Güd wrtr

(for Sue Reynolds and James Dewar,
stewards of the pond)

Sitting atop the small dam
next to the pond, I watch
a squadron of dragonflies
flit like tiny biplanes, coming
to rest in the sun next to me.

The large blue dashers hover
closest to the water, their
four wings fanning the surface,
helicopter-style.

The smaller, rust-colored
autumn meadowhawks alight
for no more than a minute,
efficient hunters said to catch
97% of what they pursue.

Fall is beginning to take hold
of the pond. Most of the insects
of summer, the peskiest ones—
the horse flies, mayflies, black flies—
have fallen; the dragonflies
will soon be gone, too.

But look—just there, next
to me on the weathered
planks—two dashers and
two meadowhawks have
landed, arranging themselves
into a tidy flightline, engines
revving, preparing to take off
again.

The longer I sit, inhaling
the warmth of the day,
the more they show up,
the closer they come—
one on my knee, three
decorating my shoulder
like so many living brooches.

I close my eyes, feel a lacy-
winged being tickling
the knuckles of my left hand,
alive in this moment by this
sweet pond, with nothing to
do but return to the breath,
me and my happily full heart.

At 35,000 feet I queue
at the rear of the Airbus
for the loo, lean over a pair
of temporarily vacated seats
for a gander out the oval
porthole to the sky.

The blue upper atmosphere
gleams as sun rains on
scudding clouds far below us,
and I’m surprised to see
the ground splotched with
a thousand lakes in imaginative
shapes—a griffin, a locomotive,
a sheep in need of shearing.

Where are we? Where is this
state or province so generously
lake’d that I’ve not heard of? Does
each body of water have a name?
Can I find them on a map?

It takes a full minute before
it lands in my altitude-addled
brain that the lakes seem to be
moving too, and the illusion
vanishes.

Now I see that they’re cloud
shadows on the move, carrying
their own moisture, some of
which they will deposit at their
pleasure when the proper
conditions arise—

perhaps for thermals that birds
and gliders ride like gentle
waves carrying surfers to shore,
air pressures we wingless
souls cannot feel in flight,

an illusion that never fails
to amaze me, that—no matter
how many times the phenomenon
is explained, how this steel
and aluminum capsule manages
to fly through weightless clouds,
taking so many of us to a common
destination—it always feels
like magic.

•••

enroute to Toronto, Ontario, Canada, from Sacramento, California,
with gratitude to the outstanding Air Canada team of flight 758

More fly than dragon,
you, dragonfly, tiny
biplane touching down

• • •

Agile flyer, you,
dragonfly, flitting forward,
then backward with ease

• • •

Dragonfly brings change,
rebirth as tiny biplane,
wingéd happiness

• • •

(Dragonflies belong to the infraorder Anisoptera, from the Greek meaning “unequal wing” because dragonflies’ hindwings are broader than their forewings.)

Though we appear to die, we do not.
Death is merely a change of address,
and loved ones wend their way
like turtles or salmon or whales—
by smell, by feel.
This mourning, we do for ourselves,
but when we raise our heads,
sniff the breeze, feel gaps of air
between our ribs—if we give them
space, the dead loved ones return.
Or maybe they never left.
We only think they did, when
like snakes, they shed their only
skins and belly-crawled to the next place—
which is the first place,
which, when we think about it,
is home.

•••

from Companion Spirit, 2013, Amherst Writers & Artists Press

(In honor of Sea Otter Awareness Week
and the Monterey Bay Aquarium otters)

•••

She log rolls on her side and rises,
breathes and pats her stomach,
rolls and pats, then, chin tucked
to her fuzzy chest, curls into
a forward roll, somehow undulating
into a twist, which to my untrained eye
would be a 10 in the gymnastics
world—a perfect otter doughnut.

I couldn’t do that.
Could you do that?
No, you could not.

But Ruby can, and Rosa and Ivy
and Kit and Selka, the aquarium’s
all-girl otter band, can, and, oh, look—
is that Ivy?—here she comes with
her elegant backstroke, a blue bowl
balanced on her chest as if she’s
ready for dinner to be served, please.

And when she rolls, she transfers
the bowl so smoothly to her paws,
momentarily disappears underwater,
her powerful tail twisting her lithe
form, propulsion and steering
all in one appendage.

How many hours on those dark
days of lockdown did I spend glued
to the otter cam? Looking up otter
facts as I watched the girls zip
in and out of the frame like
sleek brown rafts:

Otters have the world’s densest fur—
more than a million hairs per square inch.
Their whiskers are called vibrissae;
their valve-like ears and nostrils
seal up as soon as they hit water.

I’d watch and chuckle, get all punny
with exhaustion from hours of online
teaching/coaxing/counseling/
too much worry/too little sleep—

I otter stop watching now, get back
to grading. Gotta call the significant
otter. Look at those gyrating girls—
they’re just otterable. Aren’t they
otter this world?

