Güd wrtr

“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.

(for Robert Gordon, with thanks)

How many people can say they
walked out on their front porches
midday on a mid-September Sunday

to find two zombie/skeleton
sculptures propped up like ghoulish
Jesuses on survey-stake crosses?

Not many, I’ll wager, unless like me,
they’re lucky enough to know
the eccentric artist who lives

down H Street, an unconventional
Puck who drops by unannounced
and stealthily leaves on my porch

treasures assembled from
all manner of recycled bits
that others might call trash.

One zombie’s white face appears
to have entered the world as a
cardboard shoe insert, the other

a thick rectangular block of a gift
box painted a sickly chartreuse,
complete with Frankenstein-style

scar and, atop his ribs, a bright
red heart. I had no idea that I
needed zombies today (though,

apparently, Robert did),
but they make me smile, shake
my head in amazement at this

man’s creativity, his offbeat
genius in crafting art from some
of the most disposable stuff

that the rest of us mortal fools
so thoughtlessly,
so short-sightedly

throw away.

(May 2021)

Books boxed, shelves emptied,
left like gaping mouths, every bit
of paper in the filing cabinets
boxed, too—nothing left behind
for recycling—no one to remove
it on the pandemic-closed campus.

No one to say goodbye.

Faithful iMac wiped clean
of so many documents/photos/
whole publications. Spot on the desk
where the bright red stapler waited
to perform its job hundreds of times
a week. Slender ceramic tray cradling
old-fashioned letter opener, a prettily
decorated dagger that could, I belatedly
realize, have served as a weapon, had
a student sitting in the chair by the door
decided to come at me.

But they never did.

They sat there and unfurled
their hearts like multi-colored banners,
they asked questions and cried—
oh, how they cried, so many weeping
in the days after the towers fell,
no idea why so much sorrow
leaked out of them—

they laughed and pulled the chair
close to mine so we could look at
their stories together, as I taught
editor after editor semester after semester
how to edit a sports story/news story/
feature story headed for the campus
newspaper or magazine,

as I reviewed poems, short stories,
bits of memoir with others hoping
to have their pieces accepted by
the literary journal (and often were).

They sat in that chair, in so many chairs
in a half dozen offices over 30 years,
their names now vanished, their faces
blurring my brain like a soft cloud
as I leave this office for the last time,
stealth packing during quarantine,
the proverbial thief in the night
stealing back my past and boxing it,
carrying it home to sort later,

switching off the light as I leave,
depressing the little button on the inside
of the doorknob to lock it, not looking
back, two dear ones helping, witnessing
the end,

hoping I’d done what I meant to—
encouraged writers of all ages, shapes,
sizes and colors, convinced them
that they could write, that their voices
were worthy of the page, that they mattered,
the collective whole of them—

to the world, to themselves, to me.

Shanah tovah, our Jewish friends
say this weekend, offering us all

wishes for the good new year 5784,
this Rosh Hashanah, the birthday

of the universe, asking forgiveness
for mistakes, which I ask, too, as

I cut up apples, dip them in honey,
crack open a leathery pomegranate,

pull out its pearly seeds and place
them on the tongue, a taste of

blessings to come. May this sweet
new year bring only good changes:

more peace, better connection,
more tolerance, more bravery,

more love.

Of all the poems I could write today,
one about a cat gazing adoringly
at Dickie—as he laptops at my house
during an internet outage at his—

seems so trivial in these desperate
times of fire and flood, earthquakes
and mudslides, of so much suffering
in the world. But there is always

so much suffering in the world.
We are never short on that. And
sometimes I have to tune out
the agony of other beings and

look into the sweet eyes of one guy
staring with such devotion at
another guy taking up table space
with some electronic contraption

the first guy cannot comprehend
because Diego is—in addition to
being a cat—a classic doofus, far
from the brightest thing on four feet.

But none of that matters because
this is, it turns out, a love poem for
two guys who cherish me, and I them—
we three beings whose problems

don’t amount to a hill of beans
in this crazy world, but whose
fondness for each other makes
everything in our little orbit

that much brighter.

I’m afraid to open the can,
unloose the magic, or not—

what if it contains possum teeth
and snail shells, rose petals

crumbled to bits, some
unpretty pebbles and a dried-

up pen? I want swirly light,
a waft of lavender-verbena

and glitter (because, as my
vanished-into-mystery BFF

used to say, a girl can never
have too much glitter) and

some unnameable alchemy
that floats like fairy dust

and pulses words through
my fingers so they land with

the gentlest plop on the page—
here and here and, oh, there—

not things I’ve knowingly
conjured but radiance that

seems to have divinely
appeared, the new bits

glistening joyfully on the page.
I’ll happily crack open

the can of all-purpose
inspiration any day and

share it with you, too,
brimming with glitter

to hearten us all.

