August 31: "Peonies," Summer Green, Carpe Diem

Mary Oliver practices a little carpe diem . . . 

Peonies

by:  Mary Oliver

This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready

     to break my heart

          as the sun rises,

               as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers

and they open--

     pools of lace,

          white and pink--

               and all day the black ants climb over them,

boring their deep and mysterious holes

     into the curls,

          craving the sweet sap,

               taking it away

to their dark, underground cities--

     and all day

          under the shifty wind,

               as in a dance to the great wedding,

the flowers bend their bright bodies,

     and tip their fragrance to the air,

          and rise,

               their red stems holding

all that dampness and recklessness

     gladly and lightly,

          and there it is again--

               beauty the brave, the exemplary,

blazing open.

     Do you love this world?

          Do you cherish your humble and silky life?

               Do you adore the green grass with its terror beneath?

Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden,

     and softly,

          and exclaiming of their dearness,

               fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,

with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,

     their eagerness

          to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are

               nothing, forever?

Oliver really is seizing the day in this poem.  She knows the peonies will last only a little while before they are claimed by the terror beneath the grass, so she doesn't waste a second.  In the thin light of morning, she ventures out barefoot and collects them in her arms, hugs them to her body.  She wants to love this part of the world, this short moment of beauty, before it vanishes.

I went for a walk this evening with my wife and puppy.  The long light of late August stretched our shadows out before us, and the trees flashed their last gasps of summer green.  As I looked up into their canopies, I saw the first hints of autumn.  Gold, just tiny flecks of it in that lake of chlorophyll.  Not enough to declare summer over just yet, but enough to send prospectors out to pan for more gold.

It is the last day of August.  I know this.  While the rest of the United States has been baking under a brutal heat wave, I've been waking up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to almost frost on the windows.  I'll call it a heavy mist.  Fall is breathing down our necks.

Change is on the way.

I'm not going to get all Dead Poets Society in this post.  However, I feel that urgency to squeeze as much summer into these last warm days as possible.  I took tomorrow off from work.  I don't have to teach, either.  Maybe I'll go for a long walk with my dog.  Or maybe I'll sit in my backyard all afternoon with a good book, my journal, and a pen.  I still haven't seen Oppenheimer yet.

Moving from one season into another is always difficult for me, because my life changes drastically.  Summer to fall, the shift is all about getting back into the classroom.  No more quiet nights at home.  Those nights will now be filled with grading and lesson planning and calming the fears of anxious students.  

There's something in me that stubbornly wants to hold onto the ice cream days and nights of summer.  I want a few more scoops of vanilla topped with hot fudge, if you know what I mean.  Of course, there's nothing stopping me from going to the grocery store and picking up some Ben & Jerry's in September or October.  Even December, if I want.

But it won't be the same.  Ice cream on a 90-degree July day tastes different than ice cream on a 15-degree December day.  

So, I'm following Oliver's lead here.  Gathering up all the summer I can.  In fact, I just went outside barefoot to look at the full moon, and the air smelled like July and August still.  Cut grass lingering.  Everyone in my neighborhood, it seems, mowed their lawns today.  

Poet Robert Herrick wrote:  "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, / Old Time is still a-flying; / And this same flower that smiles today / Tomorrow will be dying."

Mary Oliver wrote:  "Do you cherish your humble and silky life?"

Saint Marty writes:  "Maybe I should get some Cherry Garcia."  

August 30: "White Flowers," First Week, Super Blue Moon

Mary Oliver blossoms in a field . . . 

White Flowers

by:  Mary Oliver

Last night

in the fields

I lay down in the darkness

to think about death,

but instead I fell asleep,

as if in a vast and sloping room

filled with those white flowers

that open all summer,

sticky and untidy,

in the warm fields.

When I woke

the morning light was just slipping

in front of the stars,

and I was covered

with blossoms.

I don't know

how it happened--

I don't know

if my body went diving down

under the sugary vines

in some sleep-sharpened affinity

with the depths, or whether

that green energy

rose like a wave

and curled over me, claiming me

in its husky arms.

I pushed them away, but I didn't rise.

Never in my life had I felt so plush,

or so slippery,

or so resplendently empty.

Never in my life

had I felt myself so near

that porous line

where my own body was done with

and the roots and the stems and the flowers

began.

I totally understand Oliver lying down in a dark field to meditate on death.  In case you haven't noticed, thinking about mortality is something I do frequently.  I excel at it.  However, when Oliver wakes up, she finds herself covered in white blossoms, as if her body has either taken root or the green world has risen up and claimed her.  Either way, she's transformed.

It is mid-week.  Hump day, as they say.  I've taught three classes so far, with one left to teach tomorrow morning.  I haven't made a fool of myself.  Yet.  The students seem to like me, although maybe I should substitute the verb "tolerate" for "like."  In any case, Friday is fast approaching, and I've survived the first week of the semester.

Tonight, a Super Blue Moon rises in the heavens.  Now, a blue moon usually refers to a second full moon appearing within a calendar month, and a supermoon means that the moon is closer to the Earth, making it appear slightly larger in the sky.  The next time a Super Blue Moon will appear, according to astronomers, is the year 2037.  

So, what do all these things have to do with each other--death, teaching, little white flowers, and Super Blue Moons?  I'll tell you . . . I don't really know.  It's a confluence of happenings, perhaps related, perhaps unrelated.  I often look for meaning in simply random events that occur simultaneously, and I rarely discover that meaning.

One of my best friends texted me this evening.  She sent a beautiful photo of the moon rising over Lake Superior.  It's huge, with a finger of light stretching across the waves to the shore.  She sent it to me because she knows that I've been struggling for a while with darkness.  She sent it to me because we're both Mary Oliver fans, and Oliver would have loved the image.  And she sent it because she's my friend and wanted to share something beautiful with me.

