March 17, 2026: “The Maples,” Saint Patrick’s Day Storm, “I Believe in Ghosts”

Greetings, faithful disciples!

This past weekend has been pretty wild.  In the past seven days, my little piece of the Upper Peninsula endured three winter storms.  The last was the worst—a two-day blizzard that dumped almost four feet of snow in about 36 hours.  If you do the math, that’s a little less than two inches per hour.  Couple that with almost 70 mile an hour wind gusts, six- and seven-foot-tall snowdrifts, and (in some places) thunder, and you get an idea of what life has been like for a majority of Yoopers.

According to all the old timers, Saint Patrick’s Day always ushers in a really big snow event in the U.P.  This year, Pat outdid himself.  Most meteorologists are using the adjective “historic” to describe what we’ve just been through.  We haven’t had a storm approaching this strength since 1997.  That’s about 30 years ago.  This summer, I’m sure some innovative entrepreneur will be selling tee shirts with the slogan “I Survived the Winter of ‘26” all over the place.  I know I’m going to be haunted by the memory of this little storm for quite some time.

Marie Howe is haunted by Mother Nature . . . 

The Maples

by: Marie Howe

I asked the stand of maples behind the house,

How should I live my life?

They said, shhh shhh shhh . . . 

How should I live, I asked, and the leaves seemed to ripple and gleam.

A bird called from a branch in its own tongue,

And from a branch, across the yard, another bird answered.

A squirrel scrambled up a trunk

then along the length of a branch.

Stand still, I thought,

See how long you can bear that.

Try to stand still, if only for a few moments, 

drinking light     breathing.

It’s not easy—just standing perfectly still in a moment.  Paying attention.  Breathing.  There’s this human impulse to talk, move, act.  We all have it.  Think about an uncomfortable pause in a conversation.  If you’re anything like me, you want to jump in.  Fill the void.  Silence makes us antsy.  

Tonight was the first time I’ve been out of my house (except to move snow) since Saturday evening.  My wife and I had dinner and drinks with two of our best friends.  In my last post, I wrote about the tension of waiting for the blizzard to begin; on Saturday, wherever I went, everyone I encountered seemed on edge, as if waiting for some kind of mass extinction event.  At the pub this evening, everyone was smiling, singing, laughing.  When I ordered my drink, the bartender said to me, “We all deserve this after what we’ve just been through.”

For three or so days, we’ve all been hunkered down in our homes, listening to the wind howl outside.  That’s a long time to be still for anyone.  But we had no choice.  Even the plows were getting stuck in ten-foot-high snowdrifts.  

What did I do during my hunkering down?  I watched Ken Burns’ three-part documentary on the life of Ernest Hemingway; I’ve kinda been on a Hemingway kick recently.  And I worked on some poems.  And I thought a lot about ghosts (my sisters, parents, brother, best friend).  I was so haunted by memories that I woke up in the middle of the night on Monday because I thought I heard my sister Sally call my name, and I found myself crying for no specific reason.  (I was watching a Peter, Paul, and Mary concert, and I started weeping when they sang “Puff, the Magic Dragon.”)

I think ghosts are around us all the time.  The dead find their voices through maple trees, birdcalls, blizzards, old songs.  They remind us to pay attention to everything.  Live in the moment and breathe.

That’s what I did during this extended weekend of snow and wind.  I listened to my ghosts.

Saint Marty wrote a poem for tonight . . ,

I Believe in Ghosts

by: Martin Achatz

Not the kind that appear on the battlements 

of Elsinore seeking revenge.  Or the kind

that dance to “Sir Roger de Coverly” with

the Fezziwigs, or fill 124 Bluestone Road

with baby venom.  No.  My ghosts sit

with me as I write these words, guide

my nib across a white sheet of paper

until I hear their voices in my ear, 

like mosquitoes on a July night.  All ghosts

really want is recognition.  That’s why they

hide car keys or push books off shelves

or slam doors.  My 17-year-old son

does the same thing.  He just wants

to be seen, heard.  Here he is now,

haunting the final line of this poem.

March 6, 2025: "The Killer," Digging Out, "A Selective History of Oreos"

My little piece of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan spent the day digging out from yesterday's blizzard.  The drifts were three feet deep, and the snow glowed blue with moisture.  All the area schools were shut down again today, and the library where I work opened at noon instead of 9:30 a.m.

When I was a kid, I used to love snowstorms and blizzards.   Bad winter weather meant a day off from everything—school, homework, gym class, tests, you name it.  Now, as an adult, it means shoveling, treacherous driving, more shoveling, and postponing/canceling plans.  Did I mention shoveling?  The magic of a snow day doesn’t exist once you get out of high school

Sharon Olds’ son plays with guns . . . 

The Killer

by: Sharon Olds

Whenever there's a lull in the action, my son

sights along his invisible sights and

picks things off.  He eyes a pillar

three rows over, pivots and easily

fires--a hit, you can tell by the flames and

smoke reflected in his glittering eyes.

Everything becomes a target--

cops topple, a whole populace

falls as he aims, yet I know this boy,

kind and tender.  He whirls and lets them

have it.  Tangents straighter than the arc of his

pee connect him to all he sees

like a way to touch:  as the spider travels its

silver wires, our son goes out along his

line of fire, marking each thing

with the sign of his small ecstatic life.

Yes, kids know how to make tedious situations fun.  All it takes is a thumb, a forefinger, and a target. Suddenly, you’re Luke Skywalker picking off Stormtroopers or Flash Gordon battling Ming the Merciless.  (If you’re a millennial—Flash Gordon was your grandparents’ version of the Star Wars universe.)

