July 4, 2025: "The Glass," Independence Day, "July 4th Apologia in the Time of Trump"

It is Independence Day in the United States.  Again, for my non-U.S. disciples, I will explain that, on July 4, we celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence in which we declared our freedom from British rule.  So, pretty much we rejected royal governance.  Translation:  no kings for this country.

This year, July 4th has a different vibe for me.  It feels as if the country that I know and love (for all its flaws, and there are many) is dying right before my eyes, every minute of every day.

Sharon Olds writes about her dying father . . . 

The Glass

by: Sharon Olds

I think of it with wonder now,
the glass of mucus that stood on the table
in front of my father all weekend. The tumor
is growing fast in his throat these days,
and as it grows it sends out pus
like the sun sending out flares, those pouring
tongues. So my father has to gargle, cough,
spit a mouth full of thick stuff
into the glass every ten minutes or so,
scraping the rim up his lower lip
to get the last bit off his skin, then he
sets the glass down, on the table, and it
sits there, like a glass of beer foam,
shiny and faintly golden, he gargles and
coughs and reaches for it again,
and gets the heavy sputum out,
full of bubbles and moving around like yeast–
he is like a god producing food from his own mouth.
He himself can eat nothing, anymore,
just a swallow of milk, sometimes,
cut with water, and even then
it cannot, always, get past the tumor,
and the next time the saliva comes up
it is ropey, he has to roll it in his throat
a minute to form it and get it up and dis-
gorge the oval globule into the 

glass of phlegm, which stood there all day and
filled slowly with the compound globes and I would
empty it, and it would fill again, 

and shimmer there on the table until 

the room seemed to turn around it

in an orderly way, a model of the solar system
turning around the sun,
my father the dark earth that used to
lie at the center of the universe, now 

turning with the rest of us
around his death, luminous glass of 

spit on the table, these last mouthfuls of his life.

Yes, death brings people together.  Doesn't matter what or who is dying.  I've been in a few rooms when members of my family were breathing their last breaths.  It's a difficult and sacred moment--full of sadness and gratitude, saying goodbye and thankyou at the same time.

Will this be the last time the United States will commemorate independence and freedom on July 4th?  I'm not sure.  Next year, will we all be forced to attend goose-stepping, book-burning parades and rallies?  I don't know.  At least to me, I don't feel quite as independent and free as I did last year on this day.  Perhaps I am witnessing the death of democracy in the United States.

Typically, I would attend at least two parades and a fireworks display on Independence Day.  Not this year.  Instead, I hosted a barbecue this evening for friends and family as a kind of send-off for my daughter and her significant other (they will be moving downstate in about a week for my daughter to attend medical school).  So, we served up standard July 4th cuisine--hotdogs and bratwurst and watermelon and pasta salad and delicious, chocolaty desserts.  We told family stories.  Played croquet.  Loved each other.

I'm trying not to get all maudlin about my daughter moving away.  It's difficult, though.  My job as a father these last 24 years has been to protect her, keep her out of harm's way as much as possible.  Now, I'm not sure what my job duties will be, and she's inheriting a country that seems less kind, less loving, less free.

So, you'll excuse me if I don't stand up with my hand over my heart this evening.  

Saint Marty wrote a poem for tonight based on the following prompt from July 2 of The Daily Poet:

Happy birthday to Nobel Prize-winning poet Wislawa Szymborska!  Szymborska, born in Western Poland and lifelong resident of Krakow, was known not only for her fiercely political poems but for revealing the profound truths in the everyday experience of living.  In her honor, today's assignment is to write a poem of apology.  Don't apologize for minor things, like forgetting to close the windows during a rainstorm; apologize to abstractions such as hope, necessity, chance, and loyalty.  For further inspiration, read Syzmborska's poem "Under a Certain Little Star," which can be found through an Internet search.

July 4th Apologia in the Time of Trump

by: Martin Achatz

I'm sorry to compassion for not having

          an extra bologna sandwich and pillow.

