November 16, 2025: “1954,” Tragedy and Loss, “All Breath”

It is the end of a long weekend.

I spent yesterday in Calumet, Michigan, leading a writing workshop, attending a catered dinner, doing a poetry reading.  I left home at around 7:30 a.m., finally got back around 11:30 p.m.  I’ve been in recovery mode today.

On my way to Calumet, I received a text message from my sister-in-law.  (Really, she’s like my little sister.  I’ve known her since she was since she was 11 or 12.  We’ve always had a close bond.)  She wanted to let me know that her mother-in-law, Ann—a lovely, courageous woman who’s been battling cancer for several years—died early Saturday morning.

It was news I’d been expecting, but it still caught me off guard.

Sharon Olds writes about a tragedy . . . 

1954

by: Sharon Olds

Then dirt scared me, because of the dirt
he had put on her face. And her training bra
scared me—the newspapers, morning and evening,
kept saying it, training bra,
as if the cups of it had been calling
the breasts up, he buried her in it,
perhaps he had never bothered to take it
off, and they found her underpants
in a garbage can. And I feared the word
eczema, like my acne and like
the X in the paper which marked her body,
as if he had killed her for not being flawless.
I feared his name, Burton Abbott,
the first name that was a last name,
as if he were not someone specific.
It was nothing one could learn from his face.
His face was dull and ordinary,
it took away what I’d thought I could count on
about evil. He looked thin and lonely,
it was horrifying, he looked almost humble.
I felt awe that dirt was so impersonal,
and pity for the training bra,
pity and terror of eczema.
And I could not sit on my mother’s electric
blanket anymore, I began to have 
a fear of electricity—
the good people, the parents, were going
to fry him to death. This was what
his parents had been telling us:
Burton Abbott, Burton Abbott,
death to the person, death to the home planet.
The worst thing would have been to think 

of her, of what it had been to be her, 

alive, to be walked, alive, into that cabin,
to look into those eyes, and see the human.

It’s a terrible poem about an unspeakable act—the murder of a young woman.  But Olds, as always, goes underneath the unspeakable to find the speakable, the human.  She imagines what the victim went through at the end, staring into the eyes of her killer.

I think, in the face of tragedy and loss, we lose sight of the human.  Instead, we mythologize and canonize.  It happens all the time, and it’s natural, especially when it involves a loved one.  We lose sight of the whole person and focus, instead, on that person’s best qualities.  Again, as I said, it’s a natural part of the grieving process.

Ann was an incredibly loving, giving person.  In all the time I knew her, I never saw her without a smile on her face, even when she was facing her health crises.  She had a ready laugh and an even readier heart.  Love was her guiding force, always.  My family was graced by her and her husband’s generous spirits more times than I can count.

I write these things not to mythologize, as so often is the case when a person is taken at too young an age.  I write these things simply because they are true.  The world is a little dimmer tonight without Ann in it, and my heart breaks for her family, who I consider my family, too.

In honor of Ann, hug the people you cherish tonight.  Tell them how much they mean to you.  Don’t wait until it’s too late.  Ann never did.

Saint Marty wrote a poem for tonight.  It’s about the sustaining power of breath, and it’s based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

In an abecedarian poem, every line begins with A, B, C, D, etc.  Write a mini-abecedarian poem where each word in the poem is in alphabetical order.  For example, the first line of a mini-abecedarian poem could be:  Another big cactus dies entertainingly.  Forget giving.  Help invent .  . or Autumn birds can desire eggs from groceries . . .  See if you can write an entire poem this way.  Don’t worry too much about making sense, just see what new images or lines you can invent.

All Breath

by: Martin Achatz

All breath comes down easily,

falls, goes hushed into juniper,

knobcone, locust, makes nobody

opine past questions, read sunspots

to understand various worries, 

xenial yatter, zealotry.

November 11, 2025: “For and Against Knowledge,” Veterans Day, “Uncle Shorty Never Talked About Pearl Harbor”

We are surrounded by heroes every day.

There’s the kid who goes to school every day, despite the bully who shoves him to the pavement at recess.

There’s the father who works three jobs every day to make sure his family has food and warm winter jackets and a place to call home.

There’s the teacher who stands in front of her students every day because she believes in the future.

And there’s the homeless college student who sleeps in his car in a Walmart parking lot every night and never misses a single class.

All of these people are heroes in my book.

Sharon Olds writes about a lost hero . . . 