However, tedium is pretty normal for adults.  I spent most of today answering emails and writing reports and planning events.  However, it was National Oreo Day.  So, at the library, we sampled several different kinds of Oreos and ranked them.  That’s the great thing about my job.  We’re all very serious about the work we do, but we also know it’s important to have a little fun.  Today’s fun was the world’s best sandwich cookie.  It allowed us to be kids again for a little while.

This evening, I led a poetry workshop at the library.  It was part of the NEA Big Read that I organized.  I was skeptical that anyone was going to show up for it.  I thought everyone would be too tired from digging out from the blizzard.  Instead, ten people showed up, and we sat and wrote for an hour and a half.  Whenever I can get paid to teach poetry and write poetry, it’s a good day.  Throw Oreos into the mix, and it’s damn near perfect.

Saint Marty wrote a poem in honor of Oreo Day, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:  

In 1912, Nabisco introduced Oreo cookies, and since then, they've become the bestselling cookie of all time.  Write a poem about your favorite cookie or about the Oreo.  Have your cookie appear where you don't imagine cookies--each a cookie while waterskiing or taking a bath, eat an Oreo at a black-tie event, or have a stranger offer you a cookie on the subway.  Feel free to use the names of more than one cookie or dessert, such as macaroon, shortbread, animal crackers, etc.  To provide inspiration, snack on cookies while you write.

A Selective History of Oreos

by: Martin Achatz

1.
If there had been Oreo
bushes in Eden, we’d all
be running around naked,
not caring about snakes or apples.

5.
Paleontologists discovered
a mammoth frozen
in Siberian tundra, its last
meal, eight Double Stuf Oreos,
still in its stomach, waiting
for a glass of milk to thaw them.

11.
King Tut’s tomb contained
several packages of Golden
Oreos, a gift for all the hungry
gods, except Anubis,
who preferred Red Velvet Oreos
the color of blood.

23.
They say Michelangelo only
ate Lemon Oreos while on
his back painting the Sistine
because they tasted like
the love of God.

41.
Pope Urban II started
the Crusades not to reclaim
the Holy Land, but to capture
the sacred stash of Rocky Road
Oreos guarded by Knights Templar
with the body of Mary Magdalene.

63.
After beheading Anne Boleyn,
Henry VIII feasted on
Oreo Heads or Tails cookies.

75.
Newton didn’t discover
gravity while sitting under
an apple tree. He was eating
Apple Pie Oreos after dinner,
dropped one on the floor
where his Great Dane
Copernicus gobbled it
down at the rate of 9.81
meters per second.

92.
Einstein preferred the cream
in a Space Dunk Oreo
to the cookies at twice
the rate sunlight takes
to reach Saturn’s rings,
thus relativity was born.

112.
Pope John Paul II’s face
once appeared on the top
cookie of an Easter Egg Oreo,
and the cream inside
made several goats start
singing Ave Maria.
The next day, John Paul
was made a saint.

March 5, 2025: "Pajamas," Everyday Blessings, "Waiting for a Blizzard on Ash Wednesday"

First, I must apologize for being so sporadic with my blogging recently.  There are many reasons I could cite.  Busyness at the library with two huge programming series I've been working on for over a year.  A poetic dry spell--everything I wrote sounding like I was heavily medicated and illiterate.  And, of course, the shit show that is American politics at the moment (Agent Orange doing everything he can to cozy up to a war criminal while destroying the economy and credibility of the United States).  In short, I have a lot of excuses, none of them very legitimate.

In the last few weeks, I've simply forgotten to focus on the blessings of my life.

Sharon Olds writes about the blessing of her daughter . . . 

Pajamas

by: Sharon Olds

My daughter's pajamas lie on the floor

inside-out, thin and wrinkled as

peeled skins of peaches when you ease the

whole skin off at once.

You can see where her waist emerged, and her legs,

her arms, and head, the fine material

gathered in rumples like skin the caterpillar

ramped out of and left to shrivel.

You can see, there at the center of the bottoms,

the raised cotton seam like the line

down the center of fruit, where the skin first splits

and curls back.  You can almost see the hard

halves of her young buttocks, the precise

stem-mark of her sex.  Her shed

skin shines at my feet, and in the air there is a

sharp fragrance like peach brandy--

the birth-room pungence of her released life.

Olds has the ability to really cut to the heart of intimacy and love.  There's something incredibly brave about this poem.  She doesn't shy away from the physicality of relationships, whether she's writing about her husband, lover, children, parents, or siblings.  That physicality is sacred to her.  A blessing.

It is Ash Wednesday, but I didn't attend any church service or get my forehead smudged with an ashy cross.  The reason for that:  a blizzard.  Since about 1 a.m., it has been snowing and blowing and drifting and snowing some more.  I would estimate that we have accumulated almost two feet of new snow.

My son didn't have school.  My wife worked from home.  The library closed for the day, so I spent eight hours at home, sending out and answering emails, writing program descriptions, and shoveling.  It was a productive day, but, of course, I didn't get half of the items on my to-do list to-done.  So, I'm feeling a little like a failure.

As of this writing, it is still snowing and blowing outside.  Just got a phone message that my son isn't going to have school again tomorrow.  Here I sit, no ashy cross on my forehead (all church services got canceled today, as well), trying to avoid the impulse to doom scroll through Facebook.  

I'm incredibly grateful and blessed.  I have a job that I love and doesn't require me to risk my life.  (When I worked in the healthcare industry, blizzards just slowed things down.  It never stopped them completely.)  I can sit on my couch, my puppy sleeping next to me, and get shit done.  I have a wonderful, loving spouse, and a son that's pretty cool.  Blessings upon blessing upon blessing, just like Olds.

