May 25, 2025: "Looking at Them Asleep," Nephew, "Last Advice to the High School Graduate"

It is the time of year for change.  The trees are greening, and the lawn mowers are droning.  The days a stretching out, and fewer and fewer nights involve frost.  Pretty soon, the last bells of the schoolyear will be ringing, and kids will be set free for a few months to work at McDonald's, try to score beer outside party stores, and start preparing for college.  And it's time for parents to let go.

Sharon Olds writes about her kids . . . 

Looking at Them Asleep

by: Sharon Olds

When I come home late at night and go in to kiss them,
I see my girl with her arm curled around her head,
her mouth a little puffed, like one sated, but
slightly pouted like one who hasn't had enough,
her eyes so closed you would think they have rolled the
iris around to face the back of her head,
the eyeball marble-naked under that
thick satisfied desiring lid,
she lies on her back in abandon and sealed completion,
and the son in his room, oh the son he is sideways in his bed,
one knee up as if he is climbing
sharp stairs, up into the night,
and under his thin quivering eyelids you
know his eyes are wide open and
staring and glazed, the blue in them so
anxious and crystally in all this darkness, and his
mouth is open, he is breathing hard from the climb
and panting a bit, his brow is crumpled
and pale, his fine fingers curved,
his hand open, and in the center of each hand
the dry dirty boyish palm
resting like a cookie. I look at him in his
quest, the thin muscles of his arms
passionate and tense, I look at her with her
face like the face of a snake who has swallowed a deer,
content, content--and I know if I wake her she'll
smile and turn her face toward me though
half asleep and open her eyes and I
know if I wake him he'll jerk and say Don't and sit
up and stare about him in blue
unrecognition, oh my Lord how I
know these two. When love comes to me and says
What do you know, I say This girl, this boy.

Olds knows her kids, each and every hair on their heads and nail on their fingers.  That's what parents do.  They spend 17 or 18 or 19 years teaching their children how to fly, and then they open the window and watch them wing away.

My daughter will be leaving in July for medical school.  Haven't really wrapped my mind around that fast-approaching cleaving.  This weekend, my nephew graduated from high school.  I attended his ceremony on Friday, and this evening I went to his graduation party.  

It's an exciting time for young people--on the cusp of their first real tastes of adulthood.  I could see it in my nephew's eyes.  They were full of joy and excitement and hope.  That's the way it should be.  Same with my daughter.  Both of them are gazing into the future, while we parents are mourning the little boy who loved playing Angry Birds and the little girl who fell asleep to Frosty the Snowman every afternoon.  

I wish I had enough money to fund both my daughter's and nephew's educations.  I would at the drop of a hat.  (For my international disciples, I should explain that, in the United States, students have to pay to go to college.  I know, I know.  It's messed up.)  Unfortunately, poets don't make a whole lot of money, unless a Pulitzer Prize is involved, so the best I can do is offer love, support, and words.

I have no doubt my nephew and daughter are going to change the world.  They're kind and intelligent and funny.  As Olds says, I know this girl, this boy.  And I couldn't be prouder.

Saint Marty took a day off from The Daily Poet to rite this poem for his nephew . . . 

Last Advice to the
          High School Graduate

by: Martin Achatz

for Caden, May 23, 2025

I know you’re tired of all the advice:
live in the moment, choose kindness,
measure success by the number of people
who love you, follow the path that’s
overgrown and rocky. You’re weary
of all those clichés from us oldsters
who will gladly show you our scars,
name them like willful kids or
monuments on a Civil War battlefield.

Instead, I want to tell you this morning
I found a rabbit in my backyard. His black
eyes panicked, he dragged himself
over the grass, hind legs useless
as driftwood. Perhaps he was dropped
there by a hungry owl after biting
and clawing and screaming, his spine
splintered by the fist of the ground.
I wanted to help mend his broken body, 

watch him bound away into the lilac bushes.
Sometimes, though, beautiful things cannot
be fixed, and all we can do is give thanks
that we have hearts that can be broken
by suffering and tongues to sing something
sacred and tender about this fragile world
you now hold in the palm of your hand.

May 19, 2025: "Cambridge Elegy," Sal, "Opposites Attract"

Tonight, I screened the film Gladiator II at the library.  The entire time I watched it, I was thinking about my sister, Sally, who loved Gladiator, mainly because of Russell Crowe.  I'm not sure Sal would have enjoyed the sequel all that much, because of the serious lack of Russell Crowe in the movie.  But her spirit was certainly sitting right next to me the whole time, watching.

Sharon Olds writes an elegy for a lost young love . . . 