For and Against Knowledge

(for Christa MacAuliffe)

by: Sharon Olds

What happened to her? As long as it was she,
what did she see? Strapped in,
tilted back, so her back was toward
the planet she was leaving, feeling the Gs
press her with their enormous palm, did she
weep with excitement in the roar, and in
the lens of a tear glimpse for an instant
a disc of fire? If she were our daughter,
would I think about it, how she had died, was she
torn apart, was she burned—the way
I have wondered about the first seconds
of our girl’s life, when she was a cell a
cell had just entered, she hung in me
a ball of grey liquid, without nerves,
without eyes or memory, it was
she, I love her. So I want to slow it
down, and take each millisecond
up, take her, at each point,
in my mind’s arms—the first, final
shock hit, as if God touched
a thumb to her brain and it went out, like a mercy killing,
and then, when it was no longer she,
the flames came—as we burned my father
when he had left himself. Then the massive bloom un-
buckled and jumped, she was vaporized back
down to the level of the cell. And the spirit—
I have never understood the spirit,
all I know is the shape it takes,
the wavering flame of flesh. Those
who know about the spirit may tell you
where she is, and why. What I want
to do is find every cell,
slip it out of the fishes’ mouths,
ash in the tree, soot in our eyes
where she enters our lives, I want to play it
backwards, burning jigsaw puzzle
of flesh, suck in its million stars
to meet, in the sky, boiling metal
fly back
together, and cool.
Pull that rocket
back down
surely to earth, open the hatch
and draw them out like fresh-born creatures,
sort them out, family by family, go
away, disperse, do not meet here.

Most people of a certain age will remember the day the Challenger exploded.  Those astronauts riding the elevator up to the cockpit, Christa MacAuliffe among them.  The countdown and takeoff.  And then, 73 seconds later, the heartbreak.  Like the JFK assassination or Hiroshima bombing, it is a moment that changed the world forever.

Today, the United States celebrated Veterans Day.  Originally, November 11 was Armistice Day, marking the end of World War I; in 1919, President Woodrow Wilson made it a day of commemoration for all veterans of the Great War.  Then, in 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a bill that officially turned November 11 into Veterans Day, honoring all who have served in the U.S. military, war or peacetime.

I spent this Veterans Day at the library for an annual employee inservice.  Lots of presentations and activities.  But, at the beginning of the day, the director of the library acknowledged employees who served in the military.  (There were two.)  

Most military veterans I know don’t really speak about their times in the service.  My dad never talked about his time in the army during the Korean War.  My Uncle Larry never discussed his military service in Korea either.  I’ve taught Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.  Several of them wrote about their experiences for assignments, but I can't recall a single conversation with any of them about their time in the military.

Heroes are quiet.  They don't do what they do for recognition or medals.  Usually, they feel uncomfortable in the spotlight.  If asked, they usually say something along the lines of "I was just doing my job" or "I was just doing what I had to do."  

So, today, I salute all military veterans and unsung heroes out there.  I am grateful for how they made/make this world a better place, day after day.

Saint Marty wrote a poem for this Veterans Day, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

In honor of Veterans Day, write a poem to or about a veteran.  To avoid falling into cliche, write about a veteran doing something completely normal--grocery shopping or pumping gas.  Aim to show something about this veteran without mentioning war, guns, or a bombing.

Uncle Shorty Never Talked About Pearl Harbor

by: Martin Achatz

He talked about carrots he grew

in his garden every summer,

fat and sweet as apples, or

about his son with CP who

smoked cigarettes in a long

Cruella de Vil holder and stomped

his feet with laughter when

someone told him a dirty joke, or

about Aunt Tillie's lemon bars

she brought to every family

shindig involving food (and they

all involved food).  But when

I returned from Honolulu, mentioned

standing on the Arizona Memorial,

staring down at the wreckage below,

Uncle Shorty just nodded, looked off

at his rows of tomatoes and peppers,

his lips moving in silence, as if

saying the names of buddies he lost

December 7.  Pudge.  Junior.  Piehole.

Alfalfa. Sweeney.  Little John.

The green beans hadn't done well,

he noticed.  Not enough rain.

November 1, 2025: “The Prepositions,” All Saints’ Day, “Litany of Saints for Laundry Day”

Yes, it is the first day of November.  All Saints’ Day.  

In all the years that I’ve been a music minister (at Catholic, Methodist, and Lutheran churches), I don’t think I’ve ever played a service or Mass for All Saints’ Day, which is strange since my son was baptized on this feast.  That’s almost four decades of playing the pipe organ without having to deal with saintly litanies.  (At Catholic Easter Vigil Masses, the priest/cantor sings several litanies involving saints and angels and whatnot, and I have a confession:  I don’t like litanies or Gregorian chant all that much.  A little too medieval for me.)

Sharon Olds comforts herself with a litany of prepositions . . . 

