Happy birthday to me

 Happy birthday to me, a gift to remember him by, 

The man with the broad smile, the one with not too 

Long to live, that one, handsome at age 47, 

Yes, the one whose fingers weave thin strips of palm into 

Hearts, propelling me into his world of beaches in Nicaragua,  where an old man taught him this magic.

There is magic in his eyes that will soon cloud over as they look heavenward to his God.  

Breakfast bar in La Fortuna

Pico gallo and eggs for us,

Banana, oranges and seeds for them 

I'm wondering if I can look them up and add them to

My non-existent bird list, the one that exists only in my mind,

The one that will start when I retire, when I have time

And motivation to go out with Jeff, and learn about 

Birds.

Yes, the birds at the breakfast bar will seed my bird list,

The one that I will start as soon as I get home. 

I'll tell Jeff all about it and he will show me the way,

Will motivate me to get up early, to open my ears and bring the 

Binoculars to my eyes.  

He will teach me all about birds.  

Thank you in advance, Jeff.

 

The surprise on the other side

I was surprised by the blue flash, its iridescence on the other

Side of what was already beautiful

Why add more beauty, a different beauty when there was

Already enough of it, with its pattern of brown,

Yellow and grey whirls and swirls, why add an 

Iridescent blue that flashes like an intermittent

Lantern, leading me towards the woods, into an 

Unknown world, one where there may be dangers, 

But also joy, surely surprises, like blue on the 

Other side of what was already beautiful,

Finding time to be astonished. 

 

Feeling small

Next to this towering tree, I am so small,

My husband, taller than me, is so small, 

We are so small, the fires in Los Angeles rage over our heads 

We are all so powerless and yet we point our fingers at the other

The other small beings who too often choose small ideas and hurl

Them with their small angry hand, the one not clutching their billions

I reach down and stroke the smooth bark that stretches

Impossibly high into the canopy

The leaves up top are so high, they look down on me

And see how small I am, so distant. 

shimmering endlessly in the sky

Smiling upwards. 

What she left behind

She said, in her own, little sweet way

"I'll be back", to get my toothbrush.  

When she left, she swung her long hair over her shoulder,

But when she comes back her bangs will be short and she will look so much older

I saw that in her face, with the fires blazing behind her in the LA hills,

She had to grow up, leave her cozy little canopy bed and head

To a strange house an hour away.

She no doubt wondered where her pink tooth brush was

The one with the polka dots, the one she left at Mimi and Opa's house

The place she feels loved and safe, and 100%

Spoiled. 

 

Figuring out retirement

I'm wondering how to fill the days that stretch in front of me,

No longer calling for sophisticated analyses, or providing guidance for the young,

The page of life looks empty and unstructured, scary, white, ghostly

So I write

I plot, I ask ChatGPT to make me a life, of things I think I want to do, 

And then, I step aside, and I do my life and fill in the blanks of what I did

There is no correspondence, in fact, no foundational eureka moment of where I 

Will go in this life, only a page of "I thought" next to "I did", but this must

Tell me me something of what I want to do because,

 I did. 

 

To my son

 

without a second of hesitation

You offered to pick me up, after already having spent

Many hours of driving, 

already, that day, 

You offered to drive another three hours for me to 

Spend a bit of time with my brother

Who was laying in a sterile hospital bed in an

Anonymous suburb far away.

We drove in the dark, through the congestion of rush hour

Until we reached that small sterile room where my dear brother,

Looking so old, so frail, so vulnerable, 

And you were with me, my son, the one I brought into this world,

And feel too often that I don't see enough, that you have launched

So far away, but here we are, together, in this moment, in this so 

Terribly vulnerable moment.

And I watched you be so amazingly you, pulling the stroke

Chart off the wall, finding a permanent marker and a post-it pad,

And I knew there was no one else that I wanted to be with me

In that moment but my son.

And when my brother looked at us with his sad quizzical eyes and 

Said What the Fuck between streams of unintelligibility

- we could only laugh, and harder yet when

He could not read back the same words.

But with sadness, too.

The drive back was shorter, lighter, WTF 

Let's see what tomorrow brings.