Saint Marty wrote a poem for tonight about blizzard blessings based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

In the poem "Nocturne," Susan Rich writes:  I take my place in the insomniac's village.  Write a poem about a time you were awake in the middle of the night--what you discovered about the world when everyone was sleeping, or what you learned about yourself.  If you can't remember a specific incident, make one up.  You might imagine being awake at midnight and hearing a raccoon on your porch, or pretending you are looking off your balcony in the city and you see two people kissing.  What happens in the world when most people are asleep?  Write a poem that surprises the reader with what s/he is missing.

Waiting for a Blizzard on Ash Wednesday

by: Martin Achatz

I listen at 2 a.m. this Ash Wednesday

for the promised blizzard to begin,

as if I'm in Gemelli Hospital listening

for the final gasps of a dying pope.

Everyone went to sleep hours ago--

wife snoring, puppy in her cage

huffing as if she's chasing a rabbit,

son's nose rattling with the start

of a cold.  The furnace inhales

deeply, begins coughing out heat.

I know if I step outside, look

up, I'll see the dark lungs

of the sky bulging with snowy

breaths, ready to anoint

the forehead of the world

with a chrism of white.

April 30: "Child Astronomy," Simplicity Versus Complexity, "Nursery Rhymes"

Billy Collins is star struck . . . 

Child Astronomy

by:  Billy Collins

After many hours

of peering

into a telescope

Goldilocks

discovers a dipper

that is just right.

Children do view things differently than adults, maybe because they haven't had enough time to become jaded or angry about the world and people in general.  Where I might see a lawn that needs to be raked, a kid might sees piles of colors to jump into.  When a blizzard hits, all I think about is shoveling and blocked roads and plows.  A kid thinks about snow days and wind that sounds like a herd of hungry velociraptors.

It's all about simplicity versus complexity.  The older you get, the more complex day-to-day life becomes.  When I was a kid, I worried about having enough Lucky Charms for breakfast.  Now, I worry the cholesterol in my hard-boiled egg.  You see what I mean.  

Part of the job of a poet, I think, is somehow to maintain a sense of childlike wonder.  To see with eyes of amazement.  That's what transforms a poem from the mundane into the extraordinary.  Everything new and shining.

Sometimes Saint Marty sees angels and comets in the heavens, and sometimes he sees smokestacks and air pollution.

Nursery Rhymes

by:  Martin Achatz

I wonder if Mother Goose

ever got tired of rhyming,

if her rough drafts

were all free verse, like

There was an Old Woman

who lived in a shoe.

She had so many children

because she lived in Texas

with no access to birth control.

January 13: "The Dead of Winter," Old Chestnut, Blizzard

Billy Collins remembers . . .

The Dead of Winter

by:  Billy Collins

We will all die

in one month or another.

Many of the above

left us in December

while others will stay on

to see in the new year.

Collins is taking that old chestnut (the dead of winter) quite literally in this poem.  He's talking about people who have died in the cold heart of December.  The actual cliché, however, simply refers to that time of winter that's most lacking in life or activity.  When everything is buried in dark and cold and snow and ice.  

I suppose the deadest time of winter would probably be around the Winter Solstice (December 21st), when daylight is in short supply and night (and snow) is abundant, at least in my part of the world.  My whole life, I've heard people say "I'm buried!" when a big snowstorm unleashes itself.  As a morbid kid with a death fixation, I always pictured icy graves in the dead of winter.  Bodies encased in sepulchers of snow.  Like Poe, I've always nursed a mortal fear of being buried alive.  

Well, the dead of winter arrived in my neck of the woods today.  It roared into town like a locomotive.  When I opened my front door this morning, the snow was drifted up to my chest, I could barely see my neighbor's house across the street.  And there really wasn't a street--just a plane of thick white.  Sustained winds of 30 and 40 miles per hour, with gusts approaching 50.  I wouldn't have been surprised to see a herd of wooly mammoths lumbering by.

Now, if you choose to live in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, expect blizzards.  They are inevitable.  That doesn't mean you have to like them.  But most Yoopers take pride at staring into the hungry maw of winter without blinking, myself included.  I don't enjoy icy cyclones, but I know they are the price I pay for living in a place so near the shores of an inland arctic sea.  And there is something wondrous when you witness the real fury of winter.

That is exactly what I witnessed today.  All day.  And I shoveled and shoveled and shoveled.  Then I trudged down to my sister's house (the one who recently fractured both of her wrists) and shoveled some more.  In between all that shoveling, I took ibuprofen and napped.  

I can now say, after more than 24 hours of whiteouts and snow removal (actually, it was more like snow relocation), that it is NOW the dead of winter in the Upper Peninsula.  Everything and everyone is submerged under dunes of white. 

For those of my disciples who've never experienced a real snow event, there is one particular fact that isn't widely known:  snowstorms are practically silent.  Even the wind is muted.  The scientific explanation for this phenomenon is fairly simple.  When snow accumulates, it acts as a sound absorber, much like sound tiles in a recording studio.  So, even when a blizzard is raging around you, the world is silent as the grave for the most part.

It feels like the dead of winter right now.  Nothing is moving.  No sounds.  Just deep, deep white and cold.

Saint Marty is ready to settle down for a long winter's nap.

December 25: Her Lightness, Christmas Day, "Christmas Roses"

Santiago knows he has to stay strong . . . 

Now, he thought, I must think about the drag. It has its perils and its merits. I may lose so much line that I will lose him, if he makes his effort and the drag made by the oars is in place and the boat loses all her lightness. Her lightness prolongs both our suffering but it is my safety since he has great speed that he has never yet employed. No matter what passes I must gut the dolphin so he does not spoil and eat some of him to be strong.