And maybe that's all the meaning I need tonight.  The fact that there are amazing things happening in the world, even with all the darkness.  That fact that my friend and I love the same poet who falls asleep in a dark field and wakes to white summer flowers blossoming from her body.  The fact that, no matter what I say to my students, they have to discover their own paths to light and meaning.  And the fact that someone in this world loves me enough to send me a Super Blue Moon to carry around in my pocket, in case I stumble in the night.

And Saint Marty is transformed by all this.

Photo by Gala Mahlerbe

August 29: "Water Snake," Book of Genesis, Bob Ross

Mary Oliver encounters a serpent . . .

Water Snake

by:  Mary Oliver

I saw him

in a dry place

on a hot day,

a traveler

making his way

from one pond

to another,

and he lifted up

his chary face

and looked at me

with his gravel eyes,

and the feather of his tongue

shot in and out

of his otherwise clamped mouth,

and I stopped on the path

to give him room,

and he went past me

with his head high,

loathing me, I think,

for my long legs,

my poor body, like a post,

my many fingers,

for he didn't linger

but, touching the other side of the path,

he headed, in long lunges and quick heaves,

straight to the nearest basin

of sweet black water and weeds,

and solitude--

like an old sword

that suddenly picked itself up and went off,

swinging, swinging

through the green leaves.

Oliver doesn't seem to be afraid of the snake.  She gives it wide berth, but there is also a certain admiration in the way she describes its gravel eyes and feather tongue.  There's beauty in its lunges and heaves as it searches for black water.  It makes me think of the serpent in the Biblical book of Genesis, cunning and charismatic enough to convince Eve and Adam to eat the fruit.

Think about it.  If the serpent in Genesis was frightening or repulsive in any way, Eve probably wouldn't have listened to it, and we would all be skinny dipping in the Garden of Eden right now.  Instead, Eve lets the forked feather of its tongue lead her astray, and the rest, as they say, is history, if you're literal-minded, or myth, if you're a poet.

Of course, I'm a poet.  I'm supposed to spend my days looking for moments of beauty and peace and grace.  However, it doesn't always work that way for me.  Most days, I'm too busy or tired to go hunting for wonder.  Today, for instance, I taught at the university and hosted a blues concert at the library in the evening.  The musicians were friends of mine, and their music, a wonderful gift.  

On my way home, I stopped at a grocery store to purchase some Diet Coke and snacks for my son.

As I was walking into the store with my wife, I looked up into the sky.  Most of the day had been dreary and cold, with lots of gray clouds and mist.  Tonight, the clouds were dusted pink, as if the ghost of Bob Ross had brushed them with a little Alizarin Crimson and Titanium White to make them happier.  More than likely, it was simply the setting sun causing the effect, but I like to imagine Bob Ross as God with an afro, making the whole universe and everything in it just a little happier.

That was my Mary moment today.  A sky gilded with color.

Anything can be beautiful, as long as you have the right paints and attitude.

Saint Marty gives thanks for snakes and Bob Ross tonight.

August 28: "Poppies," Inland Lake, Dog Tired

Mary Oliver believes that happiness is sacred . . . 

Poppies

by:  Mary Oliver

The poppies send up their

orange flares, swaying

in the wind, their congregations

are a levitation

of bright dust, of thin

and lacy leaves.

There isn't a place

in this world that doesn't

sooner or later drown

in the indigos of darkness,

but now, for a while,

the roughage

shines like a miracle

as it floats above everything

with its yellow hair.

Of course nothing stops the cold,

black, curved blade

from hooking forward--

of course

loss is the great lesson.

But also I say this:  that light

is an invitation

to happiness,

and that happiness,

when it's done right,

is a kind of holiness,

palpable and redemptive.

Inside the bright fields,

touched by their rough and spongy gold,

I am washed and washed

in the river

of earthly delight--

and what are you going to do--

what can you do

about it--

deep, blue night?

Oliver admits that the indigos of darkness are inescapable.  As she says, ". . . nothing stops the cold, / black, curved blade / from hooking forward--".  Death is the leveler of all fields, "that great lesson" that we all have to learn some day.  Oliver owns this idea, but she also knows that light fosters happiness.  When happiness "is done right," it is a holy thing, like the congregations of poppies in the poem.

Today was the first day of the fall semester at the university, and I taught my first class this morning.  I will own up to the fact that I'm still in summer mode, so my mind hasn't quite caught up with the rest of me.  My body may be at the end of August, but my heart is still lingering around the first few days of July.  I was not in a good mood when I left the house.

I pass a beautiful little inland lake when I drive to and from work every day.  I've learned to judge a lot of things by studying that lake.  Weather, for instance.  I gauge what kind of day it's going to be by whether the water is gray and choppy, pounded with rain, or a mirror of the sky.  I know that, when a snowstorm is on the way, the lake becomes weirdly calm beneath gun-metal clouds.

This morning, the water was calm as baby breath, and a long finger of sunlight stroked its liquid belly.  The sun itself was huge.  It looked almost too heavy for the heavens to keep holding.  It was a joyful sunrise, and I felt my indigo darkness slip a little, some light entering into my being.  I carried that image with me until after I was done teaching.

Tonight, I hosted one of my favorite local bands at the library.  Over two hundred people showed up, and the music was fast and happy.  I was surrounded by people who love and care about me, including a friend who knows me practically better than anyone else in my life.  She's seen me in the throes of despair on more than one occasion, and she still wants to hang with me.  That is a real blessing.

