among other things, and I talk to you

in the kitchen where I used to sit on a stool
and watch you wrestle stuffing into a turkey
after speedily dicing celery and onions

without nicking yourself, before you’d hand
me the knife to practice, saying, Slowly now.
I feel your tall self behind me still,

warm and constant, emanating confidence
and kindness, forever warmed,
knowing that you still have my back.

(in memory of Pat Schneider)

I did not expect her to drop in this morning,
did not expect her to squeal with little-girl glee

when her name was invoked through the ether.
But there she is, her eyes doing their happy dance

as another poet reads her poem about the patience
of ordinary things, and the unexpected happens:

At her line “the lovely repetition of stairs,”
I feel the soles of my feet on the worn planks

in her yellow house on McClellan Street,
negotiating the narrow wooden stairs that

received the bottoms of shoes, making
my way up to the little blue guest room

with its generous window looking into
the umbrella of a summer-leafed tree

beginning to think about fall. And she
sits downstairs in her office, where

I will soon descend, notebook in hand,
pausing at the threshold to see her

standing at the open window, setting out
seed for the birds, a moment so tender

I cannot speak, but stay silent, watching,
not wanting to startle. Then she turns

and smiles, and I do, too, before we turn
together to the work at hand. It’s in that

ages-ago twinkling that I linger,
the then that seemed so ordinary,

which, of course, was extraordinary,
which, of course, I did not understand

until this time that I think of as now.

•••

You can read Pat Schneider’s poem “The Patience of Ordinary Things” here.

With thanks to poet James Crews for including Pat Schneider’s poem, “The Patience of Ordinary Things” as part of his December Monthly Pause session. She was a dear friend and mentor, and I have no doubt she was gleeful about that from her place, as she liked to say, in the mystery.

•••

You can also watch a 24-minute video podcast of an interview with Maureen Buchanan Jones (former executive director of Amherst Writers & Artists and now its director of trainings) remembering Pat Schneider and reflecting on the AWA method here.

Beaming into the backyard like the big old spotlight
you are, missing for almost a fortnight, though,
of course, it wasn’t your fault, you constant star.

But like cats who get themselves shut into
someone’s shed for days, we’ve been searching
for you, walked the streets calling for you,

worried over your absence, and now, quietly,
while we weren’t looking, the sky has shifted,
the fog has lifted—at least for this moment—

and here you are, quietly brightening up the place,
casting casual shadows in the last hour or so
of this day’s wintery light, as if to say,

What? I’ve been here all this time. But thanks.
It’s nice to be missed.

All over the sidewalks,
in the gutters,
doing their deciduous dance
into winter in these
parts of our citified
woods, finally crimsoned
by mid-December,
like so many rose petals
thrown at our feet
we can’t help scuff
through them—or stop,
bend and peer at
their starry selves,
from browning banana
yellow to pumpkin-esque
to deepest blood red,
admiring the versatility
of ones that so
unselfconsciously go
from naked to leafy full
to bare again,
in the meantime,
leaving so many
terrestrial stars
for us to—yes!—
wish upon.

(Or why social media can be your friend)

Just when I can barely hold your faces
in my fading brain, much less your voices,

I am reminded by the little device
that on this day, nine years ago,

you two lay on my sofa, you needing
the break more than Diego, who was

never one to pass up an available lap—
or hip, as the case apparently was—

on which to drape his goofy self.
As it happened, you both had some

years left, though not nearly as many
as I would have liked—as though

it were up to me. But you were fading
on that visit to your hometown, having

relocated two states away to a softer,
damper climate more to your liking.

I understood, though I missed you
mightily, as BFFs are wont to do.

Here’s what you need to know today:
You said there would be other friends,

other cats, and there were, there are,
but you, like Diego, were unique among

all creatures—quirky and funny—
him rather annoying, though you, never.

It is true that none of us is replaceable
in the hearts of those who adore us.

But then your photo pops up, and I grin
at the two of you who’ve dropped by

for a quick little “hiya!” before dashing
back to your place in the wherever,

reminded of your frequent appearances,
if I only remember to pause and look.

•••

(remembering Georgann and Diego)

As the old saying goes,
Everybody talks about the weather,
but nobody does anything about it.

I am doing something about it.
I am in the car, driving toward the sun,
feeling a little like Icarus, though I doubt

I will get anywhere close to burning up.
After two weeks sucked deep into
valley fog, even the barest rays will do.

It would appear that I am going solo
on this mini adventure, but I know
that I travel with so many angels

and saints on board bringing me their luck,
particularly the companion spirits
who always ride shotgun.

