Güd wrtr

(for the participants of the recent Together We Heal retreat in Galt, California)

Graceful: Softest light pink, gentle
lips that whisper the name of one gone

Fierce: darkish brown, these lips
mean business, speak their truth

Sophisticated: pinkish with purple
undertones, svelte, out-on-the-town,
va-va-voom lips masking a tremble

Badass: bold but delicate orange-y,
take-no-shit lips that don’t look as
if they could widen and scream—
but they can

Unstoppable: fire engine/stop sign red,
she-is-here-world red, moving forward,
get out of the way, coming through
with lights and sirens,

like it or not,
here she comes

•••

Thanks to Bossy Cosmetics for their cool lipstick colors and names
that inspired this poem, as well as to Grace Vineyards in Galt, California,
which donated the lipsticks and provided their lovely space for the retreat
where I was honored to facilitate writing workshops.

And huge gratitude from all of us to Jill Batiansila, visionary extraordinaire,
who created the Together We Heal community to offer space for those struggling
with loss in its many forms and equip them with tools to build a joy-filled life.

Learn more information about Together We Heal opportunities here.

I sat, extended an arm behind
me to the roll on the wall, which
spun freely but did not release
the dangling end that makes

it easy to grab and pull and tug
off as many squares as necessary.
Instantly, deep in my brain,
I heard my dead mother snap,

Who put that on upside down?
One of the many things that
irritated her easily irritated self,
the age-old question of which way

to install toilet paper always
prompted the anecdote about
a long-ago guest at our house
who (the nerve!) repositioned

the TP roll so that it came off
the back, which could still get
my mother’s dander up
decades after it occurred.

And they told me that they’d
fixed it for me, she’d fume,
insulted, because, she insisted,
everyone knew that the end

should always hang in front.
Unless you had little kids who
liked to spin the roll, creating
a TP puddle on the floor

that some beleaguered mother
had to respool. Then backward
was an option because you did
not waste perfectly good TP.

Sitting, remembering, I figured
the roll in my bathroom must’ve
been turned around by plumbers
working on this old house,

but I could feel her reaction flow
through me like, well, water through
new pipes. The direction of the roll
has never much mattered to me,

though I now realize since she
vanished into the wherever—where
certainly TP must not be an issue—
that mine has typically cascaded

like a tissue waterfall off the front,
one more lesson I unconsciously
absorbed, despite her longstanding
belief that I didn’t listen to her.

Oh, Ma. I did. I so did.

Blue sky perfect,
whispers of clouds,
fall hinting at its arrival
under a setting quarter moon,

no sign of the predicted coming storm
allegedly headed our way this afternoon.

Some days are like this.
Call it deception or miracle.

Walking the neighborhood I call mine
in this still-capable body,
on my way to brunch with a friend,

I stop, look up at the sky, the trees,
the comma of moon, into
the deep hope that is.

•••

With thanks to Lucie Chalifour for the conversation
that gave me the poem’s last line. And to Savannah
and Ruby for a delightful brunch!

(for the team of Drain Time plumbers)

Luis behind the fridge,
Leo in the front bathroom,
each using a drill

that sings a distinct series
of notes, rising and falling
in mechanical melody.

“It’s the speeds changing,”
Luis says, but I hear it
as the plumbers’ song,

two tools harmonizing
as these experts labor deep
in the recesses that they’ve

cut into this old house,
carving out old pipe,
replacing it with new,

hooking me up, as the kids say,
in a whole new water way.
Brand spankin’ new pipes

will daily deliver the source
of life, the miracle of clean
water into mine,

others taking away
what’s no longer needed,
an ebb and flow I generally

take for granted. But now
when I turn the tap or flush
or water plants, I will

think of these young men
and their colleagues who,
over several days,

assembled hundreds of pipes
and elbow fittings, tee fittings,
couplings, adaptors and unions

like Tinker Toy rods and spools
underneath and inside this old beast
of a house, revamping its

arteries like the expert surgeons
they are, making what was old
magically new again.

(for Ryan Montgomery on his birthday)

You will likely not remember,
but it was one of your best lines
ever, especially clever

for your seven-year-old self,
who, after I cut your hair, at
your mother’s request,

and I asked only for a kiss
in return, blurted, “Can I give
you a penny instead?”

The laugh burst out of me
like a pop of pink bubble gum,
but you were absolutely serious.

And you should have been.
You shouldn’t have to kiss
ladies as old as your mother

or your teacher, in their 20s,
for goodness’ sake. And I
said, “Sure, a penny would

be fine,” prompting you to
hop off the tall stool, you
newly trimmed blonde boy,

going to hunt up a penny.
I think I accepted it, not
wanting to insult you,

but more than four decades
later, I owe you many pennies
because you and your brothers

later repaid me with cheek
smooches that I treasure still,
and a line that I repeat to everyone

whose hair I cut, should
they ask the price:
a penny or a kiss.

And sometimes, I get both.

