March 2: Tired of Snow, Green, "The Art of Growth"

Okay, I'm a little tired of snow.  Woke up to a couple of new inches of white on the ground this morning. 

I need to think of spring.  Melt.  Thaw.  Green.  Sun.  Warmth.   A time when I was watching my daughter sprout like a dandelion in my house.  It seemed every morning she was taller, faster, smarter.

Saint Marty misses those times of bloom.

The Art of Growth

by:  Martin Achatz

A coworker carries her granddaughter
around the office, showing off
her dark curls and serious eyes.
I am amazed how much the child
has grown, size her up
like a blue-ribbon squash.
The last time I saw her,
she fit into the fold of my arm,
a mitten of sleep.  Now,
in this thick June, she is
all height and weight, a moving
field of sprout and fruit.

My coworker knows the art of growth,
the moisture and heat it needs,
the cycles of sowing and reaping.
With her daughter, she kneads manure
into black earth, thick with cow smell,
watches her granddaughter plow
dirt with her fingers.
I wonder if she is ever astonished
by the size of her roses,
the yellows of her daylilies.
I wonder if she ever listens
to her garden at night,
the way I listen to my daughter
stretch and grow in the dark.

April 1: Wretched Excess, Change, Different Job

It is spring.  I plan to try to control myself this year, to watch the progress of the season in a calm and orderly fashion.  In spring I am prone to wretched excess.  I abandon myself to flights and compulsions.  I veer into various states of physical disarray.  For the duration of one entire spring I played pinochle; another spring I played second base.  One spring I missed because I had lobar pneumonia; one softball season I missed with bursitis; and every spring at just about the time the leaves first blur the willows, I stop eating and pale, like a silver eel about to migrate.  My mind wanders.  Second base is a Broadway, a Hollywood and Vine; but oh, if I'm out in right field they can kiss me goodbye.  As the sun sets, sundogs, which are mock suns--chunks of rainbow on either side of the sun but often very distant from it--appear over the pasture by Carvin's Creek.  Wes Hillman is up in his biplane; the little Waco lords it over the stillness, cutting a fine silhouette.  It might rain tomorrow, if those ice crystals find business.  I have no idea how many outs there are; I look through the left-handers, staring at rainbows.  The field looks to me as it must look to Wes Hillman up in the biplane:  everyone is running, and I can't hear a sound.  The players look so thin on the green, and the shadows so long, and the ball a mystic thing, pale to invisibility. . . .  I'm better off in the infield.

When spring springs, the world (and everything in it) goes a little berserk.  For Dillard, it's all about surrendering to obsessions.  Pinochle and softball.  Distractions.  Sundogs and silhouettes and rainbows.  Trees burst and pop, giving in to the same Dillard excess.  As winter approaches, the compulsion is to eat, pack on pounds for the upcoming cold.  As spring nears, Dillard fasts, becomes pale and thin.  Transforms into something new.  Blossoms, if you will.  Changes into something new.

Spring has come to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  Snow fell yesterday.  Snow is falling now.  In fact, snow is in the forecast for the next week, with a one-day break for sunlight and blue skies.  I am ready for change.  Because I'm tired of snow.  After months of cold and gray and white, I'm ready for some change.

That statement may come as a surprise to my two Constant Readers.  In the past, I have expressed my dislike for change.  I am not the kind of person who embraces newness.  I am suspicious of it, maybe even a little threatened by it.  I have friends who love change, thrive on it, even.  I love these friends, but I don't understand them.  "Sharon" recently left her full-time job with benefits and opened a private therapy practice.  She loves her new life.

Spring is here.  Change is on the way.  Warmth.  Leafing branches.  A little while ago, I actually applied for a different job.  Had an interview.  Lost that job to a twenty-something girl.  I went out, invited change into my life, and it punched me in the face like a bully on a playground. 

So, if you're keeping score:  Change--1, Saint Marty--0.

February 1: Snow-eater, Kayla, Poet of the Week, Catie Rosemurgy, "Why God Invented the Cold"

What else is going on right this minute while ground water creeps under my feet?  The galaxy is careening in a slow, muffled widening.  If a million solar systems are born every hour, then surely hundreds burst into being as I shift my weight to the other elbow.  The sun's surface is now exploding; other stars implode and vanish, heavy and black, out of sight.  Meteorites are arcing to earth invisibly all day long.  On the planet the winds are blowing:  the polar easterlies, the westerlies, the northeast and southeast trades.  Somewhere, someone under full sail is becalmed, in the horse latitudes, in the doldrums; in the northland, a trapper is maddened, crazed, by the eerie scent of the chinook, the snow-eater, a wind that can melt two feet of snow in a day.  The pampero blows, and the tramontane, and the Boro, sirocco, levanter, mistral.  Lick a finger:  feel the now.

There are reasons why we lick a finger and hold it up:  to feel wind.  To know if it's blowing from east, west, north, south, or some combination.  East by eastwest.  South by northwest.  Or just to test its temperature.  As Dillard writes, the galaxy is spinning, meteorites showering down.  Across the cosmos, stars are collapsing, winking out like bad nightlights.  On our little ball of dirt, the winds are blowing.  Chinook.  Boro.  Sirocco.  The planet is alive.

