Güd wrtr

It rolled in the swells,
tossed up toward the surf line,
then dragged back into the froth

of crumbling waves, a buff-colored
prolate spheroid, slightly
torpedo-shaped, as I stood

on the damp sand, the tide
playing peek-a-boo with my toes,
watching it spiral like a kid’s

foam football tossed around
by the pixies of the sea. I tried
to reach it, hoping that it might

have once been a living sea sponge.
But the pixies pulled it tantalizingly
out of reach again and again,

so I continued my splashy walk.
On my way back, perhaps tired
of the game, the pixies having

abandoned their plaything on damp
sand, I picked it up, felt its slight
crunch, squeezed, waded deeper,

rinsing and rinsing, watching it drip
sandily, imagining its invertebrate life
on the sea floor, wondering how long

it had lived, how it came to be here.
And feeling for the creature
I’d decided it was, I touched it

to my cheek, its gentle roughness
like the few-days-old growth
across jaws I have kissed,

this one smelling of sea and salt,
holding its mysteries tight within
its precious, porous little body.

(San Clemente Pier City Beach,
San Clemente, California)

“But it’s the same ocean,” he pointed out
before we got here. “And there’s sand.”

And no hurricane has decimated this
place like the one that recently ravaged

an island we love in the middle of the sea.
And today, out on the quarter-mile-long pier

that extends its planked arm over the water,
fishermen (and women and kids)

hang their hopeful lines over the edge
of the pier, praying for a fresh catch

as we eat ours nearby at a sunny table
at a place called Fisherman’s.

And afterward, we tourists walk the pier,
indulge in a heap of shave ice

drenched in passion-orange-guava
syrup over vanilla ice cream,

all of which puts us as close to Hawaii
as we can be on a splendid blue-sky day

in late October, looking out at a ruler-
straight horizon, my flip-flopped feet

on damp sand where the ocean’s
warm froth delights my happy toes.

Driving south on 99, that point when
you need a stretch, but you’re antsy
to get there, so you keep driving,

while out the passenger window
the photographer aims skyward
where the sun is extending

its beams with such exuberance
you keep sneaking peeks
out that west-facing window,

watching the clouds do-si-do
with that lava-orange ball
as it slides toward the horizon.

But it’s not until later when you
see the photo that you perceive
the godlight heart blazing

through the clouds that feels like
a wave from one who always signed
her cards “in love and light,”

even as she searched for both.
There she is, you think—with
all the beloveds—masquerading

as an everyday miracle
that you, speeding through life,
so often miss.

(Headline, San Francisco Chronicle,
Bite Curious newsletter, 10/20/26)

•••

Before she was my mother, she was young
in the early 1950s, raven-haired,
smoking slim cigarettes,

drinking dry martinis after she migrated
to California because that’s what young
folks did before they strapped on

marriage and parenthood and mortgages
and partners who would eventually
disappoint them.

I doubt that she could’ve recalled when
she switched from martinis to wine—
jug wine in the Gallo days,

then to slender bottles of white zin,
and in her final years to Moscato—
long after he was gone, when she was

far more lonely than she let on,
when she confided that she’d not
had a friend—a real friend—

since Carolyn died, decades earlier.
And I ached for her then, she who
needed sips of sweetness each day,

she who’d encouraged me to approach
kids on the playground and ask if
they wanted to play.

“And if they don’t,” she’d say,
“find someone else,” which, in my
fortunate lifetime, has led to a swath

of humanity I think of as friends—
even ones I haven’t seen in decades.
And I lift my metaphorical martini

to those who bump me to the surface
when I need to breathe, and to her,
whispering, “Cheers, Mom.”

The man in the ICU, your family
breathing through your painful inhales,
so little comfort in the exhales.
From a distance I breathe with you, too.

Together we swim back in time
to, yes, the pools but also to your
bedroom, sitting on orange shag,
you with guitar in lap, grinning,

teaching yourself what you most
need to learn—from “Mood
for a Day,” so much more than
a piece of instrumental music,

to us harmonizing “When It’s Sleepy
Time Down South,” becoming
proficient in life and love in ways
you have honed ever since.

Now I count breaths with you
in 4/4 time—one, two, three, four—
switching to an easy waltz—
one, two, three. I remember you

in water, floating, swimming,
and on it, fishing. Your great laugh.
May you float now in this time
out of time; may you float back

to your beloveds, who wait,
who watch you sleep, who breathe
with you into the place that opens
with every breath.

•••

For Dean Falltrick, with love.

•••

You can watch Steve Howe, composer, playing “Mood for a Day” here.

(for Donna)

You could probably still get into yours,
though I am far, far from the hundred-pound

lifeguard chick twirling her Acme Thunderer,
ready to blow it if kids running on the deck

failed to heed my call of “slow down!” with
all the force of my 16 years behind it.