No matter what, the old man realizes he has to eat in order to finish the battle with the fish.  He has to be stronger than his adversary.  That's what life's all about, I guess.       

 For the past two days, my adversary was a Christmas blizzard.  It started on December 23 and pretty much raged until early Christmas morning.  According to the National Weather Service, we received about 27 inches of snow.  The worst part, however:  the winds.  Sixty to 70 miles per hour at times.  There were hip-deep drifts in my driveway yesterday afternoon.  All the Christmas Eve church services but one were cancelled.  (Catholics never cancel.  They just wrap a rosary around their fingers, get in the car, and let Jesus take the wheel.)

Despite all this, Christmas came.  On Friday, as the storm was really ramping up, my wife's side of the family gathered for an Italian smorgasbord and gift exchange.  Christmas came.  Last night, I drove through the snow-clogged streets of my little hometown and played the pipe organ in the church I grew up in.  My wife and son sang "O Holy Night" together, and one of my best friends came up to the choir loft and celebrated with us.  Christmas came.  And today, it was presents and family and games and Christmas movies.  Christmas came.  

Christmas always comes.

I know that I have been mostly absent from this blog for a good portion of the year.  I have been struggling for many months with sadness and anxiety.  At a time when writing about my thoughts and emotions in blog posts would have been therapeutic, I just couldn't do it.  Most times when I got home at night, I found myself too exhausted from just . . . functioning.

Yet, this December has been full of blessings.  My daughter turned 22 years old at the beginning of the month, and we had a wonderful, late party for her on her birthday.  She has become such a beautiful, caring, poised young woman.  Blessings.  My son has been thriving at his new school, winning awards and maintaining all A's.  I haven't seen him this happy in years.  Blessings.  I have a wife who struggles with mental illness, but she never gives up.  She gets out of bed every morning, goes to work, and loves us all fiercely.  Blessings.  I have a job I love at a library, and friends who care about me deeply.  Blessings.

I did a fundraiser this December for the U. P. Poet Laureate Foundation.  For a donation of seven dollars, I wrote personalized poems for people to give their loved ones for Christmas.  When I conceived the idea, I thought I would receive, at most, ten or 15 requests for poems, mostly from friends and family.  After all, we're talking poetry, the subject that drives fear into the hearts of most school-age kids and causes PTSD (that's Poetry Traumatic Stress Disorder) in adults.  How many people want the gift of poetry for Christmas?

The answer:  44 people.  That's right.  In the space of about 17 or so days, I wrote an entire book of poems.  And it was a blessing.  People entrusted me with their stories of love and loss and grief.  It was both an honor and a huge responsibility.  I'm not sure if I rose to the occasion every time, but I tried the best I could.  And over the last 24 hours, people received my poems as Christmas presents.  Blessings, I hope.

Despite my ongoing struggles, I was able to write those poems.  I was able to write my annual Christmas essay, as well.  I struggled with that project for close to five months.  False starts.  Blazing inspiration that quickly fizzled.  Frustrations.  The essay slowly took shape.  I recorded it on December 13 for Public Radio.  I included it in my annual Christmas letter.  It seems to have had strong impact on many people this holiday season.  Blessings.

As the above passage from The Old Man in the Sea touches on, when facing a difficult adversary (a really big fish, a blizzard, a half-year depression), you just can't give up.  And there are blessings all around you.  

This Christmas night, I give thanks for all the blessings I received this December.  They have been multitude.  We are past the solstice.  The planet is slowly tipping back to light, and I will embrace each extra second of sun in the coming days.  Because darkness never wins.

I wish all of you a blessed Christmas.

Saint Marty's Christmas essay . . . 

Christmas Roses

 Dear Santa,

This letter will not be easy to write.  Or is not easy to write.  Or wasn’t.

I guess it all depends on when you’re reading it, what path of time you’ve traveled in order to receive these words.

Maybe this letter is just a thought, flashing from one synapse in my brain to another as I sit beside my sister Rose’s hospital bed, listening to her lungs take one-two-three-four more bites of air before shutting down quietly, the way autumn shuts down when that first snowfall pixilates the world into winter.

Or maybe I’ve already written this letter, left it on my dining room table next to a plate of thumbprint cookies and mug of eggnog on December 24^th, the hard work of scratching words on a piece of paper done.  Because I can’t imagine a world where you and your sleigh aren’t called to flight by my sister’s belief.  How she would spend hours conjuring you with pen each Christmas Eve, starting with that initial incantation:  “Dear Santa.”

I am surrounded by Christmas Roses.  From eight-month-old Rose in my stubborn mother’s arms:  a baby with an extra chromosome facing a world that doesn’t believe in her.  To the Rose who can barely speak, her brain plaqued with Alzheimer’s, whose Christmas gift to me is a smile after a forkful of baked ham.

I’m shuttling back-and-forth this year, watching Christmas in time lapse, Rose growing old and young again, budding and blossoming, withering and dropping petals, then retreating to seed and promise in the universe of our mother’s belly.

No matter what theory of time travel you believe or don’t—Einstein at the speed of light stretching a second into a century, Rod Taylor saving Yvette Mimieux from the clutches of the Morlocks in The Time Machine, or Emily Webb haunting her childhood in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town—we’re all subject to the passage of minutes and hours and days and years.  Our lives all episodes in The March of Time newsreels, Westbrook Van Voorhis narrating each breath and war, each plague and Christmas ginger snap. 