I'm home now.  Dog tired.  As soon as I type the last period of this blog post and click "Publish," I'm going to brush my teeth and go to sleep.  Usually, I'm awake until about 1 a.m., as my mind doesn't know when to stop doing its thing.  (Its thing is to fill my head with worry and sadness.)  Tonight, I don't think I'll have that problem.

Saint Marty had a good day.  A sacred day of happiness.  And now, he's going to type the last period of this post.  Are you ready?  Here it comes:  .

August 27: "Goldfinches," Book Club, End of Summer

Mary Oliver loves her some . . . 

Goldfinches

by:  Mary Oliver

In the fields

we let them have--

in the fields

we don't want yet--

where thistles rise

out of the marshlands of spring and spring open--

each bud

a settlement of riches--

a coin of reddish fire--

the finches

wait for midsummer,

for the long days,

for the brass heat,

for the seeds to begin to form in the hardening thistles,

dazzling as the teeth of mice,

but black,

filling the face of every flower.

Then they drop from the sky.

A buttery gold,

they swing on the thistles, they gather

the silvery down, they carry it

in their finchy beaks

to the edges of the fields,

to the trees,

as though their minds were on fire

with the flower of one perfect idea--

and there they build their nests

and lay their pale-blue eggs,

every year,

and every year

the hatchlings wake in the swaying branches

in the silver baskets,

and love the world.

Is it necessary to say any more?

Have you heard them singing in the wind, above the final fields?

Have you ever been so happy in your life?

Spying a goldfinch in a field or at the edge of a field or in a tree is not unusual.  They are pretty ordinary birds, with their buttery gold feathers and po-ta-to-chip flight calls.  Of course, Oliver finds them miraculous, a source of peace and joy.

This evening, I went for a walk with my puppy.  The sun was well on its downward descent, and the air had a chill to it, even though it's still August.  (My furnace kicked in twice this morning.)  On my walk, I saw this tree full of light--green gilded gold.  I took a picture of it, but the picture simply doesn't capture how dazzlingly beautiful it was.  It was a goldfinch of a tree.  Ordinary but extraordinary.

It feels like the end of summer this evening.  Tomorrow, the fall semester kicks off at the university, so I spent most of this afternoon and evening pulling my syllabi together and updating my online course content.  If that sounds exotic or exciting, it isn't.  It's tedious work where I sit with my textbook on one side and calendar on the other, trying to plan out an entire semester for the two classes I'm teaching.  

I'm bushed.  All of last week was exhausting, from start to finish.  I can feel tiredness in my bones.  I did meet with my book club tonight to talk about Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead and eat dinner.  Some of my oldest and closest friends are members, so the discussion usually veers from reminiscence to literary discussion and back.  It was a lovely break from the drudgery of the rest of the day with people I love dearly.

However, I did see a tree on fire with gold tonight.  And it made me happy.  Because the tree seemed just as unwilling as me to let go of summer.

That was Saint Marty's Mary moment today.

August 26: "Whelks," Helen and Mary, Wild Darkness

Mary Oliver has been restless . . .

Whelks

by:  Mary Oliver

Here are the perfect

fans of the scallops,

quahogs, and weedy mussels

still holding their orange fruit--

and here are the whelks--

whirlwinds,

each the size of a fist,

but always cracked and broken--

clearly they have been traveling

under the sky-blue waves

for a long time.

All my life

I have been restless--

I have felt there is something

more wonderful than glass--

than wholeness--

than staying at home.

I have not been sure what it is.

But every morning on the wide shore

I pass what is perfect and shining

to look for the whelks, whose edges

have rubbed so long against the world

they have snapped and crumbled--

they have almost vanished,

with the last relinquishing

of their unrepeatable energy,

back into everything else.

When I find one

I hold it in my hand, 

I look out over that shanking fire,

I shut my eyes.  Not often,

but now and again there's a moment

when the heart cries aloud:

yes, I am willing to be

that wild darkness,

that long, blue body of light.

My friend Helen and Mary Oliver had a lot in common.

Both were ocean gals--in their element when they were walking along a briny beach, finding clams and oysters and quahogs and other weedy mussels.  

Both went for long daily walks, finding wonder along the way.  For Helen, it was raspberries or blueberries or sandhill cranes or mating seagulls.

Both were poets--they understood the world better through words.  That was their medium.  Read one of Oliver's or Helen's poems, and you will taste salt on your lips. 

Both found the world endlessly complex and endlessly simple.  

Both believed in some form of Higher Power.

Both were willing to be that wild darkness, full of mystery.

Both were willing to be that long, blue body of light.

I guess what I'm saying is that every time I read Mary Oliver, I find Helen.  

Today, I hosted a day-long celebration of joy at the library.  It was beautiful, exhausting, and filled with art and words and music and healing and singing bowls.  I texted a friend on Wednesday or Thursday that I'd been experiencing Helen miracles all week long.  Tiny moments of beauty.  Rabbits eating in my backyard.  Clouds shot through with light.  Rain coming down so hard it sounded like the drum solo in Led Zeppelin's "Moby Dick."  This morning, I opened my front door, and a chipmunk was sitting on my top step, staring up at me.  

Just like Oliver, Helen taught me how to slow down and take note.  That's what I did today.

Saint Marty is now going to take note of a bowl of ice cream.  Helen taught him that, too.

August 25: ""When Death Comes," Joy Fest, "Martian Girl"

Mary Oliver has some death wishes . . . 

When Death Comes

by:  Mary Oliver

When death comes

like the hungry bear in autumn;

when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;

when death comes

like the measle-pox;

when death comes

like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:

what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything

as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,

and I look upon time as no more than an idea,

and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common

as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,

tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something

precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say:  all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder

if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,

or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited the world.