Cambridge Elegy

by: Sharon Olds

(for Henry Averell Gerry, 1941-60)

I scarcely know how to speak to you now,
you are so young now, closer to my daughter's age
than mine -- but I have been there and seen it, and must
tell you, as the seeing and hearing
spell the world into the deaf-mute's hand.
The dormer windows like the ears of a fox, like the
long row of teats on a pig, still
perk up over the Square, though they're digging up the
street now, as if digging a grave,
the shovels shrieking on stone like your car
sliding along on its roof after the crash.
How I wanted everyone to die I if you had to die,
how sealed into my own world I was,
deaf and blind. What can I tell you now,
now that I know so much and you are a
freshman, still, drinking a quart of orange juice and
playing three sets of tennis to cure a hangover, such an
ardent student of the grown-ups! I can tell you
we were right, our bodies were right, life was

really going to be that good, that
pleasurable in every cell.
Suddenly I remember the exact look of your body, but
better than the bright corners of your eyes, or the
light of your face, the rich Long Island

puppy-fat of your thighs, or the shined
chino of your pants bright in the corners of my eyes, I
remember your extraordinary act of courage in
loving me, something no one but the
blind and halt had done before. You were
fearless, you could drive after a sleepless night
just like a grown-up, and not be afraid, you could
fall asleep at the wheel easily and
never know it, each blond hair of your head--and they were
thickly laid--put out like a filament of light,
twenty years ago. The Charles still
slides by with that ease that made me bitter when I
wanted all things broken and rigid as the
bricks in the sidewalk or your love for me
stopped cell by cell in your young body.
Ave--I went ahead and had the children,
the life of ease and faithfulness, the
palm and the breast, every millimeter of delight in the body,
I took the road we stood on at the start together, I
took it all without you as if
in taking it after all I could most
honor you.

It's so difficult losing a person at a younger age.  It sounds as if Olds had made life plans with Henry Averell Gerry.  Those plans included marriage and children.  Olds saw those plans become reality, without Gerry's presence.  She writes the elegy to let him know she's done it--gone down "the road we stood on at the start together"--honoring his youth and potential.

My sister Sal was taken way too early by lymphoma of the brain.  I know she had plans.  She had retirement accounts, a nice camper, nieces and nephews she spoiled.  Always generous, Sal celebrated each Christmas and birthday as if it was going to be the last.  She gave of herself freely, without ever asking for repayment.  That's who she was.

But, of course, you can't have life without death.  Joy without grief.  Love without loss.  That's the way it works.  Everything is defined by its opposite.  You can't know if something tastes salty unless you taste sweet.  Summer can't really be enjoyed unless you know the ice of winter.  Abbott would have been nothing without Costello.  

I would never give up the time I had with Sal simply to avoid the pain of her loss.  Unfortunately, those two things go hand-in-hand.  There was always going to be grief, whether she died first or me.  The depth of love I felt for my sister is defined by sorrow I feel at her absence.  As I said, you can't have one without the other.

So, Saint Marty wrote a poem for tonight about attraction and opposition, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Write a poem about a pair of something (of a pair of people) in couplet form (a couplet is a two-line stanza).  Make sure each line in the couplet compliments the other in sound and image; for example, if your first line is about a bride maybe include an image of a groom in the second line or perhaps a veil and bouquet.  Make a list of pairs--Bert and Ernie, apples and oranges, his and hers--then write in couplets inspired by the couple you choose.

Opposites Attract

by: Martin Achatz

Mary Oliver knew this, paired joy

with grief in the same poem,

the way my dad paired 7-Up

with Seven Crown every night

and the moon sometimes sits

in the sky with morning sun,

because it's a matter of negative

calling to positive, magnetically,

Romeo betraying his family name

by falling for Juliet at first sight,

or Robert Redford jumping off

that cliff with Paul Newman.

Salt defines sugar.  Satan defines

God.  You can't have one without

the other.  Just ask the fish swimming

with birds in the reflected clouds.

May 18, 2025: “After 37 Years My Mother Apologizes for My Childhood,” Atonement, “Volcanology”

I think everyone spends their adult years recovering from their childhoods.  It’s easier for some, difficult for others.  Most of the time, it’s a mixed bag—good and bad vying for memory.  I’ve learned that forgiveness is a huge part of this process.

Sharon Olds writes about her childhood . . . 

After 37 Years My Mother

          Apologizes for My Childhood

by: Sharon Olds

When you tilted toward me, arms out
like someone trying to walk through a fire,
when you swayed toward me, crying out you were
sorry for what you had done to me, your
eyes filling with terrible liquid like
balls of mercury from a broken thermometer
skidding on the floor, when you quietly screamed
Where else could I turn? Who else did I have?, the
chopped crockery of your hands swinging toward me, the
water cracking from your eyes like moisture from
stones under heavy pressure, I could not
see what I would do with the rest of my life.
The sky seemed to be splintering, like a window
someone is bursting into or out of, your
tiny face glittered as if with
shattered crystal, with true regret, the
regret of the body. I could not see what my
days would be, with you sorry, with
you wishing you had not done it, the
sky falling around me, its shards
glistening in my eyes, your old, soft
body fallen against me in horror I
took you in my arms, I said It’s all right,
don’t cry, it’s all right, the air filled with
flying glass, I hardly knew what I
said or who I would be now that I had forgiven you.

