63/365 Aunt Doris

Grandmother's baby-beauty sister, quick to
laugh and love, open-hearted,
my dad's favorite aunt.

You opened your home to me, too,
impromptu bikerides ended at your
kitchen table, kool-aid and cookies for all.

Gram says you deserved the good death
you got because you'd lived a good life.
She's right.

62/365 Doris

Best friend:

We met at six, living
across the still-soft-tarred street, flexible
under our P.F. Flyers ready to play

Capture-the-Flag
Kick-the-Can

At ten you moved.

I missed you so
much I still knocked the screen door
to play with the girl who

moved into your house:
she was three.

61/365 Carol

Twenty-plus seasons we've
known each other since the
fateful palm-thorn, professionally
plucked one night.

I used to think "irascible" captured
something of your personality, the
"-ible" kinda light. But
"ire"'s too dark, so I must rewrite:

crotchety? peevish? cantankerous?
None capture your humor, generosity,
not-quite-thin-skin with its
lake-bottom-pebbled dappling.

60/365 Kathleen L

Certain about things, except
the "un" you met
in me: twice.

The mind disciplines the self,
over-and-over, making sure reason
wins, whatever cost, whatever prize.

Travel the world, monitoring
elections in Macedonia, Ukraine --
respite from where you never wanted to be: a

short stay,
you said. It's been
long.

59/365 Barrie&Linnea

Dynamic duo, Johnny Cash and June
with family members Patsy, Dusty,
Rosemary: golden all.

Talented fashion plate and diva
(leopard prints of course) with
butch bartender fronting the Monte Carlo's
mirror: perfect fit.

Our paths cross via work and pals,
dogs and books, dykes and bikes.
Always a pleasure.

58/365 Trina

You teared up in class tonight
when I said you were "really
smart" and that we needed to
make that intelligence come
through in your writing:

you said that this course had
made you "love literature again,"
something you'd left behind for
another life in corporate america.

Welcome back.

57/365 Steve

Jazz

that's what I remember
and forget about you:

innovation
improvisation
syncopation

a kind of melodic
wiggle and flow, wailing
eyelid-lowering saxophone

musical poetry: an
"invitation to feeling" as
Mark Doty says. You

jazz in your English
classes, too: the daily
crooked-smiled, one-lunged,

Constant-Comment way I've
gotta stop forgetting.

56/365 Kathleen D

Passionate teacher, involved
with - nope: in --
student lives, fully negotiating
every moment right to the last
two weeks, last/next rough draft,
last-minute excuses/reasons/explanations.

Your commitment to the ideals of
equality, access, literacy-for-all
shines a much-needed light into the
dimness of institutional precedent,
malaise, convention: keep fighting
the good-and-necessary fight.

55/365 Kip

English class student-teacher, then
year-long-substitute: testament to
power of eighth-grade-girl crush:
I still remember

white-chalked, green-board letters
left-handedly slanting upwards:
"Good fences make good neighbors."

"Write what you think this means," you said.
I had no idea, no way to find an idea,
no previous experience with
complete not-knowingness.

54/365 Jane L

"Bye, hero," you said as I
departed. "Nice!" said your mom.

I'm not sure: minutes before
you'd stuck out a tongue at us, "You weirdos!"

Weirdo, Hero: rhyming equivalencies from
a word-gal, precocious at three, still so

at six: reminder of another word-gal, now 20.
Lucky me to have seen and heard twice.

53/365 Ricardo

Portly gentleman, queen for more
than a day, friend for more than a
decade: your archly apt bon mots
are the least of your charms.

I'll easily store detritus
of your Minneapolis years,
as you seek more life
out of the country, headed toward
your fifth decade: viva!

52/365 Kris

Behind:
as in

- with work, especially grading,
as we all, we who
invest in students, sometimes
too much

- the scenes, especially planning,
making mundane happen:
someone must order food, hang
signs, greet attendees

- me, especially as listener,
sounding board, colleague/friend
offering perspective,
an intellectual shoulder for
resting -- or ranting

51/365 Chris

Off to Iraq in June,
you're taking two copies of
Tuesdays with Morrie yet
you give me another copy,
"large print" edition:

a gift I'd not expected,
smart-ass soldier mask,
15-year-old son, whole life ahead and
behind him, student I want to reach
and who reaches right back.