When, after nine months gestation,
the cat you brought home from
your mother’s house after she died
decides that you are, for better or worse,
his person—

though he still runs when you walk
through the house, but will come to you
when you sit on the floor and waggle
the feather boa on a stick in his direction,

and at night, when you lie in bed reading,
he hops up with a small cry, walks across you,
and arranges himself on a pillow on your right side
conveniently positioned for skritches
around his head and shoulders,

and periodically climbs the stack of pillows
on which you rest and winds himself around
your head like a big furry crown, extending
one long front leg alongside your face—

how could you feel anything but chosen?

(for World Inclusion Day, Oct. 10)

Remember that pale blue dot,
that tiny speck of light in the dark
photographed by Voyager 1
beyond Neptune, some 3.7
billion miles from the sun?

When mission managers
directed the little spacecraft
to turn and look over its
aluminum/titanium shoulder
toward home one last time,

it snapped this photo and
transmitted it through space,
where, once received by Earthlings,
it was greeted with awe.

That’s here. That’s home. That’s us,
planetary scientist Carl Sagan wrote.

On it everyone you know,
everyone you ever heard of,
every human being who ever was,
lived out their lives… on a mote of dust
suspended in a sunbeam.

All of us alive on Valentines’ Day
1990 are included in that last
snapshot, before Voyager’s cameras
went dark forever.

In 2012, the little spacecraft
that could crossed into interstellar
space, and has not been heard
from again. But it’s out there
somewhere.

Just as everyone who inhabits this
pale blue dot is right now. How can
we not embrace each other as miracles
orbiting a small star in this galaxy?

How can we be anything other than
a collective of beating hearts in
this Earthly space reaching
out for others like us?

(for Rebecca)

You know, it occurs to me
that I haven’t said to you,
dear niece,

how sorry I am for the passage
of your dear mama from life
into mystery,

feeling my own sorrow
swirled with gratitude for
the way she embraced me

as she embraced so many
others, her kind heart a
chip off your big-hearted,

tiny grandma, also DNA-linked
to your uncle, my squeeze.
But I am. I’m so sorry

that you’re paying this
huge price for deep love,
but so glad you got,

truly, one of the best
mothers I’ve ever seen.
You carry your foremothers’

big-hearted-ness, too,
you know, though you
will deny this,

just as your mother did.
But I know with my own
thankful heart what a

blessing it was to walk
into your mother’s house,
see her delighted look

as though the person
before her was exactly
whom she wanted to see.

Like you, her beloved
daughter, the one
she cherished every

day of your life,
you, the R. all of us
so treasure.

Beneath the floorboards of this old house
a young man named Nick, a genius with pipes
and fittings, has wedged his slender self

between the dirt on which the foundation rests
and the old redwood planks that form its base.
He’s a spelunker, his boss says admiringly

as we stand in the basement looking at Nick
pretzeled into the womb of this old house.
His headlamp shines on the work before him,

his body cradled into a graceful U. This literal
cave man alone is worth the enormous cost
of this project, though I again ask myself,

Why replumb a century-plus old house
while this noble experiment in democracy,
the house on which we all stand, seems

to be crumbling? There’s no guarantee
that it will withstand what I fear is coming.
On the other hand, guarantees are for new cars.

We’ve never had a warranty on survival.
And we cannot know exactly what’s coming
our way. Meanwhile, beneath the floorboards

of this old house, a spelunker—who showed
me photos on his phone of magnificently
water-carved caves that he and friends explored

over the weekend, less than 100 miles from here—
jigsaws his way through the old pipe to install
the new. My feet detect the vibrations as I walk

through what I think of as home, praying that
it might withstand such a massive reformation
of its innards, that all this will ultimately

bestow new magnificence, adding to
the previous artistry, that things unknown,
being undertaken in darkness, are somehow

exactly what needs to be done.

•••

For Nick Heath and his colleagues and bosses at Drain Time Plumbing
with my admiration for their skill and my thanks for their speedy work
and kind understanding.

I have her Porsche,
a cookie jar version
with its wild paint job,

and though, as a teen,
I heard her “Bobby McGee”
growl on the radio,

I didn’t resonate with
this Janis who spelled
her name like mine

until after she was gone.
But the car—eventually
I, too, had a vintage Porsche

(not nearly as fancy
as hers) in my keeping,
primer gray for years

until a kind friend painted
it. Mine needed restoration,
thanks to a departed husband,

who, had he lived, would not
have left without the car.
But our name, dear Janis—

how did our mothers decide
to drop the standard “-ice”
on the end for “-is”?

Perhaps they didn’t want
to raise icy daughters, hoped
that we’d grow into thoughtful,

friendly, smart girls, the kind
who grow into strong women,
knowing their own minds,

confident in their gifts
with a sense of just how
great their worth “-is.”

And we did. We are.

•••

In memory of Janis Lyn Joplin (Jan. 19, 1943–Oct. 4, 1970)
from Janis Linn Haag (1958– )