My life,
you were a door
I was given to walk through
—Jane Hirshfield, from “The Asking: New and Selected Poems”
•••
What was that opening
that I walked through
before I could walk
before I was fully formed
before I felt like me?
An opening into listening
this human life wrapped
in skin, scaffolded in bone
not ending there but
flowing into the rhythms
of the world as a being
of it and not of it,
walking through on
feet shod with wonder.
On a day of coincidences,
my order for the to-go
poke bowl came to
$19.58, and it took till
I’d gotten into my car,
backed out of the space
and hung a U-ie on
Fair Oaks Boulevard
before I realized, Hey,
that’s my year, when
I made my debut on
the planet. I have long
said when a bill comes
to 19 bucks and change,
That was a good year,
even if I was not yet
on the planet or, for
many reasons, don’t
recall much about that
12-month stretch.
The more years we
accumulate, the fewer
specifics we retain
because, I like to say,
the hard drive is full.
I had an older friend who
often declared, There are
no coincidences, honey,
which made me smile as
I drove into the now-early
dark, my boomer self and
the hula hoop craze both
born in July 1958, which made
me want to head home, find
mine, and give it a whirl
around the old hips,
just because I can.
Maybe you need to write a poem about grace.
—Robert Hass
•••
All I know about grace is that we don’t
deserve it, this unmerited favor that
humans can’t earn,
that it’s kindness freely given, nudging
us into a state of being we can’t perceive
until we land there.
As I did today, rising earlier than usual,
moved to part the blinds and find
the morning
flushed with the call of a male mourning
dove swelling its chest and exhaling a
signature coo,
seeking a mate—a reminder that just
because I rarely hear or see them in
my yard,
birds still adorn branches, flock to trees
like so many benevolent winged
ornaments.
We are awash in grace that feels like
a gift tenderly offered, and, with our
own good will
and open hearts, let us accept the love
extended, no questions asked,
again and again.
When we can no longer walk together—
a long time from now, please—
circumnavigating your park-like
homeplace abundant with trees,
so many of them now loosening leaves,
littering the crewcut lawns with
every manner of foliage from hefty
blushing trefoils to delicate gold fans.
You have seen eight decades of autumns.
I have six and a half decades of falls.
Mostly we have managed to remain
upright. But as we see others fall in
their late seasons, and have weathered
a few ourselves, we know well not to take
any of this vertical time in the world for
granted. So we linger over light speckling
through canopies that will soon stand bare
or beam a starburst right at us. I never tire
of watching you aim a tiny device you
never would have called a camera in your
younger years at a luminous moment
from a small bridge, at fountaining water,
taking in the reflection of what the trees hold
for now. For now.
(Saturday, Nov. 11, 2023, Veterans’ Day)
You said it never left you:
5 things you could see—
• The letter summoning you
• The doctor’s large finger in the cold exam room
• The big yellow bus that was not taking you to school
• Your first barracks
• The freshly shaved heads of your fellow soldiers
4 things you could hear—
• Ten-hut!
• All right, maggots—drop and give me 20.
• the rat-a-tat of assault rifles
• the chatter of your heart
3 things you could feel—
• The cold submachine gun in your sweaty hands
• The clammy neck of a downed soldier; praying for a pulse
• Your aching, blistered, rotting feet
2 things you could smell—
• Blood, sometimes your own
• Death, not your own—yet
1 thing you could taste—
• Coming home, never the same, but home,
Hallelujah. You lucky bastard.
•••
In memory of my father, Roger E. Haag, infantryman in the Korean War, with gratitude.
That if no one comes to write,
I’ve opened the dance floor,
and I can dance just fine by myself.
I will sit in the loft, put on
the kettle for tea and see
what shows up, word-wise.
The point is to lace up
the tap shoes (or ballet slippers
or favorite footwear of the moment),
join the words tripping the light
fantastic, and follow their lead
as they pick up their syllabic
feet and start to boogie.
There is no incorrect set of steps,
no funky rhythm that someone
will critique. The tea will steep,
and the clock will tick, and
the words and I shall foxtrot,
twist, watusi and samba
until there is no time,
no one but us floating
through a dreamy ballroom
of imagination, dancing
cheek to cheek
in heaven, we’re in heaven,
phrase after phrase,
sentence after glorious
waltzing sentence.
•••
You can watch Fred Astaire sing to Ginger Rogers as they dance to Irving Berlin’s “Cheek to Cheek” in this clip from the 1935 movie “Top Hat.”
(for Deborah Meltvedt)
On our morning walk along the river
path, Deb and I stop several times
to watch the progress of a…
Is that a sea lion? In the American River?!
…flopping acrobatically, swimming
fast, popping up, then diving into
concentric circles of expanding
water, a long way from home.
Some of us are like that—
natural explorers setting out
into uncharted waters, eager to
see what can be seen, and when
we spot this adventurer’s
dog-like head zigging and zagging
downstream, we landlubbers
cheer.
“They follow the fish,” Deb says,
of the lithe, ear-flapped pinniped
likely hot on the trail of salmon
making their way back upstream
after their long journey to the sea.
This splashing gymnast is not
the only one of his kind, adds Deb,
who knows this path well.
“Sometimes we see two of them.”
The big guy and his mate are
no strangers to fresh water,
have likely flippered their way
up a river or two before.
But to us, it’s like watching a
visitor explore new territory:
We wonder what he sees under
the surface, imagine a murky
underwater world with waving
grasses and swimming critters.
We stand and look and watch
for him until his slick head
disappears, silently wish him
safe passage, happy hunting,
bon voyage.
In the opposite season I make my way up the hill
that careens down to the lake, lessened by summer,
that body that sends water down long river arms
to my city, many miles away.
Months ago I sat here when grass flourished freshly green,
when oaks budded with new leaves, and the world
felt clean and bright. In the opposite season
the world has darkened again, and pain knowingly
inflicted rises like dust from rubble.
In the opposite season, I stand amid crackling grasses
that winter rains will, we hope, soften to allow them
to rise next year, remade. I carry despair in my pocket,
wanting the forever spring, the fullness of lake,
the abundance of what we believe was promised:
safety, white healing light, peace.
Trees in the fall remind me: It’s OK to lose things. It’s OK.
—Steve Garnaas-Holmes
•••
(for Catherine O’Brien)
•••
Because there’s a difference between losing
something & shedding—one more intentional
than the other—I trust Elizabeth Bishop:
“The art of losing isn’t hard to master.”
But neither does losing always spell disaster,
though it can feel that way, in watching a beloved
lose robust good health, in a fall that is
not the season, not about leaves, but the kind
that results in injury, that makes us wonder
if this loss scatters more of our marbles,
our independence, how we make our way
in the world. Look at the trees, which, like us,
are slowly working their way to an end,
& take a leaf from their branches, perhaps
not as sturdy as they once were, but neither do
they mourn the departure of their summer green
skirts—shedding is what we do in small &
large ways. We lose things. Sometimes big things.
It’s OK. We go on—losing, yes,
& trusting that, somehow, we are held,
that we will be found.
(for Dickie)
Every time I do this in
the backyard, when I get
to the back of your head,
the strands gleaming like crystal
filaments in afternoon light
leaking through browning
sycamore leaves, I admire
the circumference of your
scalp—a perfect half circle,
actually—as if someone drew
a smile in the center where
so many follicles attach.
You often say you don’t
have many hairs left, but
you do back here—I run
the comb through them,
snip the ends to tidy them
up, love watching the silvery
scissors wink in the sunlight,
doing their magic of turning
back time, shaving years
off your countenance,
remaking you, as a haircut
should every time,
fresh and bright.
Güd wrtr 