Güd wrtr

(For the creative souls at Woodflock,
which is all of you)

Before you put pen to page,
fingers to strings or keys,

blow a note or strike a chord,
before you pick up the brush

take a photo, feel your hands
roughen under raw clay, dance

a step or turn ingredients into
edible bliss, the realm of possibility

stretches long, stirring confusion,
excitement, fear, and the tiniest

bit of hope. If you say yes to
what emerges, if you can hold

the just-born with tenderness
and patience long enough

to see the brightness around
its rough edges, it turns out that

the constellation of your voice,
your messy fingerprints,

your love and joy in the making
runs over and under and through

your creations, these tiny points
of light that are your finest gifts

to the world—and I, for one,
can’t wait to see, to applaud

your something new.

(for Antsy McClain and the Trailer Park Troubadours
and all the Flamingoheads at Woodflock 2023 in Cobb, California)

Up in the mountains,
two nights at a songfest
sleeping in a cute trailer
with a low-ceiling’d loft bed
I access on my knees,

the computer shrugging
as if it’s never heard
of wi-fi,

makes me reconsider
trying to post a poem
at midnight, because
I’m outta range, baby,
unconnected in
the pines,

where we got to hear
Antsy sing “It Ain’t Home Till
You Take the Wheels Off”
to this crowd of campers,
a song I’ve heard him
perform live dozens
of times,

and now, here we are
actually in a trailer with
the wheels on, anchored
in Pine Grove Campground,
after the music has ended,

the crickets still singing their
sweet harmonies into the night,
feeling oh, so connected
to everything and everyone
who matters.

•••

(posted a day late because we were, indeed, outta range!)

(for Jill Batiansila and the Together We Heal community)

Too hot this August afternoon
as I drive to Elk Grove, hoping
the chocolate in bags in
the back seat isn’t puddling
into brown pools—

because we write better fed,
I always say, and chocolate helps,
though I also bring gummies
and some taffy. And Jill shows up
with homegrown grapes and plums—

because it’s August here in
California’s great central valley,
the state’s breadbasket, and no
matter what else is going on in
our lives, no matter how much
we might swim in pools of sorrow,

if we can sit together and write
our art out, put it on the page,
which can take anything we
throw at it—grief and anger,
even joy—we can tame the heat
a bit by showing up in this cool
space, perhaps popping a
chocolate-covered almond
or two in our mouths, and,

having no idea what to put
on the page, allow our pens
and fingers to move, then sit
back, amazed at the bounty
that appears around this table—
after we moved through this
too-hot day to bring ourselves
here, certain that we had
nothing to say.

•••

You can find more information here about Together We Heal, which supports people in the Sacramento region struggling with loss in all its forms, and its many free programs, including a writing group that I host and flowers for people in grief.

(for Georgann Turner,
March 1, 1951–Aug. 17, 2021)

Do you dream me now
as I do you?
Are we together in your
place of mystery?

Please let us sit side by side
your head on my shoulder
or mine on yours.

Let us both be embodied,
arms touching, shadowed
in dreams, surrounded
by the wagging tongues
of anthuriums set into
a bed of stars. No need
to speak.

My hand on you,
your hand on me,
dreaming our separate
dreams together
forever and ever
amene.

(for Richard Rico and my former colleagues)

I drove through town today with old
friends who knew me here when—
none of them embodied—their voices

and faces as sharp as the Exacto knives
we used to slice long galleys of type
to make a newspaper at 318 Main Street

three times a week, writing and shooting
every word, graf, column, image, headline,
caption tucked next to ads for the Nut Tree,

Vasquez Deli, for the McCune funeral
home and Mayor Bill’s TV shop. I was
proverbially green as the grass in

Andrews Park at my second newspaper
job out of college, no idea how much
those few years in that small town

would shape me, how those people
would take up residence in my heart
for the rest of my remembering—

not just the men who loved me
and one who married me—but in
every unexpected gift of the beloved

cop reporter’s joke captions under
photos, the soc hen and I sharing an
office with the publisher’s father,

arriving daily to write obits
of people he’d known for decades,
every reporter and editor handing

me new tools for my burgeoning toolbox,
a treasure chest of skills that took me
places I never expected to go.

But isn’t life like that? People extending
hands and hearts, not realizing how much
they’ve offered, me unaware of all that

I’d absorbed till much later, today driving
through town in 105-degree August heat,
warmed by visits with some who helped

me build that sturdy foundation,
who watched me grow wings I didn’t know
I had, ready to fly me into everything

I am.

