238/365 Orsay

First Turk I ever met,
first owned the Honda
I now drive: mint green, pristine,
Padmini's hand-me-down.

Your narrow-browned presence,
quiet, thick-eyebrowed,
gracing Shahid dinners even in
Atherton Hall, residence of
far-flung grad students sharing
simple friend-love-food.

Your tender heart still beats:
his memory alive
- differently -
in us both.

237/365 Ellen B

Intelligence in search of its object.

A certain kind of uncertainty,
familiar, frustrating, hidden from
all but a mother, perhaps.

Competence comes from somewhere, often
unknown, impatience from somewhere
else, perhaps a result of the search
for meaning, friendship, peers.

When junior editor becomes senior
editor, what happens next?

236/365 Anne H

Spaghetti carbonara
will always be your dish:

eggy-cheesy-pasta made
right before my eyes

heavy pottery plates
table plain wood
without a cloth

Nothing in your house matched:
wood chairs just cousins,
not mates

First time I realized
the aesthetic
as mine: or perhaps
kiss at evening's end
also infuenced

235/365 Rachel

Pre-school teacher who
loved Stefan, with
crinkled eyes smiling
at his "tender-hearted"
toddlerness.

Babysitter briefly, but
interested in our
bookshelves full of
objects you didn't
understand.

Sometime you married:
oddly we missed
the ceremony, gifts
of primary-colored glass
mixing bowls still
in our cupboards
now two decades
later.

234/365 Lisa

From Longville,
a long
way from
home you
came to
care for
other children,
snaggle-toothed
hippie from a
generation past:
married Carlton
before knowing
his secrets,
Oliver the result,
brown-eyed serious
boy with hair
as blond as
his "Lucy in
the Sky" mother.
Both my kids
loved your
smiling anarchy.

233/365 Lise

Unflappable
approachable
able to leap small
idiocies in a single
burst of dark-eyebrowed
laughter, head thrown
back in genuine glee,
ordering the next
martini or gin
and tonic as
reliable
absorbable.

What's a Wisconsin
twin doing loftily
in Minneapolis, its
skyline both backdrop
and promise, your
achievements widely known?

232/365 Ellen

Blank-faced blonde once loved
by Susie, you were

married in fact, until
some fateful Angela.

Learned sign language as
a result, now your working-words,

evidently enough to make
the mortgage in Midway.

Tall and ambling through
rooms, gyms, doorways

slightly surprised, amused,
as if you'd never ambled before.

231/365 Kathleen G

A wise voice, granny-garbed,
tidy, quiet hands nodding with

the rock of striped socks:
Just the few questions

needed to begin an answer,
long, many-volumed,

registering jangled truths
in press-board panelled office.

Years later, echoed conversations,
gray hair changed from

hippie-length to smart bob, tucked
behind ears that hear.

230/365 LeeAnn(s)

Always
Blondes,
Created or
Destined to be so.
Energetic
Females, ready to
Go away from
Home,
Interested in
Jogging
Kids
Las Vegas
Motherhood
New things
Obtained at
Patina:
Quirky gifts,
Reading material,
Soft
Towels,
Unique objects
Viewed by other
Women who are as
Xcited as
You to drink
Zinfandel.

229/365 Malachi

Curly-topped faux-hawk on a squirrely
six-almost-seven-year-old, wide-jawed
smile sweet as a Pez dispenser, offers

honest "No thank you" to beverage,
plays "Twinkle Twinkle" on violin.
Weekend school friend to Jane whose secret

party was well attended by friends
and babysitters, not noticing
spies both caramel-colored and blondie.

228/365 Andres

Lantern-jawed charmer who shifts gears
nearly effortlessly between
corporate fast-lane and classical referents:

what's the story, though, with your
journey across continents, languages, brief
stop in the groves of lowly academe?

Experiment, perhaps, or a hideout
from pressures both moral and material,
room to exercise transgressions: Mary?

227/365 Paul M

Cousin long unknown
half-way across the continent:
forgotten shared great-grandmother

as real as life,
distant
now in death to us,

as we imagined
when
we might've

first realized you'd
met then married my professor, coincidence
that seemed almost

taboo in all but fiction: avocation
of hers, yours,
ours.

226/365 Cooper's SuperValu Lady

In produce aisle, you asked about pomegranates:
What are those things?
Inside, are they like oranges or apples?
Does red mean ripe or not?

You bent your head up from quilted
green torso, near-dowager's hump,
to converse about high fructose corn syrup,
to alert me about blueberries from Argentina.

225/365 Bud

Sleek as an otter or
seal or sea lion,

black coat brightens
white at your chest crest,

heraldry in whorling hair.

Head big as a Nikon:
certain regal bearing.

Legs like bows for arrows,
bouncy with anxious spring

and muscled eagerness, the
perpetual dance between

nature and nurture.

224/365 Hal

Tall and tallish, you rake
your fingers through
now-gray hair as you always have,
thumb tucked under
palm as if a bookmark.

Fond friend to Josh, your

PhD experiences shared
but not similar, academic row
the one you hoe with anxious
attention and bashful
intelligence, as you always have.

223/365 Benny

Flat-top tidy as a hedge, eyes pale
as pilsener, smile big-but-rare.

Quick-stepping proprietor of a
soon-to-be salvaged local joint.

Sleeves pushed up, hauling
boxes bottles anything at all,
the stuff of restaurant-bar.

Boots laced round ankles, jeans
tucked in, t-shirt winking out of
neck collars buttoned to breastbone.

222/365 Ashley

Reserved conversationalist, preparing
a criminal justice career after
factory-work, living a life
I cannot imagine: pregnant wife,
teased step-son, four dogs, seven cats,
eleven horses,
fenced acreage in small
town with no other rainbow
flags, just don't ask, don't
tell -- and you don't, except
in-between classes in my office.

221/365 Barack

Superlatives: best-most

confident, compassionate
humble, historic, hopeful
rigorous, righteous
intelligent, independent
strategic, steady
talented, telegenic

embodiment of the new century

You inspire with cool
intensity, a class act who
listens with sincere
maturity, a leader who
chooses excellence to
surround and supplement,
beginning with Michelle.

Yes we can.

220/365 Mrs. Lohn

Fourth-or-fifth grade, science exam:
couldn't remember what you'd said
about toothpaste's function.

Returned, a red 99% because I'd left
a blank: "To clean your teeth," you
exclaimed. "Use some common sense
to answer questions." Yes.

Now I think of cat-eye glasses,
woolen pencil skirts, every morning
brushing with floride.

219/365 Mrs. Anderson

Strong nose and jaw, we'd say now.
Hair fixed into uniform marshmallows

of steely permanence, glasses simply
practical (now back in hipster style).

Lace collar winging out from
cameo pin decorating dark-blue

wool dresses. Slight dowager hump
from bending over six-year-olds as

they decifered color-coded
sequentially-advanced SRA storybooks.

218/365 Ruth Alice

Elementary school lunchroom memory:
cold formica tables,
bench-seats attached and
edged in silver metal,
same as the table's
collapsible legs.

You'd bring the lunch your
mom fixed -- lettuce sandwiches
on white bread with Miracle
Whip -- first person I ever
met who was "on a diet."
Did you eat?