Güd wrtr

(for Georgann)

Yeah, I retired that license plate
when I donated the car to the public
radio station some years back,

and Dick removed the plates
for me because I wasn’t letting
those go, seeing as how

you claimed them as your first
published piece of writing,
coming up with the phrase,

as you did, on the spot at
the State Fair one broiling
August day at the DMV booth.

You paid for them, too—
your birthday present, you said—
though I protested,

I can’t put those on my car.
People will think I’m bragging.
And you, mischievous light

in your eyes, popped back:
Not spelled like that.
Because, of course, it had

to fit in seven letters. Dick
added the umlaut over the ü
to fancify it. For years

my students knew that
I was on campus when they
saw my car. And today

the roses are blooming their
fool heads off on the plate
affixed to the backyard

fence—both of them full
of fragrant remembrance
of you.

Because I’d never seen one before,
never unpeeled the thin-skinned bulb
and pried out a half moon of garlic,

I had no idea what the fit-in-your-hand
contraption was. But it came with him
and the creaky red overstuffed rocker

that had belonged to his father, along
with a formerly red Chevy Luv pickup
the color of a not-yet-ripe tomato.

“A garlic press,” he said, and when I
looked perplexed, he added, “to mince
garlic?” the question hanging between

us like so many unspoken. “You’re so
smart—but you don’t know…?”
I came by my ignorance honestly.

“No one squished garlic in my house,”
I said, not coming from a family of
cooks. Or Italians. We didn’t eat rice

either, which he taught me to cook,
mostly brown or wild, those being
his favorites. And now when I make

soup, I pull his press from the drawer,
knowing he’s hovering nearby with
that teasing grin—”you don’t know…?”

The can-do fellow who married me,
who has never left, ghosting the kitchen,
the one I inhale in every fragrant bulb

I press into tiny bits.

(for SML)

My horoscope for the week
advised: Be on the lookout for
meaningful coincidences.

Synchronicities are coming!
You have entered the More-Than-
Mere-Coincidence Zone.

Or, as my late friend Julie
liked to say, Honey, there
are no accidents.

So it was that, driving up
the hill to see you, I thought
how perfect—a fish cloud

swimming across the bright
blue sky—pointing the way
to you, my tropical fishy

best friend, who dissected
more than one departed fish
from your tank to study

under your kid’s microscope—
still and always the best person
to bring to a tidepool. So I snap

a photo of this cumulus fractus
fish out of water disguised as
a torn piece of cotton candy.

Because you and fish, whether
star- or all manner of marine life,
go together like you and me,

not mere coincidence, definitely
a meant-to-be, related to each
other as forever friends are

in all the best possible ways.

Leave everything undefined, including yourself. Befriend uncertainty.
Fall in love with mystery. Kneel at the altar of Not Knowing.
Give your questions time to breathe, and the answers will find you.

— Jeff Foster

•••

Without form, you float with loss
in that space between here and gone,

your cries lifting like fog, seeking
answers to the unanswerable. The you

who once was has morphed into one
who looks like you and sounds like you

but who is utterly transformed, your
molecules blasted out of a cannon,

resettling into an unrecognizable form.
This is no accident. This is the cost of living

in a body with an expiration date unknown
to the one in that body—and to the ones

who loved the one in that body. You, awash
in grief, fear drowning, but look—

you’re floating, face upturned to sky,
breath like clouds coming and going—

going and coming—uncertain, unknowing,
but here. You. Here.

You and your wide open, tender heart.

Early evening patter on the roof
morphs into an insistent shower

—what ho? rain?
—yes, rain now—

followed by equally emphatic sun
blazing in the west, illuminating

the wall of cranky clouds that has
moved on, heading east, as am I

in the car, when, holy cow, RAINBOW!
curves its full-spectrum self over

the pines arrowing into the charcoal
sky. The cloudburst of the word bursts

from me—RAINBOW!—not as if
we never see them here, but rarely

so vivid, and with every curve and turn
it pops up again, and I’m announcing

—RAINBOW!—

though there is no one listening,
except for maybe the red-headed angel

who long ago told me that she hoped
to work in rainbows once she made

it to heaven, and I have no doubt
that she did, so perhaps my enthusiasm

nudges the immortal lighting show
team as I beg for an encore

—Hana hou! Again! More!
Keep rainbowing on!—

applauding at the long stoplight,
its red no match for this moment’s sky,

unable to look away from
the glorious arcing prism,

never wanting to see it fade.

Because it seems that cold weather
might finally be done with us,

because spring is springing with
its always surprising abandon,

tossing frilly blooms around like
so many enthusiastic pom-poms,

I decide that the plants that have
sheltered all winter on the front porch

can move to the sunny backyard
deck. And so the moving begins—

first lugging down the driveway
the tall, leggy ficus that a long-ago

editor gave me when I succeeded
her in the job, then the smaller ficus

that was ailing when I brought
it home, its adoring person near

the end of her life. Then the round
container of succulents, some

a soft, sagey green, some darker
and spiky. And the hydrangea

that the sun roasted has popped
back, so I will find it a shady spot—

trickier now with the old sycamore
pruned and some volunteers

in the urban jungle making an exit.
I move pot after pot as the cats sit

and watch, just out of the way
but interested in the process.