Oliver gives us rules to live by, especially in her last line.  When Death comes knocking, you don't want simply to be a visitor on this planet, waiting for the mothership to come and take you home.  Like Oliver, you should be in the world, of the world.  Every day, another encounter with wonder and amazement.  Even the simplest field daisy is a gift, singularly beautiful.

I spent most of this afternoon preparing for something happening at the library tomorrow.  It's called Joy Fest, and it is a day-long celebration of my friend, Helen, and all the joy she brought into this world during her time on it.  There's going to be poetry and literature and music and singing bowls meditation and yoga and art and healing and chocolate.  And laughter.  Lots of laughter.  If there was one thing Helen loved to do, it was to laugh.

If all of that sounds like too much, then you understand in a small way who Helen was.  She was, as Oliver puts it, the bride married to amazement.  The bridegroom, taking the world into her arms.  She reveled in everyone she met, made them feel as if talking to them was the greatest pleasure she'd ever known.  If you knew Helen, you somehow knew that goodness and love were the most powerful forces in the universe.

Don't misunderstand me.  Helen was human, with all the attendant failings and struggles.  She sometimes gave into anger, sorrow, maybe despair at times.  Yet, she knew that even darkness could be beautiful, and she shed her light into it.  (I remember, in particular, the night after Donald Trump won the 2016 U. S. presidential election.  Helen and I had a particularly dark conversation, venting all of our fears and frustrations and worries.  At the end, after almost an hour of shared sadness, Helen said, "We aren't going to give up or give in, Marty.  There's more amazing people in the world than there are assholes."  And we laughed and laughed until we were crying.)

That was my friend Helen.  A Martian girl who visited our planet and fell in love with it.

Saint Marty is blessed to have had so, so many close encounters of the Helen kind. 

Martian Girl

by:  Helen Haskell Remien

Oh, Mother, don't tell me it isn't safe,

that we are rotting inside, that we will die

if we don't enter that ship and take off.

Don't you see!  I have tasted it, Mother, the salt of sea,

the ripeness of berry, the very soil we are standing upon,

and I have heard it, Mother, a sound more divine

than the voices of the high beings on our planet,

a song, these earthlings call it, emitted from

their own body home, and my body has moved

to this sound, felt it inside me, and the wind . . .

they call it wind, this wild air, and they have trees, Mother,

trees with names, giant sequoia, tiny scrub pine.

I want to cling to the trees.  I am not ready to say goodbye 

to the trees and to the sea that carries me in its currents,

not ready to say goodbye to the mountains

topped with the wonder of snow.  I want to dive down

into the white billowy bank and swim my way 

to a shore of crystal flakes.

Oh, Mother, must we go?

We have learned to feast at their table,

and I want the whole meal, here, on this planet

that is thrumming with an energy we have never felt before,

vibrating in its rocky soil.  There are rocks, red rock cliffs

that light up like fire, and there is a drumbeat

in these fiery hills.  Oh, Mother, must we leave

a place we have learned to love, that lights us up?

I will carry back with me the memory,

the vibration and love these humans

have dished out so freely, so unwittingly.

Oh, Mother, I will pack it all in my bag,

the laughter, the light, a song I have learned

that is now my very own.

August 24: "Goldenrod," Extraordinary Ordinary, Performed

Mary Oliver admires weeds . . . 

Goldenrod

by:  Mary Oliver

On roadsides,

     in fall fields,

          in rumpy bunches,

               saffron and orange and pale gold,

in little towers,

     soft as mash,

          sneeze-bringers and seed-bearers,

               full of bees and yellow beads and perfect flowerlets

and orange butterflies.

     I don't suppose

          much notice comes of it, except for honey,

               and how it heartens the heart with its

blank blaze.

     I don't supposed anything loves it except, perhaps,

          the rocky voids

               filled by its dumb dazzle.

For myself, 

     I was just passing by, when the wind flared

          and the blossoms rustled,

               and the glittering pandemonium

leaned on me.

     I was just minding my own business

          when I found myself on their straw hillsides,

               citron and butter-colored,

and was happy, and why not?

     Are not the difficult labors of our lives

          full of dark hours?

               And what has consciousness come to anyway, so far,

that is better than these light-filled bodies?

     All day

          on their airy backbones

               they toss in the wind,

they bend as though it was natural and godly to bend,

     they rise in a still sweetness,

          in the pure peace of giving

               one's gold away.

One of Mary Oliver's greatest lessons:  notice how extraordinary ordinary things are, like goldenrod.  Yes, the difficult labors or our lives are full of dark hours, as she says.  And it is so easy simply to focus on the labor and darkness instead of something that rises in still sweetness to give away its golden beauty.

I'm pretty beat tonight.  It is a little past 11 p.m., and I just got home a little while ago.  I performed in a show tonight with some of my best friends, and it was wonderfully exhausting.  After more than a week of sadness and bad news, it was great to hang with people I love and sing, perform, and read poetry.

Now, I know most of my disciples reading this post would probably lose a kidney rather than get up on a stage.  Public speaking ranks right up there with death in the fear department.  But I love being in front of an audience.  Love the challenge of winning over surly or disgruntled theatergoers.  Love hearing laughter and applause.  All that was my goldenrod this evening.

My miracle today:  friends, a stage, music, and poetry.

Now, Saint Marty is ready for a long winter's nap, but he'll settle for a short night's snooze.

August 23: "The Sun," Transition, Disciple's Comment

Mary Oliver worships the sun . . .

