December 31, 2025: “Wonder as Wander,” New Year’s Eve, “House for Sale”

NOTE:  I wrote this post on New Year’s Eve. It’s a little melancholy, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to publish it. It’s a little dark for ringing in a new year. However, considering all the shit that happened in 2025, I’ve decided it’s a perfect way to ring out the old, ring in the new.

Yes, it is the last day of 2025, and I can honestly say that I’ve never been happier for a year to end.  This past year has been marked with so much turmoil and suffering.  Unspeakable acts of cruelty.  Leaders who seem to have no common decency or humanity, who harm people simply for harm’s sake.  I’m not sure the coming year will be any better.  We’re still dealing with climate change.  Politicians who don’t seem to care whether people live or die, eat or go hungry.  And a world on the brink of war in so many places.

My life in 2025 has been characterized by immense change.  My sisters sold our family home (the house in which I grew up) and moved away.  My daughter is in medical school, living downstate with her significant other, and my son is a high school senior already taking college classes.  My wife started a new job (one that she loves), and I find myself (at this moment on December 31st, about six hours away from the ball dropping in Time’s Square) filled with dread for the upcoming 365 days.

This last Sharon Olds poem I want to share with you is all about feeling lost, I think.  Of wandering and wondering about life and loss . . . 

Wonder as Wander

by: Sharon Olds

At dusk, on those evenings she does not go out,   

my mother potters around her house.   

Her daily helpers are gone, there is no one   

there, no one to tell what to do,

she wanders, sometimes she talks to herself,   

fondly scolding, sometimes she suddenly   

throws out her arms and screams—high notes   

lying here and there on the carpets   

like bodies touched by a downed wire,

she journeys, she quests, she marco-polos through   

the gilded gleamy loot-rooms, who is she.   

I feel, now, that I do not know her,

and for all my staring, I have not seen her

—like the song she sang, when we were small,   

I wonder as I wander, out under the sky,   

how Jesus, the Savior, was born for, to die,   

for poor lonely people, like you, and like I 

—on the slow evenings alone, when she delays   

and delays her supper, walking the familiar   

halls past the mirrors and night windows,   

I wonder if my mother is tasting a life   

beyond this life—not heaven, her late   

beloved is absent, her father absent,   

and her staff is absent, maybe this is earth   

alone, as she had not experienced it,   

as if she is one of the poor lonely people,   

as if she is born to die. I hold fast

to the thought of her, wandering in her house,   

a luna moth in a chambered cage.

Fifty years ago, I’d squat in her

garden, with her Red Queens, and try

to sense the flyways of the fairies as they kept

the pollen flowing on its local paths,

and our breaths on their course of puffs—they kept   

our eyes wide with seeing what we

could see, and not seeing what we could not see.

Olds’ mother seems lost in the poem—wandering through the rooms of her home, lost, almost bereft. She’s haunted by people and places and things that have simply slipped through her fingers like rainwater.  These lines are not happy in any way.  (Or, rather, I don’t find them happy.)

New Year’s Eve really is a time to wonder and wander under the sky.  We’re all poor lonely people in need, as the Christmas carol goes, for salvation of some kind.  That’s what the holidays are all about—being redeemed, finding hope in the face of darkness.  It is so, so easy to succumb to despair in our current times.  As I sit typing this post, I find myself on that slippery slope between joy (above) and grief (below).

Tonight, my wife, son, and I will have steak dinners at Texas Roadhouse (prime rib for me).  Then, we’ll play some online games with my daughter and her significant other.  And we’ll eat more foods that are completely and totally unhealthy.  Cheetos.  Chocolate.  Crackers and easy cheese.  Scoop Fritos.  And, around 11:30 p.m., we’ll turn on the TV to watch the festivities in New York City and share in the countdown.

Now is the time when a lot of people are making resolutions and promises for the coming year.  I gave up on resolutions a long, long time ago.  They never pan out.  So, you’re not going to read in this post how I’m going to hit the gym more or read at least two books a month or finish my next poetry manuscript.  I may do those things, but I’m so tired of the whole new-year-new-me mentality.

The world is broken.  People are suffering.  Toadies and sycophants and wannabe oligarchs are calling the shots in the United States.  When this happened in France a few centuries ago, those French “leaders” ended up losing their heads.  Literally.  I’m not saying we need to start publicly guillotining elected officials.  What I’m saying is that SOMETHING has to change.  In a big way.

