March 29: Gratitude Twenty-Five, Coming of Wonders, Bruce Snider, New Cartoon

On Sunday the church was full.  The minister explained the miracle.  He said the words on the spider's web proved that human beings must always be on the on the watch for the coming of wonders.

The minister in Charlotte's Web is right.  We must always be aware of the wonders of the world.  Spider webs.  Icicles five feet long.  Rainbows on an oily puddle.  Green M&Ms.  Every day, God puts wonders in our paths.

Tonight, I went to church with my family.  During a Catholic mass, a lot of liturgical music is sung and played.  One of my favorites is the "Agnus Dei" or "Lamb of God."  There are several musical settings for it, and all of them are quite beautiful.  The English version, in one translation, is:

Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.
Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.
Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, grant us peace.

For some reason, when the organ starts playing and the choir starts singing the "Lamb of God," I'm always moved to the point of tears.  I find something plaintive and longing in the words.  A yearning for compassion and harmony in the music.  It's a beautiful and moving point in the mass.  And I am grateful for it.

I'm also grateful for a poem by Bruce Snider tonight.  It was first published in The Gettysburg Review and reprinted in The Best American Poetry 2012:

The Drag Queen Dies in New Castle

Returning home
  at twenty-nine, you made
a bed your throne, your
  brothers carrying you
from room to room,

each one in turn holding
  the glass to your lips,
though you were the oldest
  of the brood.  Buried
by the barn you vanished,

but the church women
  bought your wigs
for the Christmas pageant
  that year, your blouses sewn
into a quilt under which

two newlyweds lay,
  skin to skin as if they
carried some sense
  of your undressing.  Skirts
swayed where sheep grazed

the plow and the farmer
  reached between legs
to pull out the calf,
  fluid gushing to his feet.
On lines across town,

dresses flapped empty
  over mulch while you
kept putting on your show,
  bones undressing like
it's never over, throwing

off your last great shift
  where a fox snake sank
its teeth into a corn
  toad's back, the whole
field flush with clover.

Saint Marty hopes all his disciples have something for which to be grateful this evening.  A song.  A poem.  A beautiful moon in a star-filled night.

Confessions of Saint Marty

February 21: Coming of Wonders, Wet Cement, Fairy Tale Wonders

On Sunday, the church was full.  The minister explained the miracle.  He said that the words on the spider's web proved that human beings must always be on the watch for the coming of wonders.

Well, my daughter got her wish this morning.  School was canceled.  When I got up at 4 a.m. to make a trip to the bathroom, I looked outside.  There was a lot of snow, but I could hear the plows hard at work.  That usually means school will be open for business.


My daughter's school district was the only one in the central Upper Peninsula to close for the day.  The e-mail from the school said that the cancellation was due to hazardous conditions on side roads and streets.  My daughter got to sleep in.

You're probably wondering what the above passage from Charlotte's Web has to do with my daughter getting the day off from school.  Well, I think it's really a matter of perspective.  My daughter really wanted school to be called off.  School was called off.  Only in the school district she attends.  That's kind of remarkable to me.  A wonder even.  Of course, I'm sure there were a lot of other kids hoping for a snow day, too, but I'm focusing on my little part of the universe.  And in my universe, my daughter's long weekend is a wonder, helped along by six or eight inches of snow as heavy as wet cement.

I think that's one of the jobs of poets and writers:  to recognize the coming of life's wonders that are normally ignored or overlooked.  That includes words in spider webs and unexpected days of play.  Looking out the window right now, the snow is still falling, and the wind sounds like the world has come down with whooping cough.  But the sun is still out, and it's 6:32 p.m.  That's a wonder.  The days are getting longer.  Spring is on the way.

There are other wonders in my life at the moment.  I'm reading the new Amy Tan novel and liking it.  That's a wonder.  My daughter and son spent the entire day together without any major injury.  That's a wonder.  I just ate a bite of fudge that was so perfect and dark it reminded me of an H. P. Lovecraft story.  That's a wonder.  I'm a published poet.  That's a wonder.  I have a beautiful wife and two smart, wonderful kids.  That's a wonder.

Godiva chocolate.  Wonder.  Breakfast at McDonald's, forty-degree February days, snow thunder.  Wonder, wonder, wonder.

Once upon a time, a completely boring man named Ted lived in the Mundane Forest.  Every morning, Ted ate oatmeal for breakfast.  For lunch, it was grilled cheese.  Dinner, an unsalted chicken breast with broccoli.  Ted rose at 6 a.m. every day, and he went to bed at 7:30 p.m.

Ted made shoe leather for a living.  All day long, he pounded cowhide into soft strips.  It wasn't an exciting job, but Ted never wanted excitement or wonder in his life.  He wanted predictability, routine, and warm socks.

One winter, the Mundane Forest got caught in a polar vortex that lasted three months.  Ted ran out of oatmeal and cheese and broccoli.  Nobody was buying shoe leather.  Firewood was the big business.  Ted had a choice to make:  either change his daily routines and work, or freeze to death.

In April, a neighbor found Ted dead in a block of ice in his backyard.

Moral of the story:  global warming sucks.

And Saint Marty lived happily ever after.

A picture of wonder