•••

(also for Jim, Cliff, Linda, Brian (both of you), Kathy (both of you), Barry, Steve (both of you), Cynthia, Sully, Sue, Lou, Frank, Trey, Mary Lou, Dan, Margaret, Gary and so many others)

Driving across the dam road
I can see the hill where,
months ago as the grass

greened and the old oaks
leafed into spring, I followed
the path to a particular

community of cousins,
the quercus lobata that
rooted themselves on this

slope long before I planted
my own young tendrils
in the soil around this lake.

The heat has kept me away,
grasses turned to straw,
inviting a stray spark that

could race up and down these
hills charring everything.
I hate to see them like that,

so vulnerable these venerables,
with their pewter-colored bark
the texture of alligator hide,

though softer deep inside, too,
upright, sheltering friends
who have taken me under

their great umbrellas
of kindness, without a word,
the valley oaks that have

always seemed to know
my name.

(for Annelise Cochran and the people of Lahaina)

If you are inclined to heed the signs,
you might.

Wait. Here.

You might hunker down, pause,
expecting hoping wishing for instructions
about what to do next.

Sometimes they come.
Often they do not.

If you are not so inclined, you may
forge ahead, heedless of the flames
flaring on both sides of the road,

call to a stranger also trying to flee,
Jump in! And when they do, keep going,
because moving is better than not. Maybe.

Or perhaps you climb over the sea wall
as your town burns around you,
cling to rocks battered by incoming surf
with a neighbor as sparks wing onto
the back of your neck, your legs, your nose,

embers etching the tiniest heart into
your thigh, which you take as a sign—

love is here—

and you hold tighter to your neighbor
waiting for the fire to burn itself out
now that it’s reached the sea.

Wait. Here.

To move or to stay, never an obvious answer,
though you may cry to a god you might or might
not believe in, helpmehelpmehelpme.

They say prayers are always answered.
Yours in the shape of a tiny heart that,
as the long night wears on, you’ve decided
to have permanently inked on your strong,
surviving self.

•••

You can read Annelise Cochran’s story of surviving the fires in Lahaina, Maui, here.

Remembering that we all hold them
helps us find compassion for those
we imagine are not like us at all,

when, of course, we are far more
similar than different, all beings
wanting to be happy, the reminder

to release judgments, see the spark
of grace in us all, we who are one,
behold with awe the divine connections

we all share.

•••

(for Margery Thompson and her great, compassionate heart,
on her birthday… and for her brother Dick Schmidt on his
half-birthday, too, with love and gratitude)

(for Pia Sieroty Spector)

Pia brought lemon cake
to the writing loft tonight,
and even before I set out
the rest of the snacks

(because people write better
fed, I always say—not least me)

I am ogling the spongy
triangles, their backsides
coated with a delicate glaze,

imagining a slice on a purple
paper plate sidling up to a few
blueberries, opposite the hummus
neatly corralled by small carrots
and cauliflower pieces,

a few almonds for texture,
a still life of snacks jostling
in my head, and I cannot resist:

Even before I start the writing
session, before I load up a plate
and take it with me to my spot
at the table,

I snag a slice, feel my teeth sink
into the gentle waft of lemon
gracing my palate, making me
smile because lemon does
that, along with a soft-tempered
summer evening spent writing
with lovely humans.

I do not know who engineered
this life to land me here and now
with people putting words onto
pages—and lemon cake—but
I owe someone a ginormous
thank you.

Tonight, Pia, it’s you.

A must-see for tourists,
this tree spreading its long arms,
aerial roots and leafy canopy
canopy over a half-acre,

it grew from an 8-foot sprout
planted behind the courthouse
in 1873 to honor Protestant
missionaries, who landed
in this whaling village
a half century earlier.

One hundred plus years
after it was set into the lava-
baked earth, standing on
the boat from Lanai entering
Lahaina harbor, I’d study that
tree’s crown before other
passengers and I transitioned
from sea to land, admiring its
spread, its sheltering spirit,
tended with aloha for
generations.

In one night set aflame,
left charred but still standing
as its town burned around it.

No one knows if it will survive,
this ancestor among the ashes,
its spirit perhaps wandering with
others like the night marchers,
looking, they say, for a way
from this world into the next.