Güd wrtr

You are such an interesting conversation. You belong here.
—Pádraig Ó Tuama, from “How to Be Alone”

•••

“Listen,” I say to you more often than I care to admit,
“You are not going to believe this.”

And then I unspool some fresh horror or indignity
that supports my worst-days feeling that we are all,

truly, going to hell in the proverbial handbasket,
and I don’t even believe in hell, though I do believe

in climate disasters, certainly not helped by humans.
And then I bemoan having to cancel a vacation after

a hurricane devastated my favorite island in the middle
of the sea. (They don’t need the likes of me there now.)

You understand this, along with other minor indignities
of my lucky, lovely, super-privileged, pensioned life.

You don’t consider it whining, though it is. And you—
from your vantage point on high, which is how

I imagine the after, are probably happily in some
heavenly kitchen whipping up beef bourguignon

(no cows killed in this version) with Julia Child—
would, of course, agree with me as I gripe about

the pain-in-the-ass-ness of compiling another
literary journal (all the randomly indented lines…

poets, c’mon!) or about the rats that might or
might not still be rattling around in the attic

or basement (none in traps today, says the rat guy)
or the mundanities of life. But that’s just it, right?

Life—what we the living do. I have no idea what you,
the dead-but-not-gone, do. You, who always know

what to murmur in my mind, who define BFF,
emphasis on the final F, who truly meant it

when, long ago, you promised this friendship
forever.

•••

(for Georgann… of course)

“Such a pretty day”—
complimenting those in charge
of the acutely blue sky
and end-of-summer leaves
that have not yet begun to turn,

though some have fallen here
and there, a sign of what’s to come.
Perhaps, like the squirrels, I’m storing
up this ideal walking weather to sustain
me through the inevitable unpleasantness.

“Nice job,” I tell the trees.
“Looking good,” I say to the grass
still sporting its springy green,
as if nature needs the admiration from
this strolling rah-rah to do what it does.

I don’t have to travel far to see loveliness,
I remind myself when plans to venture
further afield get canceled. I have only
to lace up my shoes and head out
the door into my little neighborhood.

“Beautiful,” I say to no one and everyone
as my feet traipse familiar ground,
some of the prettiest stretches they’ve
ever strolled—

the rest of me walking wide eyed,
always, in wonder.

Sunnyside restaurant, Tahoe City, Lake Tahoe

As we eat on the deck above the lake
for the last time, weeks before
the restaurant will shutter for good,

beyond the blue, the mountains blush
as the sun lowers its curtain, then
purple and darken into evening.

The spotlight blinks into brilliance,
and—ta da!—the spider show begins
just over my shoulder on the railing.

Five of them, from thick-bodied
black to spindly-legged white, start
unspooling filament from their

spider spots, beginning the delicate
ballet that—so quickly—weaves
a series of wheel-shaped webs,

their sticky strands perfectly spaced
in the spiral, each dancer swiftly
sewing up gaps before retreating

to the center, head down, to wait.
And, sure enough, tiny flying things
immediately get snagged in silk.

The slender, pale spider is the first
to jump and snatch an insect as it
flies by, so fast the preyed could not

have seen its predator. And as we
eat our final Hula Pie before this
place closes, the dancers in the

Sunnyside spider show, having
jitterbugged their elaborate traps,
hunker down to see what flies in.

Where, we wonder, will the spider
show go when the spotlights
no longer light their night stage?

Will they take their show on the road?
Can they find shelter as the chill comes
and their systems pause for winter?

Can we?

Babe, you hiked two miles
over crunchy granite trails
at 6,200 feet, far above
our usual sea level walks,

good sport that you are,
knowing that I wanted to do
a little explore around this
mountain lake we love.

And later, you sacked out
on the bed tucked under
the well-used blue binkit
we bring with us for naps,

outgassing here and there
like the old dog used to.
You never mean to;
you have no idea,

but sweetums, I don’t mind.
I really don’t, having lost
you once to a fluttering
heart, and somehow

you returned to me
through I don’t know how
many miracles. I’ll take you
any way I can have you,

for as long as I can have you—
thankyouthankyouthankyou—
thirty-threeish years and
counting every blesséd day.

I don’t know, but I sit myself down next to one and ask.

And then I listen.

And in the quiet, the water making almost no sound that I can detect,
Stream answers:

We remember everything. As do you.
Especially on the anniversary of that day, that year,
when so much was lost, when it felt to you like
the beginning of the end.

It is not the end. It was never the end.
We keep flowing, even when it seems that we are dry,
when you can see nothing but river rock,
so many stones that add up to those lost.

You don’t have to know them, any of them, to feel their passing.

They have whooshed by you on the way out of their bodies
into the stream—
which is us, which is you, which is everything.

Take heart, as you do every day, in the flow,
in the coming and going, even in the leaves,

which still look so green, which are beginning
to silently turn,
to begin the fall.

—

9/11/26
Rosh Hashanah

As I set off on my morning walk,
I think of a woman I know, older than I,
beginning a pilgrimage 5,500 miles away
across 100 kilometers of trail older than
both of us, far older than this troubled
country we call home.

What will she and her fellow pilgrims
find on their way? Doesn’t the Earth scatter
love letters on whatever paths we travel?
In that fallen branch with maple leaves
beginning to lose their summer green?

In the small feather tipped blue, melting
into dove gray? In the spiky liquid amber
balls, magnolia seedpods and fat oak galls?
In pebbles on a dusty path in a land new to us?

