Güd wrtr

The things you learn
at a routine physical—

how many times your heart
expands and contracts,
how pressured it is,
fueling your body,

how your lungs sound
to the man with the
stethoscope,

and, on a wall chart
of the ear, nose and throat,
discovering that your
larynx, closed, is in
phonation,
and, open, is in
inspiration—

spiritus—the breath
Hawaiians call ha—

drawing inspiration
as you speak, as your
lungs fill and empty, push
air into the squeezebox
and out through the
trachea,

to infuse life by breathing,

as that old, reliable
ticker lub-dubs along.

Spring winds rose this morning,
clearing the sky of clouds,
snapping branches newly greened.

Late in the day I walk among
the leavings, registering them
by name—black walnut,

Japanese maple, Douglas fir—
sorry that they have been felled
so early in their lives.

I know this well: We are not
all designed for longevity,
And these are just parts of

larger beings whose souls
appear unscathed. Still, there
is grief for the parts of us

that give way sooner than we
would like. We hope to make it
to our ends carrying everything

we came with, mourning what
is lost along the way, no matter
how much we wish to leave

the world intact.

(flying home from NYC)

Every time
I marvel at the cloud blanket
unraveling so far below

to reveal the patches
underneath the underneath—
a quilted world

stitched with invisible
thread outlining a fresh
green here,

a diamond-sparkled
rectangle there, studded
with sun sprinkles.

We are so close up here
in the far above
the far below,

where earthlings’ feet
walk on the planet we
all call home.

This thin air we borrow
for a time, sitting close
to strangers,

smile to make room,
lend a hand with a bag,
dish out thank you’s

like sweets, come
together as a living
quilt, an assortment

of fabrics, loosely
fastened for several hours
in a kind of harmonic

convergence—the kind
we often find so difficult
to give each other once

our feet touch the ground.

So many sit on benches
surrounding the circular mosaic,
companion spirits to the one
whose spirit certainly circles here—

Imagine all the people—

the ones who come to sit in the center
for a photo, the ones who stand on
the almost forty-year-old tiles,
his age when he was felled—

some have gone and some remain—

across the street by an assassin
whose name is rarely remembered.
But here in Strawberry Fields the one
who wrote the song and sang it

has never left. And the man now
standing with guitar, singing
to the faithful, There are
places I’ll remember all my life,

plucks the strings of my heart
amid this group of strangers who sit
with common purpose—give peace
a chance—on a sweetly sunny

May day—I know I’ll often stop
and think about them—the dead,
the living, the friends, the lovers,
with us here, now:

In my life, I’ve loved them all.

(In memory of Lorraine Hansberry and Eleanor Roosevelt, who
each lived by Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village)

•••

After a week of living
in their neighborhood—
albeit as a visitor—

I walk by the buildings
they once called home,
the playwright and

the first lady/United
Nations delegate,
and I imagine

myself stopping in
for tea with Mrs. R.,
talking writing with

Miss H.—though
they didn’t live here
in the same era.

But oh, for the chance
to leap through time
and present myself

to women I admire for
their groundbreaking
achievements, perhaps

stepping outside with
the ladies to walk
the park leafing greenly

in early May, stopping
to admire tulips and
azaleas. Look at that,

I’d say. Have you ever
seen such a stunning
spring? And I’d watch

them smile at the eager
Californian so taken
with the place they

called home.

With my poet friend en route
to her reading on Long Island
into the bowels of the renovated
edifice looking nothing like
the original Penn Station with
its 84 soaring Doric columns, its
concourse covered by magnificent
glass domes, an architectural
marvel demolished six decades
ago, more recently slingshot’d
into the 21st century, fresh
glass and steel gleaming

Even as we escalator down
to below-ground tracks with
some of the 600,000 other souls
who daily pass through,
we conjure the long-gone
click-clack, the sway of
shifting cars as we tunnel
from one island to another

Emerge into a gray day
that matches the back ends
of brick buildings grayed with
centuries of time and grime
as we skim nearly soundless
through boneyards of rail refuse
past tall brick rectangles with
people we’ll never know living
shoeboxed inside

Giving way to greenery
and wider streets lined
with houses and sidewalks
and driveways with good-
looking vehicles

Watch the Gap

advises the edge of the train
car as we exit, as we enter
the small village, all of 3.4 square
miles of homey-ness, photogenic
houses, tidy lawns, sidewalks
begging for kids on bikes

not so many miles down
the track but oh, so many
lifelines, so many lifetimes
widening the gap from
then to now, of traveling,
somehow, from there to here

I’ve long admired street poets who set up a table with pens and paper (sometimes a typewriter) on a sidewalk or other outdoor space and write an on-the-spot poem for people passing by.