But you, dear sister, also rocked the red bikini,
our preferred poolwear for guarding,

saving the one-piece Speedo for mornings
when we taught little kids how to float

face up and face down, to pull and kick
and glide, preferring to be a bit more

covered as gasping faces and grasping hands
reached for whatever part of us they could.

I still love the image that ran on the front
page of our local paper—a classic weather

picture, as the photographers called them—
you, floating face up in the pool

in shades and red bikini, ankles anchored
to the tile gutter, hands behind your head,

beyond cool. A babe, for sure, unruffled
and calm, as you’ve been all these years,

a steadying force in my life and those
of the ones you made into family.

You, my unwavering anchor, my mooring to all
that was and is, the womb-mate who later

occupied the same space in the one who
made us, rocking in that ocean

of the ever and the after.

•••

For the best sister ever, Donna Gail Haag Just, on her 66th birthday.
I so wouldn’t be me without her, and I wouldn’t want to be.
Thank you, DG, for all you do for me, for the fam,
for Mom and Dad, who are certainly, always, cheering us
on from the heavenly bleachers.

The little green torpedo
still hangs on a gnarly vine,
probably past its prime,
but I can’t persuade myself
to cut the cord and bring it
inside.

The cukes and tomatoes
have given me such a lift
on summer’s hottest days—
baskers, they are, lolling
in the patch by the garage
under so much sun.

The piece of me unwilling
to let go of the still-persistent
warmth hopes that the cute
green globes hanging like earrings
from Juliet the tomato plant’s leafy ears
might redden, allowing one last taste
of summer in a tomato/cuke/feta salad.

Just look at them in their natural
state—that hardy little cuke
and giddy tomatoes yahooing it up
like teenagers at the pool
on a sizzling day.

“The party’s not over,” the kids insist,
spreading their towels to lie face up,
eager to soak up every last ray
that shines down on their
perennially golden selves.

I don’t mind following a big bus
through my neighborhood,
especially when I get close enough
to see the license plate holder
that reads: Gillig.

A descendent of the snub-nosed orange
behemoth that carried us to and from
Eureka Elementary, ours creaked and squealed
as it pulled up at the Balmain‘s driveway
next door,

its weary hinges complaining
as Mrs. Capps grasped the push-pull handle
to open the door for the sleepy, the stragglers,
her charges for the morning.

’Twas Gillig and Mrs. Capps who
delivered us safely, day after day,
to school and back home in the tradition
of bus drivers around the world,

as they do in my city in their comparatively
quiet, fuel-efficient, clean-lined conveniences,
transporting their occupants smoothly
from one place to another, hither and yon,
from pillar to post, far and wide,

a challenging job on the best of days,
thankless, I imagine, on others,

which is why I offer my vocal gratitude
to the bus ahead of me—not only for
its service to thousands in my city
but also for this sweet ride
down memory lane.

You, sitting here — having no idea what to write,
wondering what made you think you could do this —
are hereby authorized to:

• watch your monkey mind leap from branch to branch until it settles,
• shift from overdrive into low gear,
• idle a while and allow what wants to emerge to emerge.

Permission granted to:

• write the hard stuff,
• scribble the missteps,
• record the mistakes,
• scrawl the blunders,
• even the embarrassing I-can’t write-about-this stuff.

Here’s your release form to:

• forgive (yourself most of all),
• let go,
• dismiss what needs dismissing,
• love anyway,
• apologize,
• be forgiven,
• write it all,
• read it aloud (if you want to),
• cry if you want to (it’s your party),

• &, once on the page, let what needed to be written
work its healing into your cracked-open heart,

then (best of all)

• watch those malleable words turn into art in your
capably imperfect, compassionate, writerly hands.

•••

Here’s to the writers of Team Haag who debuted the 15th annual chapbook
of their work Oct. 16 at the Sacramento Poetry Center, reading their
challenging and engaging, funny and heart-tugging writing
to an appreciative audience.

I’m so honored to host this group of writers in person (in two locations)
and online and to hear their just-written work that never fails to move
and amaze me. We continue to be grateful to the late Pat Schneider,
who created the Amherst Writers & Artists method of generative
writing that we use, and to AWA, the international organization
that promotes Pat’s belief that “A writer is someone who writes.”

The heart is a coiled hose
of ventricles and corpuscles, dear one,
winding and twining in ways
too complicated to untie.

And why would you want to?
Your dented heart has acquired
asteroid-sized impressions that have
bruised it, certainly, but also softened it,
as well as causing it to ache—sometimes
with sorrow, sometimes with love.

Honey, we see your heart hose lying there,
down for the count for the moment but
doing its job keeping you upright
in the world, no matter the latest
acquired hurts.

We’re not going to sing the pick-yourself-up
song—not even hum it. You decide when
you’re ready to rise. But we’ll be here
with a hand to help you up when
it’s time.

And if you like, we’ll sit with you
and watch your heart hose pulse
as we feel ours, too.

Watch, beloved—
they’ll synch even before we touch,
hearts finding hearts, as they do,
beat after beat after beat.