Güd wrtr

Lately my father has been riding in the backseat
on Momdays as I chauffeur my mother in her car.

He is, of course, belted in—the man who installed
seatbelts in our 1965 turquoise Rambler,

long before any law required them. He grins as
he listens to my mother chatter, something he did

for 47 years before he vanished into mystery.
His voice, garbled and unintelligible, still

answers the phone—my mother reluctant
to change the old message:

Hello, you have reached the Haag residence…

He’s been gone almost 20 years, and he catches
my eye in the rearview, winks now and then,

though I can’t tell if he’s commenting on Mother’s
running monologue, or if he’s giving me a version

of his “atta girl” whacks on the shoulder that
could leave the faintest purple splotch.

“Don’t hit the girls!” Mom would yell, that being
her job when she thought we needed it. But,

in truth, I loved feeling his amiable punch,
his you-can-do-this vote of confidence.

I catch his eye in the mirror as her monologue
washes over us like gentle rain, my hair nearly    

the same as his snowy shade in later years,
as mine when I’d sit tiny and trusting on his lap,

my small hand wrapped around his finger, each
of us delighted to be in the other’s presence.

Jeez, dude next door—
I heard all your (yes, I’m using
this word) ejaculations,

such repeated hollering that
only one thing, I imagine,
could warrant such an outcry.

But an hour later into my
news feed comes the headline,
and I remember what

a football fan you are—
in which case I think, if
watching someone make

a touchdown on TV does
that for you, I hope never
to hear you roar in ecstasy

should the other thing
take place in Apartment 1
two yardlines outside

my living room window…
Or wait. For your sake,
maybe I do.

The days aren’t all gray now,
though they can start that way—
dove gray, glove gray, elephant gray,
cloudy gray—

the color of coins or pencil lead,
pewter or the faintest gray of full moon
seen from a far-away perch from
this humble planet.

Some days in this first month of a new year
shimmer in blues from azure to cornflower,
from the color of arctic ice to the aquamarine
of tropical seas.

But true blue—a dye from Coventry
famous for not washing out, the color
of constancy, of unswerving loyalty,
of the steadfastly faithful—

is what I see when I look in your eyes,
even if what your baby blue irises lack
in melanin, they more than make up
in devotion.

how do you know it’s not the last straw,
that the ship has sailed,
that you have not made matters worse?

your guess is as good as mine
as we live and learn,
bite off more than we can chew
once in a blue moon.

easy does it, my friend,
full steam ahead,
you’ve got this,
you with bigger fish to fry—

it takes one to know one,
both of us joined at the hip,
right here on the same page,
come what may.

My mother cannot see my face
as I stand in the family room

five feet from her—you’re all shadow,
she says—sending a shudder through me

not only because her vision has been
dimming for years, but also because

I, too, now nightly deposit the same
brand of wishful drops in my eyes

that she has used for decades,
hoping to slow the unshakeable stride

of glaucoma. Perhaps her devoted
application has delayed what seems

inevitable, though she has long complained
that many restaurants are too dark—

and I agree—or that someone needs to turn
on more lights. And she understandably

balked when the ophthalmologist told
her that she could no longer drive safely.

I am one of her drivers now, as are my sister
and a few other women who chauffeur her

through her busy life. People look at photos
of the two of us, saying how much I look

like my mother. And though we do not see
the resemblance, I know that I carry her

hazel eyes, her DNA, her fierce independence.
I pray that somehow, behind my irises,

cosmic forces conspire on my behalf to—
please, eye gods—keep me seeing clearly.

Neither of us is ready to give up the light.

Though we have bailed out of exercise early
today—because the leaf blower man has
come to blow away the leaves on her lawn
where we work out to and with the oldies—

Marilyn comes inside, heading for her laptop
on the table by the living room window.
I sigh, seeing her there, this longtime writer,
her manicured red nails hovering over the keys,

her short-circuited brain recovering
day by day, week by week, watching her
return to herself, to those who love her,
to the world that she has chronicled

since she could first hold a pencil,
on countless pages, in journals
on paper and pixels, in many books.
And now she sits on the sofa reading

a memoir on her iPad by a woman who,
after concussion, had trouble reading.
Why can’t you read? the author asks herself.
You were in the Acorn group in second grade.