And when I’m done, Diego jumps
up next to a heart-shaped terra cotta

planter of last year’s stragglers into
which I will plant new annuals.

Johnny Jump-ups, I think, little
grinning violas in yellow and purple,

as well as others that catch the eye
of this give-it-a-try gardener—

still not very savvy after many years
but delighted by what shows up,

regrows and flourishes, with so
very little help from me.

The first one was actually Diego
overnighting in the bathroom
sink, which I did not discover
until a 4 a.m. foray in the dark
and a flipped light switch before
I turned on the faucet.

Not five hours later, on a morning
walk, Deb and I came across
a literal silly goose nestled
in the center of Sandburg Drive,
sleeping, its neck twisted backward,
as they do, beak tucked neatly
between its folded wings.

I stood over it, urging it to move.
Like Diego, it blinked at me,
beak still tucked into feathers.
We could not leave, we two
animal mothers worried about
this silly goose who’d decided
to nap in the street.

We did not nudge but got so close
that most other birds would have
risen in fear or at least hissed,
but not this guy/gal/whatever
giving us the go-away eye.

Finally, he/she/they flapped
out a wide webbed foot, then
another, and less-than-gracefully
stood, fluttering feathers a bit.

“Gotta move, dude!” I said from
behind, recalling that the kids
use the term for any gender,
and besides, the silly goose
wouldn’t care as it eventually
sauntered to the sidewalk,
where Deb admonished,
“Stay out of the street now,”

as if we could convince such
a headstrong animal of anything—
least of all the wisdom of choosing

a better spot than a sink or
a street as a lovely bed for
a snooze.

But, you know. Silly people.
We have to try.

Just begin. Always begin again.
Sit in meditation. Move prayerfully,
or at least thoughtfully, though,

really, it’s better to let thoughts fall
from your hands like sand as you
embark on this small pilgrimage,

the one with others walking ahead
or behind you, some going in
the opposite direction,

making turns you can’t fathom—
why are they going that way?—
walking with you.

Always someone—or many
someones—walking with you,
waiting for you.

So walk. Solvitur ambulando—
it is solved by walking—
St. Augustine is said to have said.

And perhaps he did, but
we cannot know for sure.
Here’s what we do know:

Any path, whether seemingly
straight or circuitous, will take
you where you need to go,

though you have no idea where
that will be on the next leg
of your journey.

Just begin. One step. Begin again.
Another step. Notice art and magic
in the broken bits,

the cut-apart bits, the stray threads
and scraps of fabric that make up
a life.

Keep walking. Allow for surprise,
for unexpected beauty in less-than-
beautiful spaces.

The way is made by walking,
by noticing, by collecting gifts
strewn on the path.

They’re for you. Pick them up.
Dear one, hold the gifts
in your grateful hands

and walk on.

•••

Thanks to Jen, Kate and Frances, for walking and writing with me this week. And with gratitude to the Unitarian Universalist Society of Sacramento for the use and inspiration of their labyrinth.

Mother and I commune with the lilacs
in her backyard, she taking my hand
to lead her into the shade where

the faintly purple globes hang like
heavy breasts, a little droopy, a little pale,
not unlike mine, actually.

We stand and inhale lilac, which means
that not only is it truly spring, but also
it’s hand watering season.

So I take up the hose on this patch
of earth where she raised us,
the two blonde sisters,

where we played with friends and
puppies, this unfenced yard where
Father hung rope swings,

where more stately oaks once stood
as guardians and tree-climbing
companions till they collapsed from

age and watering. Now I aim the hose
at bushes brimming with first roses,
squirt a profusion of azaleas

in the front yard under the pink dogwood,
upright and blooming in yet another
spring, this one

we’ve all been granted by some miracle,
which we do not take for granted
in our corner of Granite Bay Vista,

an unshakeable foundation—
this rocky bit of Earth where we
and the lilacs have put down

deep, deep roots.

Why capitalize “I” but not “me”?
Is I more important than Me?
Is Me not of equal weight to I?

Sure, grammar gurus, I is a subject,
the doer, the mover of a sentence.
Me is the receiver, the object—

but the object of no less adoration
than I—am I right? Only in English
do we uppercase the I, the lone

single-letter pronoun. The logic
goes that lowercase i is difficult
to read, gets lost on the page.

Uppercase I symbolizes importance,
gives added weight to the first
person. But really, while we’re

at it, are not You worthy of
capitalization? For You and I
together make a We (or an Us).

You and Me and I and We—all of
Us pronouns getting personal,
meaningful to ourselves

and to each other, hand in
uppercase hand, skipping from
line to line to warmhearted line.