I know in these Santa letters, authors usually proclaim how good they’ve been over the past 365 days and then provide catalogues of Christmas wishes, from the material to the ethereal.  New iPhones and Nintendo DS5s.  World peace.  Good health for an ailing mother.  That’s how it works.  Has worked.  Will work.  Wishes are just alternate universes for each wisher.  Ones where the wisher has traveled backward or forward to change some string of time.  Stop grandpa from smoking two packs a day.  Say “yes” to that boy in high school who asked you to the Holiday Formal.  Buy your son that God of War computer game.  Hold your dead sister’s hand one last time.

Santa, I know that, in one of these threads of time, you’re reading a note left for you by one of these Roses on Christmas Eve.  She’s been a good girl.  She always is.  Was.  Will be.  And she wants new ballpoint pens to write letters with.  Stationery.  Hubba Bubba bubblegum, as many packs as you can spare.  Another Santa reads that Rose misses our father and mother, hopes God is letting them win a few hands of gin rummy.  To a third Santa she writes that I wouldn’t let her drink another Diet Coke after dinner, and maybe he should take one present away from me.

In all of these Christmases, you exist/did exist/will continue to exist for me because all the Roses still exist—providing the plutonium for Marty McFly’s DeLorean, phone number for Bill and Ted’s next excellent adventure.  Through all the years of her life, Rose’s belief in you never failed.  Never fails.  Will never fail.  There was/is/will be cookies and milk left on the dining room table for you every Christmas Eve as sure as the moon turns Teal Lake silver on August nights and geese chase the sun across the country when frost pinches the air toward winter.

In the play Our Town, the main character, Emily Webb, dies in Act III, ending up in the town cemetery, surrounded by ghosts.  One of those ghosts is her mother-in-law, Mrs. Gibbs.  When Emily declares she’s going to travel back to a happy time in her life, Mrs. Gibbs tries to talk her out of the idea.  Emily remains determined, so Mrs. Gibbs cautions her:  “At least choose an unimportant day.  Choose the least important day in your life.  It will be important enough.”

I’ve reached that point in my letter where I’m supposed to tell you what I want for Christmas.  I want a time machine, like the one Rod Taylor rode, past to present to future to present again, with its upholstered Victorian chair, spinning sundial, flashing lights, and throttle stick capped in crystal.  So I can return like Emily to the least important day of my life.  Emily chooses her twelfth birthday.  Maybe I’ll choose my twelfth Christmas.

It had been snowing for several days, but the snow stopped that morning.  The sun came out, making the world so white it was hard to look at.  My dad, young and flinty as steel, sat in his chair, sipping his third cup of thick, black coffee.  My mother, her hair only slightly peppered with gray, was in the kitchen, pulling the ham from the oven, its back studded with cloves.  On the couch, Rose ogled the gigantic pile of presents spilling across the living room floor, trying to find ones with her name on it.  Slowly, my other siblings appeared, pulled by the smell of the ham or the voice of Willie Nelson on WJPD, twanging, “Pretty papers, pretty ribbons of blue . . .”

They all look so young and beautiful and happy.  Yet, they don’t know it.  It’s just another Christmas for them.  Another of my mother’s gingered hams.  Another December filled with snow.  Another December 25^th when Rose asks over and over, “Can we open presents now?”  Just like Emily in Our Town, I can’t look at everything hard enough.

Part of me wants to hold each one of them for a long, long time.  Tell them how this life we know goes so fast, and we never really look at each other or notice all the little things of each and every day. 

But Rose.  Somehow, she saw and knew what we all didn’t or couldn’t know.  The smell of coffee.  Our mother’s homemade bread.  The clock chiming on the dining room wall.  Old Hank Williams songs on the radio. Dad spreading mustard on his ham sandwich.  Mom humming along to Judy Garland.  The furnace ticking one, two, three times before rumbling to life.  The poinsettia from Midnight Mass sitting in the middle of the dining room table, surrounded by plates of spritz cookies and snickerdoodles.  Going to sleep at night, and waking up to the gift of another day.  The tinsel and wrap of each and every moment.  Rose knew.  Believed in a world where reindeer can fly faster than starlight. 

Perhaps that’s my real Christmas wish this year.  I don’t need an H. G. Wells time machine.  A nuclear-powered DeLorean.  An omnipotent Stage Manager with a pocket watch.  I just need a Christmas Rose to remind me how truly wonderful the world was.  Is.  Will always be.

And a cookie.  The good kind—peanut butter with a Hershey’s kiss pressed into its center.  They were always her favorite.  I’ll sit down, put that cookie in my mouth, feel Rose’s arms reach across time to wrap around my shoulders.  I’ll hear her voice in my ear, asking if she can have one more Diet Coke.  Because it’s Christmas Eve.  And Santa is coming to take her to the North Pole, where our mother and father are waiting for her to open presents.

With love,

Martin

November 26: Very Cold, First Winter Snowstorm, Wampa

Five figures wandered slowly over the blighted land.  Bits of it were dullish gray, bits of it dullish brown, the rest of it rather less interesting to look at.  It was like a dried-out marsh, now barren of all vegetation and covered with a layer of dust about an inch thick.  It was very cold.

That is Douglas Adams' description of the surface of the planet Magrathea near the end of Hitchhiker's.  If you add some snow to that, maybe the whine of snowmobiles in the distance, you would also have a perfect description of winter in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

Sitting at my kitchen table right now, in between getting home and going to bed.  I am bracing for the first major storm of winter to hit my little neck of the U.P. tonight into tomorrow.  I've heard predictions of anywhere between eight to 24 inches of snow.  Regardless of how much falls, it's going to pretty much suck for getting to work tomorrow morning.

