RIDING WITH RONDA

“Now I know your secret forever,” you said
as I drove 80 mph with orange fingers
and salty tongue from all those Cheetohs 
we shared, giggling in a conspiracy of poets,
a murder of young crows bent on growing old,
a fast-moving murmuration of words.

It was the trip after the trip when you made me
stand on a table in a sandwich shop at high lunch
in Salina, Kansas and recite a poem I couldn’t
remember so I had to make up most of it.

The trip before that trip you had us springing 
ourselves on unsuspecting and highly irritated 
quiche-eaters in Dodge City because we were
supposed to read poetry and no one showed up.
“Stand on the threshold and shout out your poem,”
you instructed us as Kansans sipping lemonade 
tried so hard not to make eye contact or,
as politely as they could, ask us to stop.

This was before we got lost past the end
of the world near Ulysses, but found the wind
that’s bred for fight out there as we bundled
our pillow and bags to the edge-of-town motel,
months before the trip to St. Francis, 
where you grew up, when we met Grandma Barb,
your elegantly-coiffed old teacher, for the best
fried chicken in this dimension in a gas station.

Was that after or before you told me new curves
of the own unlikely story that landed you here, 
against the odds and with the gods of fire, trepidation, 
and the saving grace of poetry so that you could speak 
your poems loud enough to drown out the cicadas 
in that 100-degree bandstand in the park before 
we went to the cinderblock motel with the sign,
“Hunters, please use plastic bags on the beds
before you dress your venison”?

We were always traveling, even in our own town, 
losing track of just how much French toast
we ate at Milton’s, the Roost while puzzling 
through the unlikely survival of the ones 
we love best, including ourselves, delighting 
in each other’s children as well as the strangers 
who loved poetry, the books forged out 
of impossible dread and the surprising love 
that lifts you up through that dread

and carries you here, a hospital bed in what was
once an Airbnb living room, your dog on your lap,
then so far north of our town, surely festooned
with blue Christmas lights, even deep in the woods,
where somehow you crossed into a place we can’t
fathom, accept, or follow despite how much
you wanted to live, how deeply
we all love you, loved you, love you.

CROSSING THE WATER

The kayak will glide forth
on its own weight and propensity,
going where it is pointed
or not. You will sit and stir the water 
with your paddle and thoughts,
but that is a small part of it.

The waters will heal
as they always do, mending 
scars to smooth stones, waves
from whitecaps to reflecting pool.

The wind will sweep clean
trees, roads, this lake, 
then leaf, paper, and feather 
everything full again, giving you
a moment to find the pattern. 
What do you see? Who sees you? 
Does it make a difference?

You will cross back to a landing
shifted in its sand and footprints,
the mirroring hot sky shining
so hard it’s impossible to see
what propels one flashing wave,
then the next, into something else.

BACK ON EARTH AFTER SURGERY

After eye surgery, I’m back on earth,
particles of me drifting in sunlight, 
eventually succumbing to the floor and broom, 
the skittering pads of the dog’s paw, 
time scattering us back up, sad and awake.

Here, everything opens to hunger, nausea, 
or fatigue. Miles of sky span rock ledge, 
and just beyond the crystal blue, space 
while the still-waiting-to-hatch grasshoppers 
shift under dirt and leaf, old paper bags
and wind stirring the pot.

What does it mean to look at the world?
my newly-opened old eye wants to know.
Outside, redbuds flirt with robins, rain 
makes yellow too bright to look at directly.
I forget myself and walk out the door,
each step landing in technicolor precision. 

The vista is wider after we’re cut open,
sewn back together, enlarged and returned
to our skin, so look closer into everything
leafing into the light that’s also made 
of the distance to see what it is go so far
and especially what it is to return.

Poet’s Statement:

The older we get, the greater our capacity for and experience of dancing with mortality as we age, change, lose beloveds and hard-held dreams, or otherwise discover the story we thought we were living is just our story. Poetry is my playground for finding words – and the space between words – to explore this.

These three poems – “Riding with Ronda,” “Crossing the Water,” and “Back on Earth After Surgery” – all speak to liminal spaces we sense, fully enter, or at times, feel stuck in longer than we think we can stand as realize how life is so much bigger than what we think.

I had to write “Riding With Ronda” for a dear friend (of mine and many others) within a day of her death to name some of the traveling ground we traversed together while grasping with her perhaps inevitable but sudden death. I wanted to shine a light on our affection, humor, and adventures as well as the gap between her life and death.

“Back on Earth After Surgery” looks at one of my many cancer-related procedures, all of which felt like leaving the planet, then returning, a little shaky and scared (also scarred to times) but also able to glimpse a wider view of being human.

“Crossing the Water,” my newest poem in this trio, speaks of the yearning for greater healing and wholeness through awareness and presence. In this poem and the other two, the ground (or water) beneath our feet keep shifting and curving new directions. As we go around new turns, there’s so much more to see.

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, the 2009-13 Kansas Poet Laureate is the author of 24 books, including The Magic Eye: A Story of Saving a Life and a Place in the Age of Anxiety and How Time Moves: New & Selected Poems. Founder of Transformative Language Arts, she is a beloved writing workshop facilitator and coach. Her poetry has been widely published in dozens of journals, and her life-giving collaborations include YourRightLivelihood.com with Kathryn Lorenzen, Bravevoice.com with Kelley Hunt, and TheArtofFacilitation.net with Joy Roulier Sawyer. See her weekly “Write Where You Are: A Writer’s Companion” at Patreon page and her blog, “Everyday Magic” at CarynMirriamGoldberg.com.