Some folks seek celebrity sightings
of the two-legged variety. But even
as these new versions of us have
resumed our otterly rearranged
lives, I still like to sneak a peek,
catch up with sea otter girls—

the water ballerinas who made us
smile, who helped us through those
endless days and even longer nights.

•••

You can see the Monterey Bay Aquarium otters here.

What did I really see this day?
—John O’Donohue

•••

I saw the day break into a thousand
crystal shards when my spot on the planet

rolled into sunshine, scrolling up like
movie credits, light refracting into

sleepy eyes that would much rather
be closed on a horizontal body, still

tucked into clean cotton sheets newly
applied. I saw the day cast newborn

light on the last of the roses heavy
on stems, further weighted with dew

reflecting the morning. And as I peered
closely at a thousand tiny drops,

I saw my face, one I’ll never perceive
in three dimensions, only the flattened

two of a paltry reflection at best.
I cannot see myself as others do,

but I try not to think of it as a
less-than-lovely face, as we so often do—

disliking the shape of the nose, or
noting that one eyelid droops more than

the other or (no escaping this) visible
signs of aging. I try to remember that

others see this face as beloved, just as
their sweet countenances have endeared

themselves to me. What I saw this day
was my own face reflected in perfect

drops atop a crimson rose petal that will
droop and die far sooner than I would like.

Which is why the reminder surfaces
again—to consider this a calling, to

transfigure what has hardened in me,
to praise the passing beauty my

limited sight beholds, the heart of
creativity that I see in the mirror,

so fortunately loved by many,
this one I call me.

Or an old one, as the case may be,
for we fall into autumnal shadows

today, the lengthening ones,
the light fading more quickly,

winter on its way, the radiant
days darkening with an inkling

of farewell reverberating into
chillier mornings. I look up

at the old sycamore, its leaves
beginning their annual fade into

pewter green before the eventual
crisp and fall. So many people

I know who love this interval
between summer and winter,

but this year the newly fallen
surround me, their departure

shrouded in a haze of green
smoke drifting through,

the herb garden going to seed.
No matter how I color it,

this is the dying season,
though I remind myself that

this, too, is meant to be—
the sun crossing the equator

from north to south, lingering for
a moment over the planet’s middle,

as we continue sailing along
at a steady pace, undisturbed,

day and night of equal length.
this instant of perfect balance—

one I can’t tamper with, neither
good nor bad, in this continuously

changing, maddeningly beautiful
universe.

For all that has been, thank you.
For all that is to come, yes.

—Joan Stockbridge

The simplest forms
of gratitude,
heartfelt, whether
spoken or thought,

mean the world
to the world,
so in need of
honest appreciation,

all of us here to
help heal humanity,
grow our souls
as we repair our karma,

all of which begins
with an even
simpler, kinder
yes.

•••

With thanks to Joan Stockbridge for her insight and wisdom.

My mother has lost the little gold penknife
my father used to open small packages,
and it’s driving her nuts that she can’t

find it, she says, as her ride arrives for
her evening excursion. It has to be on
the side table, she insists, so I bend over

the kidney-shaped, three-legged
platform by her easy chair strewn with
all manner of stuff—tissues, her phone

(which should be in her purse),
reading glasses, rubber bands from
the day’s newspapers, kitty fur likely

plucked from the big, fuzzy guy who
loves her lap—but no penknife. She leaves;
I move her chair, dive under the table,

take in the avalanche of books and paper
careening toward the floor. I pull it all
toward me, a few books at a time,

a handful of folded newsletters, four
identical pamphlets on CBD oil, books,
books, books. It would be easy to judge,

except that I, too, have at my house
stacks of paper threatening to topple.
I have inherited the too-many-books

gene from her. On my knees I do penance
for my own acquisitive sins as I sort
and stack, shake and look for… ah ha!

The little penknife slides from its hiding
place between (of course) the newsletters.
I hold it up like found treasure, place it

atop the cell phone where I hope she’ll
find it. Then I head for her bathroom to
try to conjure up her favorite nail file

that’s gone missing. And while I’m at it,
could I look for her charm bracelet?
I, who struggle to locate things I have

misplaced in my own house, me, whom
my family saw as scattered, a bit flaky,
have become the finder, a backup

for my mother’s dimming eyes, funny
since mine miss so much, but in other ways
seems only fair—since she, after all,

was the one who gave me mine,
the hazel pair that look so much
like hers.

“I wish”—
whispers the bottom stair, trod by countless
feet, in the translated words of Hafez,

“I could show you”—
the 14th-century Sufi poet’s
writings about divine love,

“when you are”—
in his birthplace of Shiraz,
he who learned the Quran by heart,

“lonely or”—
whom others called Hafez,
the memorizer, the safe keeper,

“in darkness”—
whose poems have leapt more
than six hundred years into our time,

“the astonishing light”—
accompanying us up and down
the stairs of these earthly lives,

“of your own being”—
always luminous, even when
we can’t see our own shining selves.