Güd wrtr

(for National Grief Awareness Day)

•••
I want to praise things that cannot last…
I want to praise everything brief and finite.
—poet Barbara Crooker
•••

Praise the too-soon gone:
the leaves that decorated spring
with their green hands months ago,
brittling in the last days of summer,
soon turning to detritus underfoot
as fall falls,

as the year itself soon ends—
another one almost gone.
Where, we always ask,
did it go?

Like the ones we imagine gone,
no longer embodied because
we don’t see them walking
through our lives—

we think them vanished,
when, like the leaves,
like all the days of our lives,
we have drunk them deep,
absorbed them into our cells
where they now live.

They never disappear,
just as we have embedded
ourselves into the loved ones
we will one day leave behind—

we, the too-soon gone,
who will turn from mourning
into the mourned.

(for our father Roger, who art, we imagine, in heaven,
and my sister Donna, who, happily, is still embodied)

I invoked your names today on the driveway
where more than a half century ago

one of you taught us how to wash a car,
and the other promptly set about doing so

weekly for 50 cents a vehicle, always beating
me to the punch and doing a bang-up job

on the Toyota and Chevy that lived in our
garage—where, just outside today, I stood

spraying off Mother’s Elantra, which I am
now driving, because, Father and Sister

forgive me, it has been three weeks since
its last wash and detailing to a fare-thee-well

by the Car Wash Goddess, then entrusted
into my care squeaky clean for Momdays

(which, I understand, some call Mondays)
when I drive her around and on other days

when I drive just me around. And though
I am not doing a thorough wash with

bucket and soap and sponge and chamois,
I have also watered the thirsty plants in

both front and back yards where we once
climbed oak trees and soaked up sun like

lizards on days like today that will top out
at the century mark. And I am reasonably

sure that Mother’s baby car will dry just fine,
no spots, with a clean windshield, and if I

get a little wet in the process, no problem
on this near-the-end-of-summer afternoon,

all of you here in spirit, giving me, I like
to think, a thumb’s up for a job, while

not up to your impeccable standards,
that’s close enough, as Father would say,

for government work.

(for Kai and Fia Skye)

Let’s call it a holiday,
24 hours when you can
use any tactics you like
to persuade people
to verbally admire you

(though you’ve decided
to graciously accept
love notes in any form, too).

So you don your most
flattering outfit, poof up
your hair, maybe even apply
a little lipstick, pop on
an eye-catching necklace.

But then,
not wanting to appear
shallow,

you think that maybe if you do
something for someone else—
hold open a door, perhaps,
or insist that the person
behind you in the checkout
line go ahead of you—

You only have a couple of items,
you generously say,
imagining a response like
How kind of you!
And what a great necklace!

But then you realize
that you’re performing
a kindness to potentially
get one in return—no
guarantee of that—which
makes it not so self-serving,
right?

Which means you really
do deserve that compliment,
you fabulous human, you.
And may I say how lovely
you look today in that
stunning blue dress?

In a way I love them best like this—bleached of spring
green, grass gone golden—though I pray a stray spark,
a careless or willful human does not ignite them,

these old oaks sentinels solid and silent on undulating
earth under clear blue skies, clouds stuttering by.
They looked like this four decades ago when I first

drove this windy road one tepid fall, to stop atop
the dam and look up at the dry hills, before the rains
plumped them into emerald carpets again.

The next summer, accompanying a photographer
into this same landscape charcoal’d beyond my
recognition, I met firefighters hosing hot spots.

Coulda been worse, one said. We’ve seen bigger.
This before we’d heard the phrase climate change,
before we learned about our rapidly warming globe.

And now, in a new century, admiring the landscape,
I remember young men with dirt-smeared faces
shoveling ash’d earth, saying, It happens. Fire.

And I whisper, Take care, as if the hills and trees
can do anything but bear up under whatever
comes, as if, with my fervent wishes, I can

somehow keep them safe.

(for Dickie and Michael)

One of you credits the Other One
with teaching One how to
to swiftly and skillfully print

black and white photos
in a newspaper darkroom,
though the Other One doesn’t

remember it that way, says
that One was inquisitive,
eager to learn. All I did was

what I was doing,
the Other One says,
and he was watching.

One calls the Other One
a master printer, his
mentor and friend,

while the Other One says
One quickly surpassed
his mentor’s skills.

By then he was his
own artist. Still is,
says the Other One.

He taught me everything
I know about printing,
says One, a highly prized,

world-class photographer.
Forty years on, mentor
and friend grin as they hug

in the city that shaped
them both, gratitude leaking
from the corners of their

soft blue eyes.