Winter Storm Kayla is headed my way.  By tomorrow evening, the winds will start howling, and the snow will begin falling.  Well, not falling so much as sheeting.  White planes of snow flapping like clean laundry on a clothesline.  My daughter is hoping for at least a foot of precipitation.  She just announced, "The Snow Day app says there's a 99% chance we won't have school on Wednesday."  I am not thrilled with Kayla, the Snow Day app, or the percentage.  Our local meteorologist just predicted 10-plus inches, Tuesday night through Wednesday.

That is where I am on this eve, this calm before the storm.  And Catie Rosemurgy is the Poet of the Week.  Let's call her Winter Storm Rosemurgy, and she's bringing the cold tonight.

Saint Marty is tired of shoveling.

Why God Invented the Cold

by:  Catie Rosemurgy

To give the people a break
from repositioning their lawn chairs.
To give us a glimpse
of life without bugs.  Without weeping welts,
the odd fever, and yellow smears on our shoes.

To confuse the boys.
To force them to ask, "Why do teenage girls
smoke outside in January until
their nipples get stiff?  Why do they
stand around with their coats undone and life

smacked onto their cheeks?
Am I that promising?"
To caution the men
that the boys will turn into
against following their semi-aroused girlfriends

into May lake water.  Seasonal Affective Disorder.
To break up lonely highways
into manageable chunks.  To make it clear
just how stupid it is to climb
the highest mountain.  To encourage sweet futilities

like cuddling and mittens.  The powerful
sleep lobby.  To give drunks a softer, deeper
alternative to liver failure.  Blue lips
and frosted eyelashes.  Ski pants,
for Christ's sake.  Dark roads, tight sweaters,

no boots, and stalled cars.  Wanna ride,
need a lift?  Country love or homespun
complex legal issues.  His word pressed
firmly against her word.  Zero degrees
and fourteen snowmobilers missing.

Natural selection.  Two feet of fodder
for made-for-TV movies and more expected.
No fiber, calories, vitamins, hallucinogenic
properties or nicotine without the tar.  Just pain
in your membranes, unexpected falls,

sprained ankles, and hyperextended
thumbs.  To see if you can
catch yourself.  To put you down.  You thought
you were mean and hard to figure out until
you found out about windchill.

To give us a way to understand
people who won't give us sex,
meter maids, Siamese cats. what it's like to kiss
your best friend's lover.  To distinguish the sweat of euphoria
from the sweat of shock.  To up the ante.

Because he could.  Because he's lonely and it leaked
out of him.  Because he wants attention
and a fluffy blanket that big enough to cover his toes
and reach his chin.  To create melting.  To give us
another hint that the body is dead.

To add ice.  To let him come as close as he can
to holding some of the glittering water he made.
To let us skate where we couldn't two weeks ago.
To let us glide on top of darkness.
To show us what it means to break through.

April 4: Plowed the Drifts, Tired of Snow, Flaky Fairy Tale

...One evening, just before Christmas, snow began falling.  It covered the house and barn and fields and woods.  Wilbur had never seen snow before.  When morning came he went out and plowed the drifts in his yard, for the fun of it.  Fern and Avery arrived, dragging a sled.  They coasted down the lane and out onto the frozen pond in the pasture.

I've spent most of the day plowing the drifts like Wilbur.  Only I wasn't doing it for fun.  Winter Storm Yona (the dumbest name for a winter storm I have ever heard) has been dumping inches and inches of white on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan all day long, and it's not going to stop until tomorrow morning at 8 a.m.  I am tired of snow.

I'm sure that tomorrow morning, around 4 a.m., I'm going to hear the city plows roaring down our street, sending tidal waves of snow into my driveway and yard.  Thus far, I have shoveled my house out three times today.  7 a.m., then 1:30 p.m., and finally 7:30 p.m.  I will be out there again tomorrow morning after the onslaught of the plows.  I am tired of snow.

Yesterday, I had grass and bare sidewalk in front of my house.  There were puddles of mud.  I could smell the world thawing.  Today, I am once again a resident of Narnia, pre-return of that lion who is a symbol for Jesus Christ.  I am tired of snow.

Once upon a time, a swimsuit salesman named Ascott lived in Snowvonia, a kingdom of eternal snow.  Ascott always stocked the latest swimsuits from the best designers.  Versace.  Gucci.  Christian Dior.  Prada.  Armani.  Every citizen of Snownovia knew that Ascott had the best swimwear in the kingdom.  Unfortunately, he never sold a single thing.

Ascott was depressed.  He sat in his store, day after day.  Nobody ever came in to shop.  Every night, he went home, took a sleeping pill, and went to bed.  He didn't understand why his business was failing.  "Why, oh why," he lamented one day, "can't I sell a swimsuit in this stupid kingdom?"

Suddenly, the Blue Fairy appeared before him.

"Who the hell are you?" Ascott said.

The Blue Fairy said, "I'm here to turn you into a real boy."

Ascott said, "I already am a real boy!  I want to sell swimsuits."

The Blue Fairy looked around.  "You live in a kingdom named Snowvonia," she said.  "I can't work magic."

"But you're a fairy," Ascott said.  "You're supposed to grant wishes."

The Blue Fairy laughed.  "Wishes I can do," she said.  "Too bad you're not made of wood."  She took her wand and vanished.

Moral of the story:   Snow sucks.

And Saint Marty lived happily ever after.

Somebody get this guy a pair of trunks