The Prepositions

by: Sharon Olds

When I started Junior High I thought
I’d probably be a Behavior Problem
all my life, John Muir Grammar 

the spawning grounds, the bad-seed bed, but
the first morning at Willard, the dawn 

of seventh grade, they handed me a list
of forty-five prepositions, to learn
by heart. I stood in the central courtyard,
enclosed garden that grew cement, 

my pupils followed the line of the arches
up and over, up and over, like
alpha waves, about, above,
across, along, among, around, an
odd calm began in me,
before, behind, below, beneath,
beside, between, I stood in that sandstone
square and started to tame. Down,
from, in, into, near, I was
located there, watching the Moorish half-
circles rise and fall. Off,
on, onto, out, outside, we
came from 6th grades all over the city 

to meet each other for the first time,
White tennis-club boys who did not
speak to me, White dorks 

who did, Black student-council guys who’d gaze 

above my head, and the Black
plump goof-off who walked past and
suddenly flicked my sweater-front, I thought to shame me.
Over, past, since, through,
that was the year my father came home in the
middle of the night with those thick earthworms 

of blood on his face, trilobites of
elegant gore, cornice and crisp
waist of the extinct form,
till, to, toward, under, the
lining of my uterus convoluted,
shapely and scarlet as the jointed leeches 

of wound clinging to my father’s face in that
mask, unlike, until, up, I’d
walk, day and night, into 

the Eden of the list, hortus enclosus where
everything had a place. I was in
relation to, upon, with, and when I
got to forty-five I could just start over, 

pull the hood of the list down over 

my brain again. It was the first rest

I had had from my mind. My eyes would run
slowly along the calm electro-
cardiogram of adobe cloister,
within, without, I’d repeat the prayer I’d
received, a place in the universe,
meaningless but a place, an exact location—
Telegraph, Woolsey, Colby, Russell—
Berkeley, 1956,
fourteen, the breaking of childhood, beginning of memory.

Litanies can provide some comfort, as Olds’ poem demonstrates.  They occupy the mind, provide a kind of stability.  Olds keeps returning to the list of prepositions because the real world (full of nipple-flicking boys and injured, alcoholic fathers) is so out of her control.  

As you know, I’m what is sometimes referred to as a “cradle Catholic”—that means I was born, baptized, and raised in the Catholic Church.  There have only been a few times in my life that I haven’t attended weekend Masses on a regular basis.  I think every young Catholic goes through that sort of rebellious stage where, instead of going to church on Sunday morning, you hit McDonald’s instead.  (That little rebellion ended for me when I started to get paid for playing the pipe organ on Saturday evenings.)  I’ve been doing my church musician thing for going on 40 years now.  

So, my weeks are full of teaching and library work, and my Saturdays and Sundays are full of organ and piano benches at one Catholic parish (on rare occasions two), two Lutheran parishes, and one Methodist parish (very infrequently).  If you’re wondering when I get a day off, the answer is pretty simple:  I don’t.  Planning any kind of time off for me is like planning the invasion of Normandy.

Today, I was able to pull off something pretty special.  In the middle of working and teaching and music ministering, I planned a surprise 30th anniversary party for my wife.  My biggest surprise for her:  our daughter drove up from medical school to attend.  While my wife and I attended our regular Saturday Mass, our kids and friends gathered at a local restaurant, decorated its back room, and waited for us to walk through the door.

To say that my wife was taken aback is an understatement.  She had no idea what was happening.  I could see it on her face as our litany of friends and relatives all shouted “Surprise!”  And when she realized that our daughter was sitting at the head table, she just about lost it.  

Everyone we loved was there.  We ate and talked and laughed and reminisced.  In a year that has been dominated by President 47 dismantling democracy and taking food and healthcare away from American citizens, tonight was balm for my heart and soul.

After the dinner, our daughter and her significant other came to our house to play games and visit.  It was such a good day and night.  (I didn’t even mind going to the laundromat today, and I hate doing laundry.)

Saint Marty wrote a litany for today, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Write a poem that includes visits from three saints.  You can research saints on the Internet and choose your favorite, or make a list of your obsessions and create a saint from that.  Write a poem to the Saint of Poets, the Saint of Birds, or make up your own saint.  The Saint of the Internet, perhaps?  The Saint of Broken Violins?  Feel free to use one or more real or invented saints in your poem.

Litany of Saints for Laundry Day

by: Martin Achatz

I wake on dirty clothes day 

     to first snow on the grass,

     a breath of white that will

     be gone as soon as the sun

     opens its morning eye.

Our Lady of Termination Dust, pray for us.

I stare at autumn gold 

     on the hillside across 

     from King Koin Laundry

     this first day of November.

Saint Maidenhair, pray for us.