The first storm of winter always fills me with dread.  I dislike having to brave U. P. roads and highways at 5:30 in the morning.  I'm a good winter driver, but plowing through snowdrifts that early in my Subaru is a little nerve-wracking.  I've gotten stuck on more than one occasion.  A few winters ago, I was driving in a blizzard, hit a whiteout, and ended up on the opposite side of the highway, saved by some guardrails from driving into a lake. 

Of course, being a Yooper, I'm supposed to love winter.  Cross country skiing.  Downhill skiing.  Sledding.  Snowshoeing.  Snowmobiling.  If I had more testosterone in my system, I'd probably be into all of those things.  Instead, when I have free time, I sit down and write or read or sleep.  (As you know, I don't get much free time.)  My outdoor exercise is shoveling during the winter.  A lot.  I don't own skis or snowshoes, and I haven't been on a snowmobile in about 20 years. 

My eleven-year-old son is ecstatic over the possibility of having school called off because of snow.  I used to love winter storms for the very same reason, but that love sort of died when I became an adult and had to actually move all the snow that fell.  Now, the prospect of any kind of wintry precipitation makes my body ache preemptively.  I have to be at work whether it's 90 degrees or -25 degrees, raining or sleeting or snowing, tornado or blizzard.  I've pretty much driven through all of those conditions, I think.

I broke down a few years ago and found a guy to plow for me.  I just couldn't face getting up two hours early to shovel BEFORE I had to drive into work, and then coming home and having to shovel again AFTER I'd worked for ten or 11 hours.  Thus, winter storms have also become really expensive.  Another reason why my love of snow has diminished considerably.

So, this is my annual beginning-of-winter rant.  Expect a few more posts like this as the white stuff accumulates enough to cover my kitchen windows.  From about the beginning of January until around the middle of March this past year, I felt as though I was living on the ice planet Hoth.  (For non-Star Wars fans, look it up.)  I think, at one point last February, I actually saw a Wampa trudge through my backyard.  (Again, non-Star Wars fans, do your homework.)

Tomorrow night at this time, I will more than likely be living in the middle of a Christmas snow globe.  And I will try to be happy about it.  My other option is hating my life for the next six months.  Hmmm, snow globe or self-loathing. . .

Saint Marty will sleep on it.

February 24: All Work and No Play, Mary Oliver, "White-Eyes"

The day is beginning to darken.  It's about 6 p.m., and the wind and snow have been screaming outside all day long.  This weekend's weather has piled white again my kitchen windows.  One more storm like this, and they will be completely buried.  If I were a less stable, grounded person, I would be sitting in my kitchen "office" typing "All work and no play make Marty a dull boy" over and over and over.

In the midst of blizzards, it's difficult to appreciate their fierce beauty.  It's like the world is reminding us who really is in charge.  I must remind myself tonight that this snow is a gift.  A really heavy, wet, impossible gift.

Saint Marty is not snow complaining this evening.  He's snow meditating, like Mary Oliver . . .

White-Eyes

by:  Mary Oliver

In winter
     all the singing is in
          the tops of the trees
               where the wind-bird

with its white eyes
     shoves and pushes
          among the branches.
               Like any of us

he wants to go to sleep,
     but he's restless--
          he has an idea,
               and slowly it unfolds

from under his beating wings
     as long as he stays awake.
          But his big, round music, after all,
               is too breathy to last.

So it's over.
     In the pine-crown
          he makes his nest,
               he's done all he can.

I don't know the name of this bird.
     I only imagine his glittering beak
          tucked in a white wing
               while the clouds--

which he has summoned
     from the north--
          which he has taught
               to be mild, and silent--

thicken and begin to fall
     into the world below
          like stars, or the feathers
               of some unimaginable bird

that loves us,
     that is asleep now, and silent--
          that has turned itself
               into snow.

December 2: Shivering Winter's Night, North Pole, Homemade Turkey Pot Pie

When on that shivering winter's night, the Pequod thrust her vindictive bows into the cold malicious waves, who should I see standing at her helm but Bulkington!  I looked with sympathetic awe and fearfulness upon the man, who in midwinter just landed from a four years' dangerous voyage, could so unrestingly push off again for still another tempestuous term . . . 

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.  It has been snowing since about midnight, and it's still coming down.  Mix in 35 mile per hour winds and subzero wind chills.  It's not just looking like Christmas.  It's looking like the North Pole.  I'm staring out the window right now, and I wouldn't be surprised to see Santa pull up in his sleigh.  Or Krampus to hunch by.

Of course, for a ten-year-old boy, this weather is prime.  My son just headed outside in his snow trappings to have a little fun.  Roll in the drifts.  Throw snowballs.  Shovel.  (Yes, he thinks shoveling is fun.)  He is a Yooper kid, through and through.  He's got blizzards in his blood.  In about a half hour, he'll come back inside, crusted with ice, asking for hot chocolate.  When I suggest he take a hot shower, he'll look at me as though I've told him to swallow a burning piece of coal.  He is ten and a boy.  That makes water a death sentence to him.  (Say it with me, "You cursed brat!  Look what you've done!  I'm melting!  Melting!  Oh, what a world!  What a world!  Who would have thought a good little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness?!  Oooooh, look out!  I'm going!  Ooooh!  Oooooooh!")

The light is disappearing from the sky now.  It's almost 5 p.m.  The storm has been storming for about 17 hours now.  A year ago, there was no snow on the ground, but Nature was still putting on a show.  December 2, 2017, there was a Super Moon.  No snow on the ground.  I was wearing my fall jacket still.  If this storm doesn't let up soon, my kids aren't going to have school tomorrow.  That won't hurt their feelings at all.

