January 19, 2026: “Prologue,” Marie Howe, MLK Day, “Broken Snow Shovel”

I have a confession:  I’m having difficulty writing.  

No, it’s not writer’s block.  I’m still scribbling in my journal, and every once in a while a poem appears.  Yet, on a day-to-day basis, I’m overwhelmed by the state of the world, or, more specifically, my country.  I find very little that’s uplifting and beautiful right now.  There are ruthless thugs brutalizing, kidnapping, and disappearing people across the United States.  Our unhinged pathological narcissist “leader” is invading sovereign nations; un-aliving innocents; and covering up child sex trafficking.  People are starving, losing jobs, and getting sick because our elected officials are more concerned with playing political games than actually doing what they’re paid to do:  taking care of their constituents.  It feels as if the great experiment of the United States of America is collapsing before my eyes.

That’s my struggle.

I’ve chosen Marie Howe as 2026’s poet of the year for this blog.  I’ve loved her writing for a very long time because she’s fearless.  She embraces joy and grief.  Hopefulness and hopelessness.  Light and dark.  

Prologue

by: Marie Howe

In the middle of my life—just past the middle—

walking along the street with our little dog Jack on a leash

—OK—just past the late-middle—

in what some might call early old age,

on a street crowded with children and tourists

my father dead, my mother dead,

my young husband gone from me and grown older (a father

a husband now to someone else),

Jason dead, John dead, Jane and Stanley and Lucy and Lucie

and Billy and Tony and now Richard dead,

I came to the edge

and I did not know that way.

Like Howe, I don’t know the way, either.  Should I just go about writing my pretty poems and turn a blind eye to all the violence and hatred around me?  Or take to the streets, march, raise my voice, stand in the line of fire?  I don’t know what my role is here, except to bear witness, speak the truth.  And I’m not sure that’s enough.

Today was Martin Luther King Day in the United States (regardless of any of #47’s Executive Orders).  We honor the memory of this brave man who did march, raise his voice, stand in the line of fire.  Martin dreamed of a better world, and he did everything in his power to make that dream a reality.  I’m sure, at times, Dr. King lost hope, got pissed.  How could he not, living in a country where racism is as much a part of our history as the Boston Tea Party?  Yet, he never gave up.

One person can make a difference.  Ask Martin.  Or Gandhi.  Or Malcom.  Or Nelson.  Or Mother Teresa.  Or Malala.  Or Dorothy Day.  

That’s my prologue for 2026.  We all need to stand up.  March.  Speak out.  Not lose hope.  If we do all that, we shall overcome.

Saint Marty wrote a poem for today about shoveling snow , , , 

Broken Snow Shovel

by: Martin Achatz

Ten winters, it battled

snow, ice, boulders of earth

hard as iron, storm after flurry

after blizzard after squall.

This morning, a wooden snap,

like a moose crashing through 

deadfall and brush, and its yellow

scoop head lodged in a ridge

of heavy slush, stayed there,

the way mammoths laid down

to nap eons ago, stayed buried

until some farmer plowed up 

their ribs and curled tusks.

January has just begun, several

shoveling months ahead.  I consider

gluing the handle back into

the scoop, taking the chance

it will last until the final flakes

of March or April or sometimes May.

Instead, I leave the scoop stuck,

push more snow over it, erase it

from the white landscape.  When

the waters of spring come, it will

emerge from its grave, remind me 

of this frozen day when I swear 

I see something immense and wooly 

lumbering down my street toward summer.

August 28: Marie Howe, "The Last Time," New Fanboy

The Last Time

by:  Marie Howe

The last time we had dinner together in a restraurant
with white table clothes, he leaned forward

and took my two hands in his and said,
I'm going to die soon. I want you to know that.

And I said, I think I do know.
And he said, what surprises me is that you don't.

And I said, I do. And he said, What?
And I said, Know that you're going to die.

And he said, No, I mean know that you are.                         

_________________________

I recently was introduced to the work of poet Marie Howe.  I had read some of her work before and liked it, but I had never read her in earnest.  For the last week or so, I've been searching for her poems online, watching videos of her poetry readings.  She has become my new favorite poet.

In my addled mind, her poems calm me for some reason.  Speak to me deeply through the fog and dark.

Saint Marty is a new Marie Howe fanboy.