I miss simpler times.  Easier times.  When my family was all alive and together and cared for each other.  When our leaders respected the U.S. Constitution, and the President of the United States knew he was simply a tenant of the White House for four or eight years.  When bigots and racists were afraid to crawl out from under their rocks.  When common decency and compassion were the guiding principles of being a living, breathing citizen of this planet.  

That’s my New Year’s message tonight.  I want everyone to remember that we’re all in this together.  What hurts one person, hurts everyone.  No more rambling, incoherent, hate-filled monologues.  If you call yourself a Christian, then start behaving like Jesus Christ—with love and compassion and generosity.  If you’re a poet, use your words to uplift and enlighten.  To put it simply:  don’t be an asshole in 2026.

Saint Marty does have a new poem for you tonight, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Begin by freewriting a list of memorable events of the past year:  places you traveled, people you met, books you read, etc.  Then, take the true and earnest statements about these events, and embellish and exaggerate them until they are funny.  Example:  on your trip to Florida you may have actually seen two people wielding metal detectors, but in your poem, the entire coastline will be covered with folks out there metal detecting.  Create a poem that both preserves some of the highlights of your year and leaves you (and hopefully your reader) smiling.

House for Sale

by: Martin Achatz

Plenty of potential.  Roof installed 5 years

ago, along with laminate flooring.  New furnace,

water heater.  Refrigerator, washer/dryer

included.  Mornings, house fills with scent

of brewing coffee & Old Spice.  TV randomly

plays episodes of Gunsmoke and Bonanza.

Occasional Doris Day songs heard in middle

of night in kitchen, usually “Secret Love” 

or “Que Sera, Sera,” along with rattling

pots and air simmering with spaghetti

sauce.  Attached 2-car garage.  Stand-alone

storage shed, perfect for garden implements,

lawnmower, snowblower.  Green peppers,

eggplants, zucchini grow well in backyard.

From 7:12 a.m. to 7:27 a.m. daily, living

room swells with sound of breaths, as if

someone is drowning in the rising sunlight.

August 12: "Yes! No!", Opinions and Assholes, Endless and Proper Work

Mary Oliver expresses some opinions . . . 

Yes!  No!

by:  Mary Oliver

How necessary it is to have opinions!  I think the spotted trout lilies are satisfied, standing a few inches above the earth.  I think serenity is not something you just find in the world, like a plum tree, holding up its white petals.

The violets, along the river, are opening their blue faces, like small dark lanterns.

The green mosses, being so many, are as good as brawny.

How important it is to walk along, not in haste but slowly, looking at everything and calling out.

Yes!  No!  The

swan, for all his pomp, his robes of glass and petals, wants only to be allowed to live on the nameless pond.  The catbrier is without fault.  The water thrushes, down among the sloppy rocks, are going crazy with happiness.  Imagination is better than a sharp instrument.  To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.

The first line of this poem says it all:  it is necessary to have opinions.  Oliver wants to share her beliefs about the world, and for the rest of the stanzas, that's what she does.  She calls attention to ideas she holds dear.

I have opinions.  Anybody who personally knows me knows that I'm opinionated.  Sometimes obnoxiously so.  Oliver's poem is a list of her opinions, right down to her last sentence:  "To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work."

I try to avoid expressing too many opinions in my blog posts.  One of my father's favorite sayings was, "Opinions are like assholes.  Everybody has one."  Scroll through Facebook if you want to witness the truth of this statement.  So, I'm very careful about with whom I share my opinions, lest I look like an asshole.  Tonight, however, I'm going to express a few of my opinions, but I will try to avoid topics that deal with politics or religion.

Here goes . . .

The Empire Strikes Back is the best Star Wars movie ever made.

I prefer Captain Kirk to Captain Picard.

Poetry and art and music can save your life.

Climate change is real.  Ask the polar bears.

Jesus was a person of color who hung out with hookers, lepers, and tax collectors.

My puppy is the sweetest, smartest, prettiest dog ever.

Rain is better than snow, but snow is pretty cool, too.

The best Billy Joel song is "Captain Jack."  Listen to it.

The guy standing outside Walmart holding a sign ("Haven't eaten in three days") is an angel.

So is the lady at the Taco Bell drive-thru who gives my puppy treats every Sunday morning.

Both my kids are way smarter than me.

Baja Blast Zero is the best Mountain Dew flavor ever.