(for Lisa and Stuart Morgan)

Here’s to the trusty scoops
at the ready to ball up a perfect
sphere of your favorite flavor,
bound for dish or bowl or cone.

Here’s to the porcelain-topped syrup
dispensers with their clear lettering
boldly announcing vanilla, strawberry,
orange and more,

the graceful tulip fountain dishes
begging for two scoops topped with
hot fudge, whipped cream, nuts
and a cherry,

the neat rows of ice cream float glasses,
water glasses, soda glasses, every
manner of glassware hovering over
the hot fudge warmer, the mint green

Hamilton milkshake mixer, near a
stack of upended pointed paper cones
prepared to cradle a crunchy, edible one
supporting a single or double scoop.

And behind it all, a teenaged soda jerk
swathed like a pharmacist in white
from shirt to apron, paper-hatted,
ready to take your order,

as you and a girlfriend sit swiveling
on chrome-rimmed stools, elbows
chilled by the marble counter,
grinning, giggling, gossiping,

reaching for a fresh straw fanned
from the fluted dispenser, taking a
deep pull of Coke, then returning
to your endless conversation,

which—though this scene will fade
into history—if you are lucky,
will continue well into your long
lifetimes.

A poem isn’t something I make, it’s something I serve…
—Jane Hirshfield

Serve the poem on a large platter;
decorate with all the trimmings
accompanied by hearty staples—
yummy line breaks, tasty stanzas—
smothered in metaphor.

Let it stand as centerpiece
of a moment, as a thing
somehow greater than it
appears at first glance.

Let it fill you and move you,
satiate you so well that
dessert becomes unnecessary.

Let it go for the distance
traveled by a great egret
high-stepping through
summer green rice paddies,
then flapping away, bound for
some unnamed landscape,
some other poet’s perfect
moment.

(for Christie Domasky)

The morning glories’ purple abundance
makes it seem as if they’ll live forever
on the old fence in my back yard,

unlike the poor fly buzzing around
the kitchen window, desperate
for a way out.

And when I try to shoo it toward
the open back door so it can live
the rest of its short life outside,

it stubbornly clings to the glass,
certain that’s its departure point.
I’d so much rather it spend however

many days it has left where it’s
meant to be—out in sunshine,
perhaps taking a rest on one

of those glories of the morning,
breathing until it’s truly time
to go. I’ve learned that arrivals

and departures are not up to me—
though I wish they were—
not the timing or place,

no matter how much I wish
to help. That we are all here
to accompany each other,

to serve as witnesses
to the process,
as hard as that might be.

’Tis the season, hot August
hoppers filled with our city’s
(sort of) namesake lumbering
north on I-5 for processing,

the two of us driving home
after a weekend in the mountains,
spotting the familiar image of
a California summer—

14 double-trailer’d hoppers
lugging untold tons of tomatoes
to the plant in Williams to be
mooshed into all manner of

—tomato paste
—diced tomatoes
—tomato puree
—fire roasted tomatoes
—dried tomatoes
—chili sauce
—plus ketchup base.

We exclaim, Tomatoes!
as each truckful trundles
into view on the opposite side
of the highway, as if we’ve
never seen such gleaming
red bounty heaped high in
transit, as if we’ve not learned
about the round-the-clock
harvests for 12 to 14 weeks
in our tomato-happy state,

your hand gently squeezing
one of my ever-aging tomatoes
each time we spot a hopperful
driving by,

me giggling as if mine were
still young and firm and ripe,
(as if both of us were still
young and firm and ripe).

Here’s to the red fruit of the field
or homegrown multicolored
gems ripening in back yards—
some yellow, orange, green,
burgundy, others streaked and
striped—

tastiest when plucked fresh
off the vine, sun-warmed,
ready to pop into the mouth,
to enjoy the squish and savor
the flavor of summer
right here, right now.

(for Dick)

It can happen anywhere,
a sprinkle of contentment
descending like a gentle
wash of warm, friendly rain,

when you will tease me
about such a fortunate
moment—say, walking
the sands of an island beach

toward a triangular peak
silhouetted in movie memory,
water-colored against a
salmon sky,

when there is nothing
to think about except
when to cut the fresh
pineapple waiting in

the kitchen of our for-
the-fortunate-moment
cottage, when you will
toss out a phrase that

would, in polite company,
sound derisive, critical,
unkind. But here, and on
other preciously ordinary

occasions, you stop and
whisper it like a prayer—
rich bitch—though in most
ways we’re far from it.

But right now, walking on
warm sand, or bending in
the backyard to inhale roses
on the bloom, or sharing

three desserts outdoors
on a summer evening with
family—if we think about it,
look how content we are,
how joyful these simple,
lovely moments,
basking in this wealth
beyond our imagining.