I wish the pilgrims treasures of all kinds—
not least the intangibles of new friendships,
trust in the creative process and glimmers
winking like mini Morse code, insight more felt
than seen, absorbed into the bones.

From my footsteps to theirs, may wayfaring
transform us in ways that may take years,
perhaps, to recognize, far longer
to understand—

we mere mortals, here so briefly,
walking the sacred path that always circles back,
the one that takes us—no matter how far
afield we go—always in the direction
of home.

•••

(for Melisa McCampbell and her fellow creative pilgrims
led by Laura Davis, Brenda Porter and Andre Mallinger
on the Camino de Santiago)

(Lake Tahoe, west shore)

Jackie has her phone ready
as Ryan nimbly hoists himself up
onto a piling on the pier, a good
ten feet above the water.

Balancing like a tightrope walker,
he does not teeter and takes his
first leap into the lake as she
captures his twisting flip.

Jackie, a bikini’d college student,
shoots video from the pier. Ryan,
also in college, is a cheerful young man
who seems not to be showing off
so much as literally testing the water
and delighting his friends.

We, old enough to be their grandparents,
enjoy the show, one of us shooting stills,
though also on a phone with
the rapid-fire action of what used
to be called a motor drive.

There is no motor, of course, no film,
but, he’s still got it as I often tell this
former newspaper photographer,
who, more than half century ago,
before motor drives, shot an exploding,
bomb-filled railcar, timing it perfectly,
just as the mushroom cloud reached
its peak.

He now employs that same muscle
as Ryan hurls himself backward,
landing feet first in the cold blue
of Lake Tahoe.

Ryan hollers as he surfaces
the first time, stunned as most are
by the fierce grip of Tahoe’s chill,
but on subsequent leaps, his face
pops up wearing a glittering smile,
happy to jump again.

We cheer, and the old photographer—
who in the long ago would have gotten
an address to send the kids a print—
airdrops one of his best digital images
to Jackie.

She happily returns the favor by sharing
her videos, reminding me why I spent
more than three decades with college
journalists and photographers,
guiding them in placing their work
in paper publications that could be
held in the hands.

All that changed with time
and technology, as things do.

What remains the same, however,
are young people with a sense
of kindliness toward older folks—
as well as a taste for adventure,
using the last of their summer
vacations to make memories that,
with luck, will last their lifetimes.

•••

With thanks to Ryan and Jackie for their
good sport-ness in sharing a bit of their fun
before they begin their new term at UC Santa Barbara.

(D. L. Bliss State Park, Lake Tahoe)

As we take the granite steps,
slowly, slowly, we see the top
of the upper rock,

tons of granite resting
precariously on a slender
stone base, we two older,

far less sure-footed beings,
mindful of our own balance,
which grows more precarious

by the year. We feel ourselves
decomposing like the granite
crumbling beneath us

as we climb to the viewpoint
to see two boulders, the top
one leaning at what seems

an impossible angle on
two stubby feet, a crack
of daylight between them.

Though they’ve stood
conjoined for thousands
of years, it’s only a matter

of time before erosion wears
away the equilibrium between
the two, crashing the top-heavy

partner into the other. But we,
the only humans in sight, remain
for now upright and awed

at such a geological balancing
act that it takes what feels
like eons to realize just

how much it is like our own.

(Lake Tahoe, California)

As a whopper of a hurricane
called Lowell steamrolls its way
toward our favorite Pacific island,

we arrive at the largest alpine lake
in North America to find it whipped
by wind into a deep sea green,

though in a matter of hours
it morphs into emerald,
then back to its familiar cobalt.

What, we wonder, must be
the color of ocean swirling under
tropical storm winds, making

for Kauai and its tiny neighbor
Ni’ihau? As we do for all beings
caught in impossible situations

not of their making, we offer
silent prayers to those in charge
of outsized turbulence to please

quell the chaotic mountains
of water preparing to pummel
places and people we love.

To return the peace of breezes,
of warm, friendly rain,
of kind sun and peaceful blue,

a love letter from those
watching over this ancient
masterpiece of a mountain lake

to those looking after
the jewels of Hawaiian islands
in the middle of the sea.

for Ella Capri Malekian

This is not the time to tell you
a story I have probably told you
many times before, but I will
do it anyway—

about your second day on the planet,
almost 16 years ago, when your great-uncle
and I came to visit your brand new self
in the hospital.

There we beheld tiny you,
your beautiful but exhausted mama
and your bewildered father, who was
charged with changing your diaper.

He shot me a stricken look,
so, having once upon a time been
pretty handy at such a task
with my own niece and nephew,
I guided your father through
his first diaper change, both of us
grinning and chuckling. It did not
take him long to become a pro.

That was a baptism of sorts,
though your daddy vanished from us
far too soon. I’m sure his great heart
was present today as you were welcomed
into the church where he was baptized
as a tiny boy and where four generations
of your family have worshipped.

Today, as the wife of your first cousin
once removed played “Holy, Holy, Holy”
on your great grandmother‘s organ,
I felt the presence of your ancestors,
some of whom I knew, most of whom
you did not, whoosh in on a wave of love.

They would not miss this. They would—
as they always have been and always will—
be here for you, as well as those of us
gathered in the pews who will love you
far beyond our earthly existences.

That, it turns out, is one of the greatest
miracles of all, taught by a traveling teacher
from Galilee some 2,000 years ago:

that love really is all there is,
that love holds us always,
that you, dear one, are beheld,
cherished for all time
by so many seen and unseen.

Amene.