50/365 Sr. Mary Virginia

Cottony intensity, whiter
than before. Same slope of your nose,
narrow eyes like watermelon seeds,
just as squirty.

I learned "creative writing" from you,
but I don't remember a thing about
the course, assignments,
work I must have done. Perhaps
this bit from seeing
your afternoon walk
will do.

49/365 Claudia

Out of the blue (or beige in
Phoenix) you friend me on
Facebook: aren't we too old for this?

We who've known each other since
mullets were in style, who've been through
and with the Borowai, as you say, brothers
with distinctive ways-and-means.

Good sisters-in-law-outlaw are
hard to find.

48/365 Suzanne

Why's it difficult?
Too much to say, too
association-filled, cliched?

Or

What was it like for you, newly-nineteened?

Or

How much remembered, forgotten,
rearranged: this frame around
our mothering-daughtering-thing,
our daughtering-mothering-thing?

Oh

This relationship grounds, foregrounds,
a consistent question-query-inquiry until
the end of my life.
Which began with you.

47/365 Kathleen

How could you NOT be
favorite aunt? Almost close
enough in age to be the oldest
sister of Julie & Jane
instead of the youngest
daughter of Art & Betty.

Kindness and patience personified,
that's you:
ready laugh, big blue-gray eyes,
two-times a mother to cousins
who're my kids' good friends.

46/365 Rick L

Gregarious keeper of family
photos, stories, lore:
seeing more of you in our middle age
(yours later-middle, mine early-middle)
we learn some truth(s) about
ourselves and our relatives.

Shared grandfather, of a sort, different
grandmothers, we are cousins, of a sort:
the best sort.

You're good glue.

45/365 Stacy J

Jody's doppelganger: strange to see such
vast similarity in phenotype, temperament,
energy, engagement. Passionate, hearty,
ready to fight for what's right-good-just:
we (or should I say "I") want to add ALL
that to our department. Not yet, I guess, next
time. Try us again. We'll meet next time. Yes.

44/365 Danny

Called Dan or R. Daniel these days,
no longer red-headed but bald with the
horn-rimmed glasses and comfortably pudgy
physique of a successful attorney.
Your smile remains the same: crinkle-eyed like
your mother's, crooked-toothed like your
father's, readily expressed like your own.

Remember backyard football?
the "abandoned" grader's cab?

43/356 Graham

1980, Camborne, dinner, your married friends,
my American English "I am so stuffed."

Their guffawed "congratulations!"
tipped me off to some kind of meaning
my twenty-year-old self did not know.

Every semester you live in this story I tell
my students, who are as
goofy as we were then.

42/365 Bill

You're killing my dear friend with
your abandon, aging, art:
your absent presence.

Who feeds you:
artist without income,
homeowner without home,
visionary without vision?

A nice fish, lemons, cucumbers cut with
tomatoes you don't eat: leave
her alone or die
so she can
get her
own
life
back.

41/365 Bonnie

Best athlete in our grade, male or female:
varsity setter, second-chair clarinet:

After-schools at your
narrow-windowed house, seven
older brothers' and sisters' senior pictures:
funny collars, cat-eye glasses, flips.

Dark-eyed mom roamed kitchen,
blue-eyed dad drove snowmobile
to work, 45 miles -
didn't understand why
until my own brother's DUI.

40/365 Mike

You bring something to my sister's
life: humor, comfort, companionship,
occasional venison sausage:

these things are good, fitting for a
game warden who boasts of his ability
as a "trained observer":

but you haven't observed her,
fragile forty-something with a heart
bigger than the lake you monitor:

watch: out.

39/365 Norbert

Good neighbors, rare in
the city, small yards fenced by
flowers, garages, previously installed
chain link.

Familiar now through the sad process of
Ann's death, feisty first person
I met, smoke break conversations at the
yard's edge.

Another first: Zoe's step-sitting,
sans house key,
you invited her in -

Thanks.

38/365 Judith

Vertically-challenged, you call yourself - knowing
the joke's on us: you challenge
the powerful and the stupid,
found everywhere we look.

I admire your tenacity and your talent and
admit that I can't keep up with your allusions,
associations, aggrievedness: am I just
obtuse? unsavvy? Perhaps you can teach me.