The Sun

by:  Mary Oliver

Have you ever seen

anything 

in your life

more wonderful

than the way the sun,

every evening,

relaxed and easy,

floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills,

or the rumpled sea,

and is gone--

and how it slides again

out of the blackness,

every morning,

on the other side of the world,

like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,

say, on a morning in early summer,

at its perfect imperial distance--

and have you ever felt for anything

such wild love--

do you think there is anywhere, in any language,

a word billowing enough

for the pleasure

that fills you,

as the sun

reaches out,

as it warms you

as you stand there,

empty-handed--

or have you too

turned from this world--

or have you too

gone crazy

for power,

for things?

There wasn't a whole lot of sun today to feel that wild love Mary Oliver talks about.  But there was plenty of fog and mist.  I used to be a person who preferred dark days filled with rain or snow.  An endless winter of sheet metal clouds never bothered me.  Now, however, I prefer sun and the long hours of summer.

Yesterday, my friend, Rosalie, made her transition after being in hospice care for about a week.  I found out this morning and sat in my library office, staring out the window for a long while, thinking of her and her daughter.  

Grief is like some unwelcome cousin, the kind that shows up at your front door with a suitcase one day, moves in, and just won't leave.  Grief has been my houseguest since May, 2014, when my brother, Kevin, passed unexpectedly.  (That's not a euphemism for suicide.  It's simply the truth.  We didn't expect him to die.)  Since that time, grief has hung around, eating my food, taking long showers, sitting on my couch, watching bad Netflix movies.

A disciple wrote a comment on last night's blog post about Joseph, saying all I think about is death.  Granted, the last few posts have been about people I've lost/am losing in my life--a brother, two sisters, my parents, some best friends.  There's this mistaken perception that once the pageantry of death is over, the last casserole eaten, grief packs up and leaves for home, wherever that is.  I'm here to tell you that grief is a lifelong job, like breathing.  You don't get over loss.  You get used to it.  It becomes a part of your life, like the sun streaming upward every day on its heavenly oils.

And you can't have sunny days without rainy ones.  Or light without darkness.  And you can't have joy without sorrow.  That's the way the universe works.  Rain makes the sun brighter.  Darkness makes the light more blinding.  And sorrow makes joy even sweeter.

Saint Marty celebrates it all--clouds and rain, sun and sorrow, darkness and joy..

August 22: "The Sea Mouse," Joseph, Truly Blessed

Mary Oliver pets death . . .

The Sea Mouse

by:  Mary Oliver

What lay this morning

on the wet sand

was so ugly

I sighed with a kind of horror as I lifted it

into my hand

and looked under the soaked mat of what was almost fur,

but wasn't, and found

the face that has no eyes, and recognized

the sea mouse--

toothless, legless, earless too,

it had been flung out of the stormy sea

and dropped

into the world's outer weather, and clearly it was

done for.  I studied

what was not even a fist

of gray corduroy;

I looked in vain

for elbows and wrists;

I counted

the thirty-segments, with which

it had rippled its mouse-like dance

over the sea's black floor--not on

feet, which it did not have, but on

tiny buds tipped with bristles,

like paintbrushes--

to find and swallow

the least pulse, and so stay alive, and feel--

however a worm feels it--satisfaction.

Before me

the sea still heaved, and the heavens were dark,

the storm unfinished,

and whatever was still alive

stirred in the awful cup of its power,

though it breathe like fire, though it love

the lung of its own life.

Little mat, little blot, little crawler,

it lay in my hand

all delicate and revolting.

With the tip of my finger

I stroked it,

tenderly, little darling, little dancer,

little pilgrim,

gray pouch slowly

filling with death.

Mary Oliver doesn't find much in nature revolting.  In fact, I'd say that her fallback position on anything she encounters in the green world is wonder and affection.  She loves everything, from the hermit thrush to the sea mouse.  She ends up holding the little mat, little blot, little crawler in her palm, stroking the gray pouch of its body as it slowly dies in the killing air.

Tonight at the library, I hosted a book launch event for an anthology of essays about water.  There was music, brownies, veggies and dip, La Croix and bottled water.  And there were 13 readers.  I had the room set up with 50 chairs.  People started showing up around 5:30 p.m.  And they kept coming.  And coming.  When all was said and done, close to 120 people attended.

One of the people who attended was a dear, dear friend of mine named Joseph.  He showed up a few minutes late, and I saw him standing in the doorway, scoping out seats.

The first time I met Joseph was at a poetry reading I gave at my hometown library just a couple days after my father died.  Joseph showed up, sat in the front row, and listened to my words with an intensity usually reserved for saints and extraterrestrials.  After the reading, he approached me, talked about my work, remembering entire stanzas, word-for-word.  Then he told me how sorry he was to read about my father's passing in the newspaper, spoke as if he knew my father personally.  It wasn't just politeness.  Joseph showed up three days later at the funeral, in a suit and tie, hugging me, telling me how proud my father was of me.  And I believed him.

In the last couple years, since COVID hit, Joseph has been facing health issues.  Problems with his heart mostly.  He spent some time in the hospital, and then even more time recuperating.  For a man who made his living as a lumberjack in Norway (the country--not the city in Michigan), Joseph had a hard time accepting his new limitations.

Tonight, during the intermission of the event, my wife and I sat and talked with Joseph.  We asked him how he was doing.  "Well," he said, "my organs are shutting down, and the doctors are saying that, in two to four weeks, I'm going to have a stroke that will probably end my life."  

Joseph is dying.

When he saw the looks on our faces, he smiled as only he can smile.  With his whole body.  

"Joseph," I said.  "I'm so, so sorry."

He shook his head and laughed.  Yes, he laughed.  "No, no, my friends," he said, holding my wife's hand.  "I've had a good life.  I have three beautiful daughters.  Wonderful grandchildren.  I'm so, so blessed."  Like Oliver, Joseph was holding the sea mouse in his palm, stroking it tenderly.  Unafraid.  