“I didn’t have any trouble reading,” Marilyn
says. “That would have been awful.”
She chats as she did in the before-stroke
times, better able to follow conversation,

though I still need to slow my speech
for her to catch my fastball words. I think
of her late husband’s dementia that utterly
destroyed his brain, her own on the mend.

Every time I’m with her, I find her more
herself, but, I suspect, she was never
not herself. No one can see the buttery
consistency of her brain floating

in its cradle of fluid, doing its good work
to repair itself bit by bit, synapses
making new connections, her brain
circuitry rewiring synapse to synapse,

creating new pathways,
one precious cell talking to another,
all by their clever, clever selves.

Given the choice
between love and not love,

between the harsh voice
and the gentle one,

it is prudent, you remind
yourself, to pause when

this one or that one is
annoyingly annoying,

and you want, more than
anything, to snap off their

head and chomp on it like
a female praying mantis

is wont to do after mating
with a hapless swain.

But then, you draw breath
and remind yourself that,

like you, all beings simply
want to be happy, that

all beings search for the
compassionate-hearted,

and, like you, cherish bits
of lovingkindness when it

appears—even from those
you barely know—from

the server who brings bright
lemon slices on a white plate

on a hesitantly sunny winter
afternoon for your water glass

because he remembers that
you like them. And you resolve

to choose love, to unearth some
submerged kindness from

your momentarily hardened
heart space, and offer it to one

before you now, because, truly—
could you bear to live without it,

even just a little?

for Dickie on his fifth rebirth-a-versary

The day you melted,
I witnessed the collapse
of a self, a candle burned
down to a puddle of wax,
a heap of humanity—
gone.

Yet strangers sprang
to reshape your melted
self into a new form,
and we learned that
resurrection is not
pretty.

But in the act of revival,
we become ones who
once again can bear light,
whose brightness cannot
be diminished—

who can be
reanimated,
re-formed—

our hearts reshaped
by grace and everyday,
imperfect human love,
into something we never
imagined we might be.

•••

You can read the stories of Dick’s cardiac arrest in Honolulu on Jan. 15, 2019, and the aftermath here.

•••

With our deepest mahalo, again and forever, to the AED Institute, Pamela Foster and Jenna Tanigawa, to Salesi Maumau, Claudio Alvarado, Camron Calloway, Chris Ohta, Andrew and Leona Boyd Doughty, Jan Lake, Mākena J. Ongoy, Dr. Nicholas Dang and the incredible staff and volunteers at Kaiser Moanalua Hospital in Honolulu, Cora Hoffmaster Johnson, Constance Raub, Danielle McKinney… and all our friends and family, whose support and love sustained us then and now.

It’s my month, I think, every time
I abbreviate it—not the one of my birth,

but my name, the Roman god of doorways,
beginnings, sunrises and sunsets.

One letter difference between his name
and mine to indicate entrance and,

yes, transitions, him with two bearded
faces looking in opposite directions—

both to the past and the future,
backward and forward. Two-faced, yes,

but not necessarily deceitful or
contradictory. In the spirit of duality,

I play with Janus words that hold
opposite meanings—dust, which can

mean the removal or application of it.
And now I’m thinking of cookies

dusted with confectioners’ sugar,
which leads me also to the notion

of wiping clean at the beginning of this
new year—to heed the impulse to

tidy up and organize at the same time
I want to burrow in, read, nap.

Janis as Janus—I claim my true nature
in this, my month, and yes, go in

search of dust cloth and cookie,
ready to embrace both.

I have thought for weeks
that now’s the time—

on these gray, cold days
with the narcissus shooting

their merry paperwhites skyward,
even the odd hollyhock clinging

to an unseasonably tall stalk—
that I must take up the clippers

and head to the back fence—
not to mention attend to the bed

in the front yard with roses
that I deadhead all summer—

to prune last season’s gangly stems
that provided unasked-for bounty.

Now, in January, a few crimson
blossoms nod their heavy heads

groundward as I ponder such
mysteries as roses in winter.

I have sometimes neglected to
prune them, hating to lop them

mercilessly, almost to the ground,
to make space for the yet-to-be,

to overcome my reluctance to
allow the dying to die, so that

what is gestating can—
with no help from me—

be born.