I'm also sorry to justice for taking

          a nap this afternoon.

Freedom, please don't hold it against me

          if I forget your name.

And, common sense, you and I both know

          that throwing salt over your shoulder

          won't change any outcome or mind.  

Laughter, I've known you a long time, but

          I've blocked your texts

          until you come up with new jokes.

Independence, I'm sorry I mowed my lawn

          so the rabbits have to visit

          my neighbor's yard when they get hungry.

My condolences, pride, for leaving my shoes

          in the middle of the living room

          floor to trip over.

But I can't say I'm sorry, patriotism, 

          for not inviting you to tonight's barbecue.

You see, I prefer to hang with

          poets who don't mind sharing

          the last hotdog on the grill

          with the migrant worker next door.

Because everyone should know

          what liberty tastes like. 

October 13: "The Great American Poem," Driving Downpour, Marquette Art Awards

It rained pretty much all day.  A hard, driving downpour.  It was the kind of rain that makes you not want to get out of bed or brush your teeth or do anything productive.  Except maybe read a good book.  Something with a dog or star-crossed lovers.

I did not not do any of that.  (Read that sentence over a few times.  It makes sense.)  I played two church services.  Took my dog for a muddy walk then gave her a bath.  Went grocery shopping.  Attended the 2024 Marquette Art Awards.  Got a little drunk.

If I were a Stephen King character, I'd probably be on about page 50 and a zombie would crash through my living room window to eat my brains about now.  But I'm not a protagonist in a horror novel.  I'm a poet who had really busy Sunday.

Billy Collins isn't a character in a novel or a novelist, either . . . 

The Great American Poem

by: Billy Collins

If this were a novel,

it would begin with a character,
a man alone on a southbound train
or a young girl on a swing by a farmhouse.

And as the pages turned, you would be told
that it was morning or the dead of night,
and I, the narrator, would describe
for you the miscellaneous clouds over the farmhouse

and what the man was wearing on the train
right down to his red tartan scarf,
and the hat he tossed onto the rack above his head,
as well as the cows sliding past his window.

Eventually—one can only read so fast—
you would learn either that the train was bearing
the man back to the place of his birth
or that he was headed into the vast unknown,

and you might just tolerate all of this
as you waited patiently for shots to ring out
in a ravine where the man was hiding
or for a tall, raven-haired woman to appear in a doorway.

But this is a poem, not a novel,
and the only characters here are you and I,
alone in an imaginary room
which will disappear after a few more lines,

leaving us no time to point guns at one another
or toss all our clothes into a roaring fireplace.
I ask you: who needs the man on the train
and who cares what his black valise contains?

We have something better than all this turbulence
lurching toward some ruinous conclusion.
I mean the sound that we will hear
as soon as I stop writing and put down this pen.

I once heard someone compare it
to the sound of crickets in a field of wheat
or, more faintly, just the wind
over that field stirring things that we will never see.

I really enjoy being around creatives.  Dancers.  Educators.  Painters.  Jewelry makers.  Poets.  That's my scene.  As a poet, I can vouch for the fact that artists don't really get acknowledged or celebrated very much.  That's why I love attending the Marquette Art Awards.  It's a time to reward great people and organizations for just being really damn cool.

This year, a poet friend received the award for Writer of the Year.  I couldn't have been more thrilled for her.  Generally, poets don't receive a whole lot of recognition, unless your last name happens to be Collins or Angelou.  The last time the Nobel Prize in Literature was given to a poet was in 2020, when Louise Glück won.  Before that, you'd have to go back to 2011 (Tomas Tranströmer), and then to 1996 (Wislawa Szymborska).  Like I said, poets are the redheaded stepchildren on the literary world.

So this evening's ceremony was a really great ending to the weekend.  Saint Marty got to hang out with some of his best friends, drink, and eat cheese and crackers.  It was like being at a Diddy party without the sex, drugs, rape, or pedophilia.