I scribble these words, my first

     lines while the colds

     spin cycle, tumbling

     like teens in a Buick’s backseat.

Saint Coitus, pray for us.

I think of you, my first (and only)

     love at home, waiting

     for me to return with

     baskets of bread-warm clothes.

God of Bounce Dryer Sheets, remind us

     we were all once fresh and clean. 

October 31, 2025: “Leaving the Island,” All Hallow’s Eve, “My Teenage Son Carves a Pumpkin”

Yes, it is All Hallow’s Eve.  

All the little ghosts and goblins and Supermans are at home, sifting through their chocolaty loot.  I used to do that every year—dividing my Halloween candy into three categories:  1) all chocolate products not containing coconut; 2) Starburst types of sweets (including Laffy Taffy); and 3) Smarties and Lemonheads.  It is the start of candy season.

Sharon Olds writes about a scary encounter with between a father and son . . . 

Leaving the Island

by: Sharon Olds

On the ferry, on the last morning of summer,

a father at the snack counter low in the boat

gets breakfast for the others.  Here, let me drink some of

Mom’s coffee, so it won’t be so full

for you to carry, he says to his son,

a boy of ten or eleven.  The boat

lies lower and lower in the water as the last

cars drive on, tilts its massive

grey floor like the flat world.  Then the

screaming starts, I carry four things,

and I only give you one, and you drop it,

what are you, a baby? a high, male

shrieking, and it doesn’t stop, Are you two?

Are you a baby? I give you one thing,

no one in the room seems to move for a second,

a steaming pool spreading on the floor, little

sea with its own waves, the boy

at the shore of it.  Can’t you do anything

right? Are you two? Are you two? the piercing

cry of the father.  Go away,

go up to your mother, get out of here— 

the purser swabbing the floor, the boy

not moving from where the first word touched him,

and I could not quite walk past him, I paused

and said I spilled my coffee on the deck, last trip,

it happens to us all.  He turned to me,

his lips everted so the gums gleamed,

he hissed a guttural hiss, and in

a voice like Gollum’s or the Exorcist girl’s when she

made the stream of vomit and beamed it

eight feet straight into the minister’s mouth

he said Shut up, shut up, shut up, as if

protecting his father, peeling from himself

a thin wing of hate, and wrapping it

tightly around father and son, shielding them.

It’s amazing what kids will do to protect or defend their parents, even mothers or fathers who are physically or emotionally abusive.  It’s almost as if the boy in Olds’ poem doesn’t know what to do when the speaker says something kind to him.  He interprets the speaker’s words as a criticism of the father and thus goes into full defense mode:  Shut up, shut up, shut up.

Tonight, all the parents were bundled up while their little Elmos and witches and dinosaurs went begging for candy door-to-door.  I didn’t hear an angry word or criticism, except the occasional “What do you say?” when I handed out the Twix bars, followed by a sheepish “Thank you!”  

Holidays, even ones steeped in blood and ghosts and serial killers, seem to bring out the best in people.  And, really, Halloween started as a time to honor and remember the dearly departed, at a time when, supposedly, the veil between the here and hereafter is the thinnest.  That’s why All Hallow’s Eve is followed by All Saints’ Day and then All Souls’ Day.

My kids have outgrown trick-or-treating.  This year is literally the first time my wife and I haven’t trooped around the neighborhood with one or both of them.  Instead, we stood outside with our bowl of booty, became that old couple who fawns over all the cute little goblins coming to our front step.

My son?  He invited a friend (who happens to be a girl) over for the evening.  They had pizza and did whatever teenagers these days do to entertain themselves.  (I remember what I did at my son’s age on Halloween, so I’m hoping he’s being a little more responsible.)  He carved our pumpkin this afternoon, so he did his filial duty.  So I don’t begrudge him his hormonally charged night.

Saint Marty wrote a poem for this Halloween night, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Write a poem about a specific moment that could happen on Halloween.  It could be about stealing a pumpkin, walking through a graveyard, or giving out candy to trick-or-treaters.  Pay attention to specific details, sounds, or sights that might be present on this holiday.

My Teenage Son Carves a Pumpkin

by: Martin Achatz

He doesn’t want to do it, hates

the viscera inside with its

almost human membranes,

cold as December.  But he does it

because he wants to spend

this All Hallow’s Eve with a girl,

watch Jason hunt horny teens

or Regan baptize Father Merrin

with split pea, hoping the girl

clings to him the way pollen

clings to a bee’s leg.  His pumpkin

sits now on the front stoop,

mouth big as a super moon, 

eyes just tiny stars, candle

inside—a flickering tonsil—

while he and the girl carve

each other in the dark upstairs,

bodies blazing like Druid bonfires.