Do I or Don't I

If I had to choose a favorite book(s), I'd go with TLOR--which surprises me whenever I say that because my taste in fiction usually runs to the realistic.

But. I discovered TLOR at exactly the right time in my life--as a 16 year-old girl in California whose father had just dropped her off at a dismal little mall in Pomona California while he went recruiting. The only thing still opened in the mall was a drugstore, where I found THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING on a spinner. I'm not sure why I even bought the novel--maybe there weren't any bodice-rippers available--so I purchased my copy, went outside, sat on a bench, and read about little men with hairy toes until Dad returned to pick us up.

By then I was hooked.

I don't typically re-read books, but I have read TLOR novels at different times in my life and they've always held up for me--spoken to me about whatever journey I was taking at the time. And now that September 22nd is approaching (NERD ALERT! SEPTEMBER 22ND IS BILBO'S BIRTHDAY!) I've been toying with the idea of reading the books again.

Except.

What if this is the time the books lose their magic? And also, I'm old. If I re-read TLOR will I miss out on a few other books I should read BEFORE I DIE?

This is a quandary.  To re-read or not re-read. That is the question.

What I'm Missing Today

My old column.

I just returned from a luncheon where I spoke about how I became a columnist (the answer is "by accident") and I was semi-shocked to realize that I did a version of the same column from 1985 (when I started writing for Parent Express) until 2017 (I think) when The Tribune asked me to focus on the advice column only.

That's a lot of columns. And I've realized that not writing that column has felt like an enormous loss to me. More than I've been willing to acknowledge.

Because the column was "personal," I wrote about my boys, my parents (especially TRQ), Ken Cannon, the dogs, friends, Salt Lake City, popular culture, whatever. I was fortunate because the column allowed me to bear witness about my own life. And knowing I had a deadline made me pay attention to that all that living . . .  in a way I haven't since then.

So. I know that blogging isn't really a thing anymore. But I think I'll start up here again, along with posting the poems I have enjoyed writing.

Yes. I think this is a plan.

Her Things

An unread book--
An unlit candle--
An unopened tube of hand cream--
An unworn necklace--
They were all gifts I'd given through the year
To my mother-in-law
Who printed my name neatly
On a piece of masking tape,
Then stuck that tape on the gifts
So I would get them back
In the event of her death.

Her daughter returned them all
To me last week.
I knew that not using my gifts
Was her way of honoring them.
A child of the Great Depression,
She was frugal, careful with resources,
Turning out lights when she left a room,
Running only as much water as needed,
Eating leftovers until they were gone.

She saved those things for me
Because they were precious.
Only I wish she had worn the necklace
Until the silver turned dark against her skin,
Opened the tube of hand cream and
Rubbed it all on her sun brown arms,
Lit the candle and watched its
Flames flicker until the wax
Melted into memory,
Opened the book and devoured
Each word as through it were chocolate.

Remembrance

Some say there's rosemary, that's for remembrance,
But I say please fill my arms with Russian sage
Growing wide and unwieldy along the gutters of
Second Avenue, planted by earnest and well-intentioned
Xeriscapers wanting to save the world,
But who did not, perhaps, fully understand
The true nature of this aggressive
And sharp-scented beast.

Saturday she pushed her own stroller
All the way home from 7-11,
My two year-old granddaughter, Buster Boots,
Who cannot be contained by a mere strap in a seat.
She meandered beneath an arch of blue stalks
On the street corner that left tiny blossoms,
thick as honey bees, in her unwieldy hair
So when I turned her over to her father that night
She smelled of Slurpee and sun on skin
And sweet, sweet wild sage.

Understory

"Understory: A layer of vegetation beneath the main canopy of forest."

I learned about understory in Alaska

As my friends and I waded through the 

Green grasses beneath the alder trees on

A tiny island in a river as silver as Coho

Salmon while dragonflies flitted 

 Past us in a sheen of blue.

I marveled at the thought of each quiet

Thing--seed and leaf and moss and shrub--

Whispering their stories there 

Beneath the noise of our unhearing feet.

Moment

I once asked a friend which
Emotions he feels most strongly.
Love and fear, he said. And you?
Love and loss, I said. Love and loss.
This morning in a melancholy mood
I felt the urge to count those losses
Just as the moon, solemn and silent,
Counts her stars like coins each night.
I began listing the things I miss--
Oh, the sound of certain voices
And the feel of those voices
All around me.
But then I saw a daylily,
Its dawn-pink petals, curved and fluted,
Arching above a spray of green leaf,
And it must be said in the moment
I was distracted by delight.

Sawdust

This morning on our walk,
Sally said the smell of sawdust
Takes her back and
Almost makes her cry,
Which made me think of
My grandpa's garage
Where he worked as
The town mechanic,
Tinkering with trucks and cars,
While telling tales to the
Old men who wandered
Inside and bought
glass bottle sodas, then
Sat on chairs and window sills
Like elders of a gas station church.
I saw them again this morning--
My grandfather and his friends--
When Sally remembered sawdust,
And I missed them all,
Along with the scent of oil on concrete.

To the Moon (and Back)

I make it a point to check in with You each night
Usually through my bedroom window
But sometimes from my front porch where
I can see shining You, riding high in an inky sky.

Fifty years later we're all watching You tonight
After men landed like gnomes in your lunar gardens.
We were in California that day, our parents and
My brothers and I, on one of Dad's recruiting trips.