They never argue about who gets the seat
next to me, and, in fact, don’t need to sit
at all, disembodied as they are.

But I think of them as a collective,
their voices and faces cutting through
the insistent fog. And when, heading east

toward the mountains, just before
Shingle Springs, the shroud begins to
rise and dissolve, and blue sky appears,

a cheer goes round: There it is!
As if witnessing a miracle, which it
kind of is. The singers among us break

into a chorus of here comes the sun
(George, I hear you in there, too—
you can’t resist, can you?),

and everything heavy lifts like
the dissipating gray that vanishes.
Because it does seem like years

since it’s been here, and we all
doo-doo-doo-doo our way into
the cute mountain town where

I park and walk and take photos
of my own shadow, just because
I can, trying not to think of

the moment, not long from now,
when I must descend into
the underworld again.

But this time, carrying so much
light in my little backpack.
So. Much. Light.

•••

(With thanks to singer/songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter for her evocative line, “saint[s] on board bringing me their luck” from her lovely song “Between Here and Gone.” And equally hearty gratitude to the late, great George Harrison for “Here Comes the Sun,” which, if he’d written nothing else, would have been more than enough. It is, to this day, the most digitally streamed Beatles song ever.)

Yes, it arrives every winter.
And can, as it is doing now, hang around
for weeks. So I, a native of the long, slender
Golden State, who has spent most of my life
in the northern part of the great Central Valley,
should be well accustomed to this.

But I am a summer baby, a Leo
comforted by warmth and bright light,
so all this gray and cold do nothing for me.
The half dozen of you who love this stupid
weather mystify me, but I like you anyway.

Little cat feet, my Great Aunt Fanny.
Carl Sandburg did not know tule fog.

So, in the midst of a gray day of errands,
I sit in a parking lot and recall sun flooding
this same spot, where in July I often open
the car door into fierce heat that makes
many people—including you fog lovers—
wish for a day like today.

Putting a lighter spin on persistent tule fog,
I know that the sun is lurking behind it,
even if this high-pressure ridge is not allowing
our closest star to come out and play.

Though I know the answer, I search
weather apps to see how far I need to drive
to climb from under this low-hanging cloud.
About an hour, up one freeway or the other,
out of this foggy fishbowl into the foothills.

Tempted, so tempted. Take the groceries
home, grab shades and sunblock and drive,
baby. Toss the haftas to the nonexistent wind
(come on, wind!), to the nowhere-to-be-seen rain,
(come on, rain!) as I plot a solo road trip
on a going-to-the-sun road that will
(I pray to the weather gods) brighten
with every mile.

•••

You can read Carl Sandburg’s excellent six-line poem, “Fog,” here.

Dearest Miss D.,
I hope that you have a
well-deserved place
in the balcony where you

can look down upon
scads of us mere mortals
who hold your words
in the highest esteem,

shy as you were about
publishing in your day.
I have fat books of
your poems and letters,

which you likely would
have hated, seeing as
how you wanted them
destroyed. But Emily

—if I may be so bold—
195 years after your
birth, we revere
your name much as

we do Shakespeare’s
or Miss Austen’s or even
the Beatles, some of
whose lyrics I think

you might like. That
blackbird singing in
the dead of night is
one fine bit of poetry—

an example of hope
is a thing with feathers,
if I’ve ever heard one,
or a bird that came down

the walk. And as we dwell
in possibility, we’re still
wondering, as you did,
what is so special

about the buzz of a fly?
If you’ve figured that out,
having long since joined
the ranks of the gods

and goddesses of all things
wise and wonderful,
please send us a sign,
won’t you?

•••

(In memory of Emily Dickinson, Dec. 10, 1830–May 15, 1886)

Every year, as this tree outside the
science building on the university
campus I still think of as mine

releases its gold bounty, I make
a mini pilgrimage to stand beneath it
and wonder who comes with what

implement and makes perfect circles
around the ginkgo’s strong center, turning
the leavings into leafy sculpture.

Every hour more little fans flutter
and join their grounded brethren,
gradually obscuring the pattern

that I see today has spokes radiating
around the circles—an ode to the sun
that has been a stranger for a good

two weeks? Or is it merely the fancy
of the one I imagine who applies
the rake and those who resist

collecting the fallen? Perhaps
they do so in silent acknowledgment
of the hard work of this living,

breathing being, who, I suspect,
has no idea how stunning
it is, who, like so many,

humbly does what it does, with
no expectation of adulation
or applause.