September 3: A Better Poet, Marie Howe, "Practicing"

So, the poem below may make some of my readers feel uncomfortable.  That's okay.  Sometimes, that what poetry does.  It pushes you to re-understand the world.

I'm working on a new poem right now, and it always helps my process to read a poem that surprises me.  That's why I love Sharon Olds.  She writes about subjects that most people push into the back of the closet.  Marie Howe does the same thing in the poem below.  But it's only in looking at things head-on that we gain insight and understanding.  Sort of like listening to a Donald Trump campaign speech closely and realizing that he's a hate-mongering, racist, misogynistic, xenophobic idiot.

So, Marie Howe and Sharon Olds push me to be a better poet.

And Donald Trump pushes Saint Marty to look for teaching jobs in Vancouver.

Practicing

by:  Marie Howe

I want to write a love poem for the girls I kissed in seventh grade,

a song for what we did on the floor in the basement

of somebody’s parents’ house, a hymn for what we didn’t say but thought:

That feels good or I like that, when we learned how to open each other’s mouths

how to move our tongues to make somebody moan. We called it practicing, and

one was the boy, and we paired off—maybe six or eight girls—and turned out

the lights and kissed and kissed until we were stoned on kisses, and lifted our

nightgowns or let the straps drop, and, Now you be the boy:

concrete floor, sleeping bag or couch, playroom, game room, train room, laundry.

Linda’s basement was like a boat with booths and portholes

instead of windows. Gloria’s father had a bar downstairs with stools that spun,

plush carpeting. We kissed each other’s throats.

We sucked each other’s breasts, and we left marks, and never spoke of it upstairs

outdoors, in daylight, not once. We did it, and it was

practicing, and slept, sprawled so our legs still locked or crossed, a hand still lost

in someone’s hair . . . and we grew up and hardly mentioned who

the first kiss really was—a girl like us, still sticky with moisturizer we’d

shared in the bathroom. I want to write a song

for that thick silence in the dark, and the first pure thrill of unreluctant desire,

just before we’d made ourselves stop.

August 31: Ice Cream, Marie Howe, "The Copper Beech"

There's nothing worse in life than feeling unprotected.

I've been fairly lucky in my life.  I had parents who supported me in every crazy thing I did, including abandoning a possible career in computer programming to go to graduate school to study creative writing.  I have a wife who's willing to listen to 500 drafts of a poem until it's done.  And my kids aren't too embarrassed with having a father who cries at movies like a pregnant woman sometimes.

I've had love and protection, even during the darkest moments of my life.  That's pretty unusual.  Yet, everyone deserves this.  Everyone should have a person to go get ice cream with.  To sit at a picnic table on a hot August day and lick away at some Mackinac Island Fudge or Blue Moon.  It has made all the difference in my life, this human assurance.

Saint Marty hopes everybody reading this post has a Dairy Queen pal.  Or at least a copper beech to sit under.

The Copper Beech

by:  Marie Howe

Immense, entirely itself,

it wore that yard like a dress,

with limbs low enough for me to enter it

and climb the crooked ladder to where

I could lean against the trunk and practice being alone.

One day, I heard the sound before I saw it, rain fell

darkening the sidewalk.

Sitting close to the center, not very high in the branches,

I heard it hitting the high leaves, and I was happy,

watching it happen without it happening to me.

Everyone deserves ice cream every once in a while

August 30: Steam in My Engine, Poet of the Week, Marie Howe, "Hurry"

I don't have much steam in my engine right now.  It's close to 11 p.m., and I have to get up at 4:45 a.m.  So, I will just name the Poet of the Week and go to bed.

Marie Howe.

Saint Marty is going to brush his teeth now.  Enjoy tonight's poem.

Hurry

by:  Marie Howe

We stop at the dry cleaners and the grocery store   

and the gas station and the green market and   

Hurry up honey, I say, hurry,   

as she runs along two or three steps behind me   

her blue jacket unzipped and her socks rolled down.   

Where do I want her to hurry to? To her grave?   

To mine? Where one day she might stand all grown?   

Today, when all the errands are finally done, I say to her,   

Honey I'm sorry I keep saying Hurry—   

you walk ahead of me. You be the mother.   

And, Hurry up, she says, over her shoulder, looking   

back at me, laughing. Hurry up now darling, she says,   

hurry, hurry, taking the house keys from my hands.

This cartoon has nothing to do with the poem