August 15, 2026: “How Some of It Happened,” Confession, “hebron”

In case you haven’t noticed, I haven’t been posting a lot this summer.  And I’ve made tons of excuses about WHY I haven’t been posting:  taking some “me” time, working hard at the library, focusing on my latest poetry manuscript, reading War and Peace.  You get the idea.  

Here’s my confession:  I haven’t experienced a whole lot of happiness this summer.  Yes, I am so proud of my son for graduating in May and for landing a job at the local children’s museum.  Yes, my daughter continues to amaze me with her drive and courage in her medical school program.  And my wife is the most loving, supportive partner, even when I’m not easy to be around.

Yet, in these long days of summer, I’ve been really struggling.

Marie Howe writes about her brother’s struggles . . . 

How Some of It Happened

by: Marie Howe

My brother was afraid, all his life, of going blind, so deeply

that he would turn the dinner knives away from, looking at him,

he said, as they lay on the kitchen table.

He would throw a sweatshirt over those knobs that lock the car door

from the inside, and once, he dismantled a chandelier in the middle

of the night when everyone was sleeping.

We found the pile of sharp and shining crystals in the upstairs hall.

So you understand, it was terrible

when they clamped his one eye open and put the needle in his cheek

and up and into his eye from underneath

and held it there for a full minute before they drew it slowly out

once a week for many weeks.  He learned to lean into it,

to settle down he said, and still the eye went dead, ulcerated,

breaking up green in his head as the other eye, still blue

and wide open, looked and looked at the clock.

My brother promised me he wouldn’t die after our father died.

He shook my hand on a train going home one Christmas and gave me

five years, as clearly as he promised he’d be home for breakfast when

I watched him walk into the New York City autumn night.  By nine, I promise,

and he did come back.  And five years later he gave me five years more.

So much for the brave pride of premonition, 

the worry that won’t let it happen.

You know, he said, I always knew I would die young.

And then I got sober, and I thought, OK, I’m not.

I’m going to see thirty and live to be an old man.  And now

it turns out that I am going to die.  Isn’t that funny?

—One day it happens:  what you have feared all your life,

the unendurable specific, the exact thing.  No matter what you say or do.

This is what my brother said:  Here, sit closer to the bed

so I can see you.

Howe’s brother experiences what he feared the most:  blindness.  Yet, he learns to lean into it, settle down.  It seems that the certainty of his impending death removes his childhood terror of living in darkness.  One struggle replaces the other, and her brother finds a kind of peace, even as he still tries to shield Howe from pain.  The last two lines of the poem absolutely gut me—the brother’s small act of need and comfort:  “. . .  sit closer to the bed / so I can see you.”  Be near me, he’s saying, and I love you.

My struggles pale in comparison to the subject matter of Howe’s poem.  In fact, I’m almost embarrassed to write about my mental health struggles.  Yet, here I sit in metaphorical darkness, asking you, kind reader, to be near me.

That’s been the hardest part of these last couple months—the loneliness.  When you’re sitting on your living room couch in the middle of the night, crying for no tangible reason, you start feeling like you’re stranded on some alien planet with no way to get home.  (So, either I’m E.T. the extraterrestrial trying to phone home, or I’m Matt Damon in The Martian, trying to grow potatoes to survive until the rescue team shows up.)

I’ve been trying to pinpoint the cause of my current melancholia.  I am now the father of two adult children who no longer depend on me for sage advice or help with homework.  I realized this week that I’ve already lived over half my life and have only 30 or 35 years left.  If I’m lucky.  (Like Howe’s brother, I’ve always thought I was going to die young.)  And, looking back on my life, I’m not sure how much of a difference I’ve made in this world.  I haven’t saved anyone from a burning building or donated a kidney.  As far as I know, my writing hasn’t altered the universe in any way, either.

In short, my life hasn’t really mattered all that much.  (Yes, as I typed those words, I started crying.  Again.)

This weekend, in particular, has been very difficult for many reasons.  The only moment I found a scrap of happiness came this afternoon when I finished a poem I’ve been trying to write for over a week.  I read it to my wife, and she smiled and nodded at me (after making me change one image—she is my best and harshest critic).  For a little while, I actually felt lighter, as if some weight had lifted off my shoulders.  I held onto that feeling for as long as I could before the darkness descended again.

That’s my confession.  This whole summer has been my penance.

Here’s the poem Saint Marty finished today . . . 

hebron

by: Martin Achatz

standing at the mouth of the cave as a tornado

screamed by, elijah thought it was god

blowing out birthday candles.  but it wasn’t.  then

the ground shook its fist, the mountain stomped

its feet, and elijah was sure it was god line dancing

with moses, but it wasn’t.  then a firestorm baked

everything to bricks and pottery, and elijah thought

it was god having a smoke after dinner, but it wasn’t.

then a mosquito flew into his ear, sang him 

a lullaby, and elijah thought it was his mother,

but it wasn’t.  it was god eating ripe blueberries

and humming “what a wonderful world”

before it had even been written.