Then Joseph changed the subject, started asking about our kids, celebrating all of their accomplishments.

I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I got a little pissed after speaking with Joseph.  I'm tired of people I love getting sick and dying.  It seems like God's a bully on the playground, picking on all of my best friends.  

At the end of the night, as he was leaving, Joseph wrapped me in his arms, kissed me, and said, "Thank you for being my friend.  I'm so lucky."  And there it was:  grace and gratitude.

Joseph is my miracle today.

Do Saint Marty a favor whenever you read this post:  think of his friend Joseph and remember how blessed you really are.

August 21: "I Looked Up," Helen, Passenger Pigeons

Mary Oliver spies a bird . . .

I Looked Up

by:  Mary Oliver

I looked up and there it was

among the green branches of the pitchpines--

thick bird,

a ruffle of fire trailing over the shoulders and down the back--

color of copper, iron, bronze--

lighting up the dark branches of the pine.

What misery to be afraid of death.

What wretchedness, to believe only in what can be proven.

When I made a little sound

it looked at me, then it looked past me.

Then it rose, the wings enormous and opulent,

and, as I said, wreathed in fire.

Birds are like this--delicate and transitory, startling with fiery beauty, flying off before you even have a chance to utter a prayer of thanks or surprise or awe.  I take birds for granted.  Most people do, I think.  When I wake up on a summer morning, I assume there will be birdsong to welcome me into the day.  When the air turns cold and leaves blaze up, I assume geese will be filling the heavens with the traffic noises of their migration.  I expect this.  Count on it.

Flocks of passenger pigeons used to blot out the sun when they passed overhead.  Three to five billion of them.  Carolina parakeets crowded trees and skies in large, loud flocks, as well.  The dusky seaside sparrows were done in by the rockets of Kennedy Space Center roaring toward the heavens from their nesting grounds.  No one thought any of these birds would just take wing and vanish one day, wreathed in the fire of extinction.  

Yet, they are all gone.  Martha, the last passenger pigeon, died on September 1, 1914, in the Cincinnati Zoo.

Today is the one year anniversary of the passing of one of my best friends, Helen.  

What can I say about Helen?  She was a living, breathing, walking poem.  A flock of passenger pigeons, eating the sun.  A crew of Carolina parakeets, flashing emerald and saffron.  A host of seaside sparrows, hitching rides to the moon.  Up until a year ago, I couldn't imagine a universe without Helen in it.  I took her presence for granted.

Now, she's gone.  Like her feathered sisters and brothers, she spread her opulent wings and disappeared.  

I remember the last conversation I had with Helen.  She called me about a week before she passed.  Her voice was weak with struggle.  She said to me, "Marty, I'm ready."  I didn't need any more explanation.  I knew what she meant.  

I told her that I loved her.  Would always love her.  I promised to look after her gaggles, murmurations, ostentations of joy.  And I thanked her for being my friend.  My beautiful, flashing sea sparrow friend.  

Seven or eight days later, she was gone.

Even now, Saint Marty imagines her spreading her wings on a mountaintop.  Shouting her poems,  Rising, rising, rising into the crushing blue of the sky.   

August 20: "Toad," Bayou Art Walk, Vision of Reality

Mary Oliver has a conversation with a . . .

Toad

by:  Mary Oliver

I was walking by.  He was sitting there.

It was full morning, so the heat was heavy on his sand-colored head and his webbed feet.  I squatted beside him, at the edge of the path.  He didn't move,

I began to talk.  I talked about summer, and about time.  The pleasures of eating, the terrors of the night.  About this cup we call a life.  About happiness.  And how good it feels, the heat of the sun between the shoulder blades.

He looked neither up nor down, which didn't necessarily mean he was either afraid or asleep.  I felt his energy, stored under his tongue perhaps, and behind his bulging eyes.

I talked about how the world seems to me, five feet tall, the blue sky all around my head.  I said, I wondered how it seemed to him, down there, intimate with the dust.

He might have been Buddha--did not move, blink, or frown, not a tear fell from those gold-rimmed eyes as the refined anguish of language passed over him,

Oliver meets a toad as she's walking, and she does what Oliver always does:  stops and pays attention.  She talks to the toad about what is on her mind--food, summer, sun between her shoulder blades, the refined anguish of language.  I love the adjective "refined" in this poem, because it hints at something that has been distilled, purified, broken down into its main elements.  Oliver's words are a buffer between experience and understanding.  She uses language to create meaning, but, of course, that language barely comes close to the truth.

That's what all poets do, really.  We use the tools of poetry (imagery, rhythm, music, rhyme, metaphor, simile) to try to talk about how the world seems to us.  To communicate our vision (version?) of reality.  We TRY, but, most of the time, we fail.  Because it's like trying to explain grief or love to a toad, who has not need for either of those emotions.

I spent this afternoon sitting in the middle of a bayou, giving away free poetry.  It was part of an annual Bayou Art Walk sponsored by the Upper Peninsula Land Conservancy.  As people passed by, I called to them like a carnival barker on the midway, tempting them with promises of a free postcard poem, plus and chance to roll the dice and win a poetry broadside poster.  And people stopped.  They read haiku and played the game.

I talked to strangers and friends, petted passing dogs, got individuals who probably hadn't touched poetry since high school to read a poem aloud to the cedars and ferns and birds.  I didn't see any toads on the path, but I did spy a couple squirrels and a dragonfly or two.  

This is my vision/version of reality today.  Sun and wind and trees and poetry and art, all in one place.  People going out of their ways, tramping along a path through a bayou, to find beauty and meaning.  Me, sitting in the pines, sharing with a poet friend the refined anguish of language.