I remember when weather like this filled me with excitement.  It was when I didn't have to shovel and hire people to plow my property.  When I didn't have to get up at 4 a.m. and drive 20 miles to work every day, rain, shine, blizzard, or monsoon.  Days like this meant sleeping in.  Watching movies.  Reading great books.  Recording cassette mix tapes off the radio.  They were the best.

However, I've spent a good portion of this day with a shovel in my hand.  I have lost my youthful enthusiasm for snow storms and blizzards.  It happens around the time you become a property owner and have a family of your own.  I experience it vicariously now, through my kids.

Saint Marty is thankful this evening for a warm house and homemade turkey pot pie.

Last year . . .

This year . . .

December 2: William Carlos Williams, "Blizzard," Special Hot Chocolate

Blizzard 

by:  William Carlos Williams

Snow:
years of anger following
hours that float idly down--
the blizzard
drifts its weight
deeper and deeper for three days
or sixty years, eh?  Then
the sun! a clutter of
yellow and blue flakes--
Hairy looking trees stand out
in long alleys
over a wild solitude.
The man turns and there--
his solitary track stretched out
upon the world.

_________________________

A good poem for tonight, as the snow and wind continue.

Saint Marty is in the mood for some special hot chocolate tonight.

October 10: Dairy Queen, Joy Harjo, "It's Raining in Honolulu"

It has been a long day of work and student conferences again.  I want a vacation.

England or Greece or Italy sound nice.  I'd even settle for something a little closer--Big Sur or Mount Rushmore or the Grand Canyon.  Heck, I'd even take a trip to Dairy Queen for a Blizzard at the moment. 

On days/weeks like this, I really think back to the time my wife and I spent in Hawaii on our honeymoon.  I remember hiking over a mile of black igneous in Volcano National Park.  It was night, and the stars were like milky clouds of gnats in the sky.  When we reached the edge of a cliff, we looked out across a bay.  Lava was pouring into the Pacific, an orange tongue licking the salt.  And the sound of it hitting the water was deafening.  A Jurassic roar.

Saint Marty needs to go back to Hawaii.

It's Raining in Honolulu

by:  Joy Harjo

There is a small mist at the brow of the mountain,

each leaf of flower, of taro, tree and bush shivers with ecstasy.

And the rain songs of all the flowering ones who have called for the rain

can be found there, flourishing beneath the currents of singing.

Rain opens us, like flowers, or earth that has been thirsty for more than a season.

We stop all of our talking, quit thinking, or blowing sax to drink the mystery.

We listen to the breathing beneath our breathing.

This is how the rain became rain, how we became human.

The wetness saturates everything, including the perpetrators of the second
     overthrow.

We will plant songs where there were curses.

February 14: Stealing Kisses, St. Valentine's Day, New Cartoon

Leavng Macy's, they spent an hour walking uptown and lingered by the Rockefeller Center ice-skating rink, on the promenade, directly across from the bronze statue of Prometheus reclining, the great tree, a Maine pine, some fifty feet high and as wide as a house, covered with thousands of lights, towering cheerfully over the scene.  Down below, a hundred skaters, of all ages, circled the ice, some gracefully as professionals, others clumsily, their faces and twisting bodies in colored caps and suits, vivid in the surrounding floodlights.  Leaning against the railing, Annie and Ives were caught up, as were so many others, by the romance of the setting, and, ever so happy, held each other tightly, nudging one another with their chilled noses and stealing kisses, until laughing, she said, "Oh, Eddie, you make me feel like a kid again."

Ives and Annie love each other. Deeply.  In just a couple of pages, their son, Robert, will be dead, and they will be thrown into an entirely new universe.  Grief will be their guiding star for years.  Ives will wallow in sadness, and, eventually, Annie will contemplate leaving him.  But she doesn't.  Her love is too strong for Ives.  She holds on, praying and hoping that her husband will make her feel like a kid again.

It is St. Valentine's Day.  A blizzard has been tearing through the Upper Peninsula of Michigan all day long.  The civil authorities issued a warning, telling people to stay off the roads.  I've lived here most of my life, except for a brief sojourn in Kalamazoo, and I can't remember that ever happening before.

Of course, that did not stop my wife and I from having a lunch date this afternoon.  We went to a local restaurant and ordered cheese soup and cheesy pretzels and hot chocolate spiked with peppermint schnapps.  And we talked.  We hardly ever get a chance to sit across from each other and just talk.  I'm not sure it made us feel like kids again, but it felt really good.

We've been through a lot together.  This year will be our twentieth anniversary.  It hasn't all been roses and chocolates, as long-time disciples of this blog know.  We've had separations and close encounters with divorce.  But, through it all, I've always held on to this:  the young girl I met over 25 years ago.  How I looked at her and immediately felt like I'd never be the same again.

Saint Marty wishes all his disciples a happy Valentine's Day.

Confessions of Saint Marty

February 27: Web Itself, Blogging Miracle, Thanks for Safety

"Oh, no," said Dr. Dorian.  "I don't understand it.  But for that matter I don't understand how a spider learned to spin a web in the first place.  When the words appeared, everyone said they were a miracle.  But nobody pointed out that the web itself is a miracle."

Yes, I'm writing about everyday miracles again.  The fact that I'm sitting here, writing this post, is a miracle this evening.


When I woke up at 4 a.m., the wind was vicious.  I could barely see the house across the street.  The cold was even worse.  It was the kind of cold that makes the air in your nose and mouth sting like paper cuts.

My route to work takes me along a highway beside a good-sized inland lake.  As I was coming down U. S. 41 by this lake this morning, I drove into a wall of snow and wind.  I was blind.  I couldn't see more than a foot in front or behind me.  I kept my car rolling forward because I knew there were vehicles behind me.  Then, I ran into something.  A snow bank.  A guardrail.  Something.  I couldn't go forward, and I didn't want to go backward.