On this trip to New York I’m traveling with my poet friend Mary Mackey as she does two readings for her most recent book, “Creativity: Where Poems Begin.” Mary and I walked the High Line—a 1.45-mile-long elevated park created on a former New York Central Railroad spur—where we encountered a poet who set up shop on the High Line offering her craft. We engaged her to write a poem about us and gave her the first line, which is also the title.

So instead of one of my poems today, I’m offering you one by this young poet, Benedith Laure Loiseau, whom two older lady poets met and asked for a poem. (As longtime unpaid poets, we know how lovely it is to have someone pay you, so we gave her $20… the top of her rate scale.) We quite like Benedith’s poem, too!

•••

Two poets in New York

Benedith Laure Loiseau

•••

Two poets in New York
running the streets
as if they lived here,
embracing the torrents
of the city.

The rhythm of madness
murmurs underneath your feet:
Each moment is a wonder;
each glance is a scene.
Right there on the highline
all the artists are thriving

There is an elegance,
a grace,
a dance worth noticing.
Make a misstep here,
and you may lose your footing.

Luckily, we have each other
and the gift that keeps on giving.
Luckily, we have the gift that keeps on.

(In memory of the Stonewall Uprising, June 28, 1969)

The tiny triangle of a park
catches my eye as the yellow taxi
whisks me back to where I began—
three days in, and I’m taxiing like
a New Yorker.

The fluttering rainbows make
me want to search out the wee
green space with the tall statue.
Fingering my portable encylopedia,
I oh! right there in the cab—

Stonewall. That Stonewall.
Not the Civil War general, but
the site of a different kind
of battle, now a national
monument to those who
fought, who died in a war,
I realize, that has never
ended.

And I think of the men
who lived the last of their
lives in small bedrooms
in San Francisco, dying of
a plague no one could
quell at the time,

tended by women I knew,
visited by men in high heels,
who brought food and held
the hands of their friends
and lovers as they died,
so many shunned by their
embarrassed families.

And I walk to the park,
where the rainbow flags stir
in the soft breeze, taking a place
at the wrought iron fence with
other pilgrims on a gloriously
sunny New York afternoon,
and remember,

before turning to look at the bar
where so many made a stand
for their right to exist.

And I cross the street,
open the fabled door,
and go in.

Spray painted on the back of signs
indicating construction on
Waverly Place, down the block
from Washington Square Park,

Say “I love you,”

where yesterday a host of humanity
carried other kinds of signs
protesting unfairness, brutality
in a far-away place.

This morning Mary and I walk
past visible despair on park
benches, men and women farther
down than “down and out” conveys.

Amid tourists taking selfies
in the park (even us oldies
but goodies), as NYU students
hurry to and from their last

classes of the year, say goodbye
to a professor, I think about
the blue pouches with rescue
drugs given to us
on the street by kind souls

hoping to help folks like those
on the bench, or the ones
slumped in subway entrances
and doorways without doormen

like the ones who kindly open
the brass-and-glass doors
to us every time we return
to the hotel.

And I read aloud, Say “I love you,”
as I pass the signs, think it
as passers-by pass by,
to the man who makes

my poke bowl for take-away
lunch, whisper it as I walk
behind the benches ribboning
the park,

Say “I love you,”

to—as a kind man once said—
the least these, my brethren,
my brothers and sisters,
weeping with those who weep.

(for Georgann)

Yeah, I retired that license plate
when I donated the car to the public
radio station some years back,

and Dick removed the plates
for me because I wasn’t letting
those go, seeing as how

you claimed them as your first
published piece of writing,
coming up with the phrase,

as you did, on the spot at
the State Fair one broiling
August day at the DMV booth.

You paid for them, too—
your birthday present, you said—
though I protested,

I can’t put those on my car.
People will think I’m bragging.
And you, mischievous light

in your eyes, popped back:
Not spelled like that.
Because, of course, it had

to fit in seven letters. Dick
added the umlaut over the ü
to fancify it. For years

my students knew that
I was on campus when they
saw my car. And today

the roses are blooming their
fool heads off on the plate
affixed to the backyard

fence—both of them full
of fragrant remembrance
of you.