Forgiving someone who hurt you as a child, without the ability to defend yourself, is incredibly painful.  I speak from experience.  While I’m not going to get into specifics, I want to say that individuals who harm young people are not irredeemable.  However, redemption comes at a cost—the need to face your mistakes and try to atone.

I know that sounds very Catholic.  However, I firmly believe that forgiveness without some act of penance is meaningless.  All abusers apologize to their victims after committing their abuse.  Perhaps the apology is, in  that moment, genuine, but if the abuser continues to abuse, that apology is also meaningless.

Don’t try to decode this post.  There are no hidden messages.  Family dysfunction occurs.  Frankly, I don’t know any “functional” family.  Humans are fallible.  They fuck up.  Mix in mental illness, and the result can be unbearable at times.

But, as a Christian, I also have to believe that everyone is worthy of being forgiven, depending on the actions they take to BE forgiven.  As the old saying goes, actions speak louder than words.  If saying “I am sorry” isn’t backed up by acts of true love and kindness, then those three words are only that—words.  

Apologies are cheap, unless they are followed by grace and amends.

Saint Marty wrote a poem for tonight about dysfunction and love, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

On this day in 1980, Washington State’s Mount St. Helens erupted, sending ash in the air for miles.  Write a poem that compares a relationship, person, lover, family, job, or divorce to a volcano.  Learn about the differences in volcanoes, such as the slow moving lava of Hawaiian volcanoes to the almost atomic-blast ash clouds of Mount St. Helens.

Volcanology

by: Martin Achatz

It’s hard to love him

with his magma tongue

in the caldera of his mouth,

never sure when he will blot

out the sun, fill my lungs

with ash and vog until

breathing is just memory

and I lie down, maybe

hugging a pillow or dog,

let myself be consumed,

calcified, even the thoughts

inside my hollow skull,

echoing like ocean waves

in the ear of a conch:

He loves me, loves me not,

loves me, loves me not.

May 17, 2025: "Why My Mother Made Me," Hold On to Things, "Momento Mori"

What makes a person?  It's an interesting question.

Do past traumas?  Old relationships?  Physical challenges?  Movies?  Television shows?  Parents?  Teachers?  I guess it boils down to nature versus nurture.  Are we born with our personalities, or do our personalities develop over time?

Sharon Olds meditates on why she was born . . .  

Why My Mother Made Me

by: Sharon Olds

Maybe I am what she always wanted, 

my father as a woman, 

maybe I am what she wanted to be 

when she first saw him, tall and smart, 

standing there in the college yard with the 

hard male light of 1937 

shining on his slicked hair. She wanted that 

power. She wanted that size. She pulled and 

pulled through him as if he were silky 

bourbon taffy, she pulled and pulled and 

pulled through his body till she drew me out, 

sticky and gleaming, her life after her life. 

Maybe I am the way I am 

because she wanted exactly that, 

wanted there to be a woman 

a lot like her, but who would not hold back, so she 

pressed herself, hard, against him, 

pressed and pressed the clear soft 

ball of herself like a stick of beaten cream 

against his stained sour steel grater 

until I came out the other side of his body, 

a tall woman, stained, sour, sharp, 

but with milk at the center of my nature. 

I lie here now as I once lay 

in the crook of her arm, her creature, 

and I feel her looking down into me the way 

the maker of a sword gazes at his face 

in the steel of the blade.

We all hold onto things--trinkets from the past that seem too important simply to throw away.  I still have a People Magazine from the week River Phoenix died.  I've been keeping diaries and journals since I was in middle school.  I have boxes and boxes of them.  I've been posting on this blog for close to 15 years now.  Well over 5,000 posts.

My poems and posts and stories and journals are my my mementos.  They remind me of who I am, where I come from.  And now this post will be another of those reminders.  Twenty years from now, I may reread these words and not remember a single thing about their composition.  Or I may remember everything.

What I want to remember about today:  my wife and I watched an episode of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel tonight.  Being happy.  Feeling blessed.  Not wanting the night to end.

Saint Marty wrote a poem for today about all those things that remind us of life . . . and death, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Find an index card and turn it vertically.  Write a poem about something that doesn't last long.  Writing on an index card vertically will result in much shorter lines--see how this added structure changes how you normally write.  For extra credit, turn the index card over and write horizontally about something that lasts a long time.

Memento Mori

by: Martin Achatz

My sister's hospital badge,

from when she was still saving

people's lives.  A polaroid

of a cocker spaniel, blue ball

in his jaws, as if he's waiting

for me to toss it one last time.

My grandfather's wedding ring,

worn smooth as an old tooth.

My grandma didn't want it, 

told me it belonged to his first

wife, as if love was a well

that could run dry.  We all keep

tokens like these in dresser

drawers, closet boxes.  I bet

Mary Todd kept the silver

half-dollars from Lincoln's

eyelids.  Maybe she worried 

them all day until her fingers 

burned, slept with them 

under her cool pillow at night 

until she couldn't remember

the sound of his voice or 

the smell of his 

whiskered cheeks.