I sat there for a moment, trying to figure out what to do.  Then I saw trucks go by me, and I realized I was on the opposite side of the highway, heading straight for the lake, in the direct path of oncoming traffic.

I panicked.  I backed up, shifted my car into drive, and plowed back across the highway, using the passing trucks' taillights as my guides.  When I made it past the lake, I pulled into a gas station and stopped, hyperventilating.  I considered turning around and going home, but I didn't want to go by the lake again.  So I drove the remaining twelve miles to work.

When I was parked in the lot of the medical center, I got out of my car and surveyed the damage from my journey.  I had a flat tire.  It wasn't completely flat, but it was well on its way.

Now, I know, on the surface, this story doesn't sound miraculous.  But, as I've reflected on it during the day, the more miraculous it seemed.  First, I was headed straight for the lake, and something stopped my car.  Two, I was directly in the path of oncoming traffic, and I wasn't creamed by a car or truck.  Three, my Ford Freestyle didn't get stuck on a snow-clogged highway; it kept moving.  Four, I was able to drive to work in blizzard with 40-below windchills with a flat tire.  And, five, I'm alive, with all of my appendages, bones, and brain matter in working order.

I'm a walking, talking, blogging miracle today.

Saint Marty gives thanks for that.

Beware of lake ahead!

April 11: Snow and Poetry

Tonight is a night for snow and poetry.

The Upper Peninsula of Michigan is bracing for a huge snowstorm overnight.  Up to 14 inches where I live in the highlands of Marquette County.  It's supposed to start falling later this evening and last until Saturday morning.  It's the same storm that has pretty much paralyzed Minnesota.  In the U.P., it will simply add five to ten minutes onto the morning commute.  However, I am tired of snow.

The other thing going on tonight is a poetry reading by a good friend of mine at the local library.  He's reading from his newly published book of poems, and I'm planning to attend.  I've even offered my students extra credit for showing up and writing a paper about it.  I'm just hoping that, by the time the reading is over, I'm not going to be driving home in a blizzard.  I've done that quite a few times.  It isn't fun.

That is what's on Saint Marty's agenda.  To quote Wallace Stevens, Saint Marty has "a mind of winter" tonight.

This is what my drive home is going to be like this evening

December 21: Tough Snore, Snow Storm, "Jesus Freaks"

Awaking in the middle of a prodigiously tough snore, and sitting up in bed to get his thoughts together, Scrooge had no occasion to be told that the bell was again upon the stroke of One…

Scrooge is always waking up in the nick of time to meet the next Christmas Spirit.  He never sleeps through the appointed hours.  He has some kind of internal alarm that goes off when something paranormal approaches.  Perhaps it’s fear.  Perhaps it’s annoyance.  Perhaps it’s an enlarged prostate.

This morning, I woke at 3:58 a.m.  I was pissed.  I hate waking up just a couple minutes before my alarm sounds.  I just lie there, in bed, waiting for that buzz that tells me it’s time to drag my butt from my warm bed into the cold, dark work day.

Today, I stepped out onto my front porch first, to check the weather situation.  The forecast was for high winds and near blizzard conditions.  The wind was there.  The snow was there.  And across the street was my sister, trying to dig her car out of the drifts.  My wife got up; we got dressed; and we went outside to get my sister’s car unstuck.  I could hear the snowplows roaring up and down nearby streets, but my street was still thick and white.  It took about ten minutes of pushing and rocking to get my sister moving.

I did not get stuck on my way to work.  In fact, I was barely late.  Then I cleaned.  I filed.  I typed up surgical schedules.  Each time I thought I was done with my work, some other task presented itself.  I left the office over an hour later than I planned.

The snow storm was pretty much over by the time I headed home.  To make a long story even longer, we are going to have a white Christmas.  A really white Christmas.

For P.O.E.T.S. Day, I have a poem for my disciples from the poet Carl Dennis.  It’s from his Pulitzer Prize winning collection Practical Gods (which you’ll hear more about tomorrow).  It’s about belief and doubt.  It’s about passion and resentment.  Mostly, it’s about the human need for companionship.

Saint Marty is going to be getting a lot of companionship this weekend.  Music rehearsals.  Worship services.  Christmas programs.  He’s going to have companionship coming out his wazoo.

Jesus Freaks

The approval they get from above is all they need,

So why should they care if they offend me

Here in the parking lot of the Super Duper, my arms full,

By stuffing a pamphlet or two in my pocket?

No point in shouting at them to keep back

When they’re looking for disapproval.  No reason

For them to obey the rules of one of the ignorant

Who supposes the perpetual dusk he lives in

Sunny noon.  Their business is with my soul,

However buried, with my unvoiced wish for the truth

Too soft for me to catch over the street noise.

Should I rest my packages on my car a minute

And try to listen if I’m sure they really believe

They’re vexing me in my own best interest?

To them I’m the loser they used to be

When they sweated daily to please themselves,

Deaf to their real wishes.  Why make it easy for me

To load the trunk of my car with grocery bags

When they offer a joy that none of my purchases,

However free of impurities, can provide?

Their calls to attention shouldn’t sound any more threatening

Than the peal of a church bell.  And if I call

On the car phone to lodge a complaint,

Jail will seem to them the perfect place to bear witness

In this dark dominion where Herod rules.

In jail, but also guests at a banquet, while I,

They’re certain, stubbornly stand outside

Shivering in the snow, too proud

To enter a hall not of my own devising

And warm myself at a fire I didn’t light

And enjoy a meal strangers have taken pains with.

Yes, the table’s crowded, but there’s room for me.

Some of the best people I know are Jesus Freaks