Plant my heart on a stick
right there

in the garden where
passers-by can see it,

perhaps pause to admire
it, say something like,

Look at that heart
standing so tall and proud,

perhaps put a hand
on their sturdy chests,

feel the lub-dub of their
own engines motoring

along, then continue
on their way, unaware

that they’ve left a sweet
bit of their hearts

right there to keep
company with mine.

I missed National Ampersand Day,
days ago, not that it matters
particularly, but dang,

it’s my favorite symbol
&&&&&&&&&
this Latin doohickey

“et,”, which, cleverly means
“and,” & to top it off is a
nifty ligature—two or more

letters combined to make
a symbol, an ancient one,
found in Pompeii graffiti

(after super-destructive
Vesuvius blew its top
in 79 AD).

I love that the word
is derived from
“and per se and”

(created by Marcus
Tullius Tiro, Roman
slave to Cicero) in 63 BC

& first appears as
a character at the end
of the Latin alphabet

in 1011 AD. Yes,
& was the 26th letter.
XYZ& !

Mostly I love to
whip a curvy & onto
a page, not to be

confused with the
even more elegant
& equally seductive

treble clef, though
they are kissing cousins
in symbology land,

their cute round
bottoms & curly
tops a delight to draw—

go ahead, try ’em
both (start at the
bottom & work your

way up) & see if
that just isn’t a
whole lot of fun.

(National Ampersand Day is Sept. 8.)

Look, I say to him as I water the last
of the hollyhocks, small bursts
sprouting from the yellow-stick stalks

that all summer long sported baby pink
frilly numbers fluttering like tutus.
I hope you’re up there—wherever there is—

offering a metaphorical hand to the newbies
so startlingly blasted out of their bodies
into whatever comes next. So many recently:

Margaret and Stephen and Joan and Christie.
I can’t feature an actual heaven with a
receiving line of the just-died waiting to get in

since y’all pretty much left your bodies
behind for us, the living, to deal with.
Thanks, by the way, for that. You couldn’t

just ascend, a la That Guy, and take your
old bones with you? And I feel his chuckle
rumble through my chest, his murmur

a cresting wave in my ears. Everyone
is received, Toots. Not to worry.
I sigh. OK, but how? Received into what?

Not something I can describe, Toots,
he conveys in that way he does. I expel
another heavy breath. And what about

those who are so close but can’t seem
to lift out of their pain-filled bodies?
Can you help with that? I feel his smile

right behind my own. They’re being
helped, Toots. And before I question
that, he adds, I promise. And before I

protest that it sure doesn’t look that way,
he directs my gaze to the two-inch-tall,
magenta hollyhock blossom adjacent

to the dead stalk I trimmed but did not
remove, just to see what might happen.
Because you never know.

Yeah, yeah, I say. We’ve been having
this conversation for decades now.
Growth. Something’s still living there.

He starts to drift, as he does in dreams
set by a starry stream, where I often
find him, where we’ve been talking,

chuckling, remembering. My heart longs
to follow like one or more of our dogs
and cats who’re always with him now.

His warmth caresses my ribcage
before whooshing away, leaving
what he always leaves with me:

Love, Toots. It’s all love.

who deeply misses his dearly
departed companion Dick Tracy—
not the comic book character
but an entirely real character—

who married Felicia long ago
and moved to her family‘s ranch
where she was raised, where she
raised her children and trained horses
and cared for the world famous garden
detective until he reached the end
of his long season.

Of course, they would name the dog Spencer
after the 1930s and ’40s movie star.
Of course, his canine namesake would trot
happily after his master,

who performed his own starring role
as Ricardo the Ranch Hand, piloting the ATV
around Emigrant Springs Ranch, performing
all manner of chores—

planting and tending the garden,
moving hay bales into fields,
shoveling all manner of poo,
milking sweet little Holly cow
and uncountable other duties.

We visited Felicia and Spencer today
on the ranch, all of us missing
the larger-than-life character/raconteur/
wicked funny journalist/author/garden writer.

Spencer ambled over to each of us for a pat,
then leaned on our legs and looked up adoringly,
wishing, we imagine, for the one he so loved
to amble out of the house, cowboy-hatted
and work-booted,

whistle for his faithful canine companion,
and set off together across those 100 acres
ready for whatever comes their way.

•••

Longtime Sacramento Bee journalist and garden editor Richard L. Tracy (whose byline was Dick Tracy), was a dear friend and colleague of Dick Schmidt (and later me, too). He was, among many other things, a UC Master Gardener, as well as a columnist for The Bee where he worked for 30 years, and, after his retirement from that paper, The Union in Grass Valley. Dick Tracy died at age 84 on Feb. 28, 2023, at Emigrant Springs Ranch, his home in Grass Valley, CA, which he shared with his beloved wife Felicia and dog Spencer Tracy and many other two- and four-footed ones over the years. Dick Schmidt and I and Dick Tracy’s family, friends and colleagues miss him deeply. You can read my poem about his passing here.