It was their anniversary, a small step for mankind,
An enormous step for them,
So Dad announced, "Yessir, your mother sent me 
To the moon and back."

Mom, who was knitting, punched him in the arm.
Not in front of the children.
Dad laughed while 13 year-old me felt
Mortified for them both.

Turn up the radio, I said
Or maybe I only wanted to say it.
But when I see You tonight, the laughter
Will unspool from me now like my mother's yarn.

In the Heart of the City

On our walk through the grassy cemetery this morning
The brown dog stopped and stood at attention,
Quivering like a new recruit on his first day at boot camp.
I followed her yellow gaze and saw
The thing following us--
Another dog, I thought at first,
But less brown than mine,
Its dull coat shot through with gray and gold,
Prick-eared, lean-legged and steady-eyed,
Its yellow gaze unafraid.
Not a dog, I realized, but a coyote,
The desert trickster surprising
Me and the brown dog this morning
On our walk in the heart of the city.

Solstice

What was Solstice like in Finland?
I ask my husband on this summer's eve.
We are sitting together on the patio,
Watching a granddaughter blow soapy bubbles.
I only remember the long white nights
and the bonfires lit by the lakes.

It's not much of a memory but
I can see it all and more, lily-of-the valley
and birch branches strewn like leafy wings
on the shores of burning seas where
the mermaids call each to each.
And yes. I hear them call to me.

Unfettered

We drove across the Mojave Desert
With all the windows down--
My younger brother and I rolling around
Unfettered in the back of the old
Family station wagon, our faces and fingers
Sticky from peanut butter sandwiches,
Salty from a stale bag of Clover Club chips.

By the end of that day,
Just as a red disc of sun began to sink
We crested a sand-strewn hill and saw
The ocean for the very first time--
An undulating blue-gray beast,
its scales glittering in the last light.

Can we?
Yes, our father said,
Then parked the car on the side of the road,
The air all around us thick
With the scents of decaying and living.
So my brother and I stripped down
And raced across the beach to the water's edge--

Unfettered.

Peony

In my next life, I
like to say, because
I am always talking
about past lives and
next lives, I want to
be a peony farmer.
I will have fields and
fields of blowsy blossoms
in shades of red and
 rose and white,
their thin petals curved
around each other
like shimmering fabric,
alive for five minutes
before shedding their
beauty and breaking
my heart all over
again as they have
done for spring upon
spring upon spring
and yet, I cannot,
as the French say, stop
from eating my own
heart when the month
of June comes and goes.

Scents

This morning I saw the brown dog
Sitting on the deck perfectly still
Except for her nose
Twitching as the breeze came
Bearing scents of roses
And sour milk from the cartons
In the recycling bin and
Those dogs next door
And that cat beneath the spirea.

They say you shouldn't project
Human emotions on animals.
Fine. But the brown dog sitting
On the deck perfectly still
Except for her nose this
Morning was the closest thing
I have seen to a creature--
Any creature--
Being devoured by joy.

Light

The sky this morning
Was pink and pearl and gray,
The color of doves
Descending from the heavens
With invitations to
Step into a fresh new day.

Remembered

The brown dog wanted a walk
So she and I took to the hills
Covered with long slender grasses
And suddenly their scent,
Sweet and sharp as mown hay,
Sent me to those hills back home--
Three houses away from our house--
Where my girlfriends and I hiked
And made forts from scrub oak
And talked about the boy on our street
Who gave us shy smiles when
He knew the other boys weren't looking.
I had not thought of these things for
Years until the long cool grasses
Remembered.

How the experiment went

Well, obviously I didn't write a poem a day in April. And obviously my poetry skillz need some work. But I enjoyed myself so much I've decided to keep going a little. Writing tiny poems sharpens my focus as I move through my day. Thanks for your kind indulgence.

I noticed by accident that my cactus

            Was in bloom—studded by three

            Tiny flowers the color of rubies.

            But when I looked at it the next

            Morning they were already gone

            Like twilight on the mountains

            Like a sudden flock of cedar waxwings

            Like the glow of a full moon

            Like the scent of lilacs

            Like a wave on sand

            Like a snowflake on a windshield

            Like a white-winged butterfly

            Like the son you held not 

            Long ago in the bend of your arms.

At a Rest Stop in McGuireville, AZ

The desert here smells clean
like air scrubbed  with sage.
The desert here smells sweet
like citrus blooms that fill your dreams.
The air here smells fresh
like a western rain after noon's heat.
The desert here smells like memory
of a station wagon filled with my
brothers and my parents and me
passing this way on moonlit journeys
when all of us were young.

If You Stayed in Bed This Morning . . .

This is what you missed:
A watercolor sky, washed with pink
The air thick with pear blossom scent
A coffee klatch of sparrows, planning their day
The feel of a road beneath your feet
A fleeting taste of spring

Reinvention

And now the ground that was
flat and bare brown is a green
quilt of thready stems--
lily of the valley shoots
twist and uncurl upward,
reinventing the garden
with each morning that passes.

In My Backyard

The yellow sumac--I planted
in memory of Marilyn,
whose backyard was filled
with sumac she treated like family.

The snowball bush--I planted
in memory of Becky,
who believed its flowers in coffee cans
were the only acceptable offering on Memorial Day.

The butterfly bush--I planted
in memory of my father and our trip
to Normandy's graves when the shrub's long purple
blooms were in honey-fragrant season.

The lilac bush--I planted
for myself in memory of all
the Anns I have been and will be when
another April rolls down the mountain.