Saint Marty didn't have a Mary moment today.  He had a Mary afternoon. 

August 19: "August," My Sister Sally, Eighth Anniversary

Mary Oliver honors her neighbor . . .

August

by:  Mary Oliver

Our neighbor, tall and blond and vigorous, the mother of many children, is sick.  We did not know she was sick, but she has come to the fence, walking like a woman who is balancing a sword inside of her body, and besides that her long hair is gone, it is short and, suddenly, gray.  I don't recognize her.  It even occurs to me that it might be her mother.  But it's her own laughter-edged voice, we have heard it for years over the hedges.

All summer the children, grown now and some of them with children of their own, come to visit.  They swim, they go for long walks along the harbor, they make dinners for twelve, for fifteen, for twenty.  In the early morning two daughters come to the garden and slowly go through the precise and silent gestures of T'ai Chi.

They all smile.  Their father smiles, too, and builds castles on the shore with the children, and drives back to the city, and drives back to the country.  A carpenter is hired--a roof repaired, a porch rebuilt.  Everything that can be fixed.

June, July, August.  Every day, we hear their laughter.  I think of the painting by van Gogh, the man in the chair.  Everything wrong, and nowhere to go.  His hands over his eyes.

I find this poem beautiful and heartbreaking, as most things are in life.  Oliver's neighbor is very sick, "walking like a woman who is balancing a sword inside her body."  Oliver doesn't know if this woman is dying, but the whole summer is filled with children and grandchildren, swimming, and sandcastles.  In August, the last month before the slow descent into autumn and then winter, these neighbors seem to be seizing the days of sun and warmth and togetherness before everything changes and loss sets up shop in their home.

Today is the eighth anniversary of my sister Sally's death.  Hard to believe she has been gone that long already.  Of course, her going from us was long--over a year of ambulances and nursing home stays and hospitalizations.  Up until just a couple months before her passing, we didn't even know what was wrong with her, and that staved off the process of saying goodbye.  We all existed in a space of hope for a very long time, believing she would eventually return to us, whole and loving once more.

Most of you reading this post never knew Sally, but you may have had a Sally in your life.  No-nonsense and generous, always full of compassion and support.  The kind of person who remains calm in a crisis and always makes sure everyone is fed before sitting down to eat.  Not a saint by any means, but always striving to do the right thing, no matter what the cost.

I tried to be a Sally today.  Spent the morning and early afternoon rehearsing for the church services I have to play this weekend.  Then took my puppy for a walk.  Got a haircut.  Tonight, I took my wife and son to see Barbie.

If all of that sounds pretty mundane, perhaps that's the point.  Being a Sally doesn't mean performing miracles every hour of every day.  I don't have to multiply spaghetti to feed five thousand people.  Don't have to kick a demon out a anyone's body, unless you count my surly 14-year-old son.  Being a Sally is more about making the best out of even the quietest, most boring moments.  Fixing what can be fixed, as Oliver says, and accepting what can't be fixed.  

And, above all, feeling blessed, even if everything is wrong and there's nowhere to go.

The night before she died, I leaned over Sally's bed, kissed her forehead, and whispered into her ear that we were all going to be okay.  She didn't need to worry.  And I thanked her for being my sister.

Saint Marty will spend the rest of his life trying to be a Sally for his family and friends.

August 18: "Morning Glories," Poet Friend, Hospice

Mary Oliver loves weeds . . . 

Morning Glories

by:  Mary Oliver

Blue and dark-blue

     rose and deepest rose

          white and pink they

are everywhere in the diligent

     cornfield rising and swaying

          in their reliable

finery in the little

     fling of their bodies their

          gear and tackle

all caught up in the cornstalks.

     The reaper's story is the story

          of endless work of

work careful and heavy but the

     reaper cannot

          separate them out there they

are in the story of his life

     bright random useless

          year after year

taken with the serious tons

     weeds without value humorous

          beautiful weeds.

Oliver sees worth in everything, including noxious weeds.  The morning glories in this poem are also called bindweed, and they are definitely not welcome additions to any farm field or garden.  Yet, they're vibrant and gorgeous.  As Oliver writes, blue and dark-blue, rose and deepest rose, pink and white, they are everywhere.  Common and beautiful.

I want to tell you about a poet friend of mine.  Her name is Rosalie.

I've known Rosalie for over 30 years.  We went to graduate school together.  At the time, I thought I was going to be the next Flannery O'Connor, studying fiction writing while Rosalie was already writing and publishing poems.  I never had a doubt that she was going to make a name for herself as a poet.  Her work was heartbreaking and beautiful even back then.

Being a graduate student is a strange experience--a mixture of attending Hogwarts and Crunchem Hall Primary School from Matilda.  There's magical moments (a class in Modern Women Poets, a poetry reading by Maya Angelou) and painful moments (postmodern literary theory, anyone?).  And you're part of a band of misfits.  Poets.  Novelists.  Short story writers.  Essayists.  If you survive, you're guaranteed to have PTDS--post-traumatic Derrida syndrome.  (That's a really funny joke if you are/were an English major.)

I found out this afternoon that Rosalie is currently in hospice care.  I'm not going to go into the details of her illness.  That's not my story to tell.  Her daughter, whom I've known since she was an infant, is caring for Rosalie at home.

So, I'm sitting here tonight, thinking of the classes I took with Rosalie.  The shared stress of teaching composition to groups of surly freshman who didn't know comma splices from comma faults.  (If you don't know, look it up.)  The laughter and tears we shared.  And, always, the writing.  Her poems.  My short stories.  

Tragedy is common as noxious weeds.  It's everywhere, sprouting and thriving.  Is there beauty in tragedy?  Perhaps.  Speaking from experience, having a loved one in hospice is like distilling life down to its most necessary and important elements.  I've had the privilege of being in the room when two of my sisters, my father, and my mother have died.  Yes, it was a privilege to be able to hold their hands, tell them how much they were loved, and witness those last breaths that seemed almost like sighs of relief after long and winding roads.  And then the peace that followed.

Of course, loss is painful, too.  Always.  Especially when it involves someone as relatively young as Rosalie.  It's not easy to find beauty when you are in the weeds of grief.  Yet, in Rosalie's final struggle, there is love.  Deep, abiding, multiplying love.

Tonight, I raise my poet friend up to all of you.  Remember her, if you have a moment.  Know that she is a beautiful soul, on the cusp of blossoming into eternity.  Say her name like a prayer.  Give it breath.  

Rosalie.

Saint Marty is going to let his friend have the last word tonight . . . 

Before Leaving

by:  Rosalie Sanara Petrouske

I climb black rocks with my daughter,

who scrambles ahead.

Close behind, I'm ready to reach out

should she stumble on the uneven surface.

At the top, we stare out at Superior,

breathing in the peace of lake and sky.

Below, a few waves crest white,

then lap

the million-year-old ledge beneath us.

On a far shore, sugar maple, hemlock, balsam fir

and white pine cover the island and grow down sides

of distant outcroppings.

Pairs of seagulls rise from the Bon Rocks.

They lift and circle,

           dip and glide.

To the West, I point out Hogsback

and Sugarloaf, remnants of ancient glaciers.

Near us, a group of college students gather.

We watch as they leap from the highest point

to plummet into icy water.

This ritual repeats year after year.

Perhaps, I think, one day my daughter will dive

from this cliff into Superior's silvery-blue.

Her breath will catch when she rises

and gulps warm air,

yet her heart will beat again

when she discovers

effortless, she can fall and still rise.

For now, we simply sit side by side.

Sun warms our shoulder blades

and dampness gathers in the hollows

of our necks

where tendrils of hair separate to expose

skin to mid-afternoon light.

I tell her this place, this moment will always be part of us--

its mantra will call to us when we close our eyes

and still hear lake sounds, as if someone placed

a seashell against our ears.

We will carry it inside.

"Inside here?" she asks.

She places a hand across her chest.

Reaching, I take her other hand.

I squeeze, but she pulls away.

            "Don't hold so tightly," she says.

August 17: "I Found a Dead Fox," Feast Days, Resurrection

Mary Oliver communes with the dead . . . 

I Found a Dead Fox

by:  Mary Oliver

I found a dead fox                                    about foxes.

beside the gravel road,                             But what happened is this--

curled inside the big                                when I began,

iron wheel                                                when I crawled in

of an old tractor                                       through the honeysuckle

that has been standing,                            and lay down,

for years,                                                  curling my long spine

in the vines at the edge                            inside that cold wheel,

of the road.                                              and touched the dead fox,

I don't know                                            and looked out

what happened to it--                              into the wide fields,

when it came there                                  the fox

or why it lay down                                  vanished.

for good, settling                                    There was only myself

its narrow chin                                        and the world,

on the rusted rim                                     and it was I

of the iron wheel                                     who was leaving.

to look out                                               And what could I sing

over the fields,                                        then?

and that way died--                                 Oh, beautiful world!

but I know                                               I just lay there

this:  its posture--                                    and looked at it.

of looking,                                              And then it grew dark,

to the last possible moment,                   That day was done with.

back into the world--                              And then the stars stepped forth

made me want                                         and held up their appointed fires--

to sing something                                    those hot, hard

joyous and tender                                    watchmen of the night.

It's a strange impulse Oliver has, to lay down with the dead fox, curl herself around its body, touch its face.  To look out at the world, see what the fox saw in its last breathing moments.  The wide fields of the world.  Oliver's poem is a celebration really, a psalm, joyous and tender.

The Catholic Church celebrates the feast days of saints.  For example, today, August 17th, is the feast day of Saint Clare of the Cross Montefalco.  I'm not going to go into Clare's life or accomplishments.  The thing that is significant is that she died on August 17, 1308.  Feast days are basically death days.

The reason the Catholic Church honors saints on the days of their deaths is because it is in death these holy people finally entered into the glory of God.  I suppose that's somehow meant to inspire Christians.  Don't be afraid of dying because, when your heart stops and lungs go still, you finally get to see the face of the Divine.  

Every year, my dad would go through his calendar and write the birthdays and death days of family members.  I understood the need to write birthday reminders.  To buy presents or send cards.  However, death day reminders always creeped me out a little.  As if my dad was trying to resurrect, every year, the loss and attendant grief.  He created feast days for his dead.

As I've gotten older, I've begun to understand why my father did this.  It's all about keeping the candle of someone's memory burning, making sure it doesn't fade into oblivion.  Think about it.  When you visit a cemetery, you're surrounded by stones bearing the names of the dead.  If you speak one of those names, give it breath, for those few seconds, that person is resurrected.  Alive again.

In two days' time, it will be the eighth feast day for my sister Sally.  Two days beyond that, it will be the first feast day for my good friend Helen.  I type their names here, say them aloud.  Give them breath again.  The sting of grief is still with me.  I feel their absences like missing teeth that my tongue keeps trying to find.

I'm not wallowing.  I'm remembering.  Resurrecting.  Think of it as poetic CPR.

Here are the names of Saint Marty's dead:  Sally and Helen.  Put them on your tongue.  Say them, like a prayer or incantation.  A bright sun in the belly of clouds.