The pandemic was real.  Facemasks worked.  Vaccines saved hundreds of thousands of lives.  (Again, this is science, not politics.)

Politicians are not scientists.  Neither are religious leaders.

I used to believe in Bigfoot when I was a kid.  Now I believe in wonder.  

Bigfoot and wonder are the same thing.

Tonight, when I go to bed, I will lie awake for a while and listen to my wife's breaths, counting them like starfish on a beach.

Paying attention is our endless and proper work.  So is love.

Love is love is love.

Here endeth Saint Marty's lesson for tonight.

April 26: William Stafford, "The Well Rising," I Believe

The Well Rising

by:  William Stafford

The well rising without sound,

the spring on a hillside,

the plowshare brimming through deep ground

everywhere in the field—

The sharp swallows in their swerve

flaring and hesitating

hunting for the final curve

coming closer and closer—

The swallow heart from wingbeat to wingbeat

counseling decision, decision:

thunderous examples. I place my feet

with care in such a world.

________________________

I believe in climate change.  That the levels of the oceans are rising.  That humankind is the culprit.

I believe that fossil fuels are not good energy sources.  That the people of the world need to figure out how to live using less (or no) gasoline and oil and coal.

I believe that sulfide mining is inherently damaging.  That it destroys habitats and pollutes pure water sources.

I believe in God, and I believe in science.  I believe those two beliefs are not mutually exclusive.

And, like William Stafford, Saint Marty believes that we all need to place our feet with care in the world.

October 21: Battle of the Laboratories, Climate Change, Rumfoords of the World

"You guys go on without me," said Billy Pilgrim deliriously, as pretty little Lily came in.  She had been an a-go-go girl when Rumfoord saw her and resolved to make her his own.  She was a high school dropout.  Her I. Q. was 103.  "He scares me," she whispered to her husband about Billy Pilgrim.

"He bores the hell out of me!" Rumfoord replied boomingly.  "All he does in his sleep is quit and surrender and apologize and ask to be left alone."  Rumfoord was a retired brigadier general in the Air Force Reserve, the official Air Force Historian, a full professor, the author of twenty-six books, a multimillionaire since birth, and one of the great competitive sailors of all time.  His most popular book was about sex and strenuous athletics for men over sixty-five.  Now he quoted Theodore Roosevelt, whom he resembled a lot:

"'I could carve a better man out of a banana.'"

One of the things Rumfoord told Lily to get in Boston was a copy of President Harry S. Truman's announcement to the world that an atomic bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima.  She had a Xerox of it, and Rumfoord asked her if she had read it.

"No."  She didn't read well, which was one of the reasons she had dropped out of high school.

Rumfoord ordered her to sit down and read the Truman statement now.  He didn't know that she couldn't read much.  He knew very little about her, except that she was one more public demonstration that he was a superman.

So Lily sat down and pretended to read the Truman thing, which went like this:

Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese Army base.  That bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of T.N.T.  It had more than two thousand times the blast power of the British "Grand Slam," which is the largest bomb ever yet used in the history of warfare.

The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor.  They have been repaid many-fold.  And the end is not yet.  With this bomb we have now added a new and revolutionary increase in destruction to supplement the growing power of our armed forces.  In their present form, these bombs are now in production, and even more powerful forms are in development.

It is an atomic bomb.  It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe.  The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East.

Before 1939, it was the accepted belief of scientists that it was theoretically possible to release atomic energy.  But nobody knew any practical method of doing it.  By 1942, however, we knew that the Germans were working feverishly to find a way to add atomic energy to all the other engines of war with which they hoped to enslave the world.  But they failed.  We may be grateful to Providence that the Germans got the V-1's and V-2's late and in limited quantities and even more grateful that they did not get the atomic bomb at all.

The battle of laboratories held fateful risks for us as well as the battles of the air, land, and sea, and we have now won the battle of the laboratories as we have won the other battles.

We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city, said Harry Truman.  We shall destroy their docks, their factories, and their communications.  Let there be no mistake; we shall completely destroy Japan's power to make war.  It was to spare--

And so on.

I know that is an incredibly long passage, mostly because of Truman's announcement about the bombing of Hiroshima.  Rumfoord, a multimillionaire who has probably never seen the real wages of warfare and thinks he's smarter than everybody else (sound familiar?), obviously is trying to make a point to his young wife.  Something about the necessity for death and destruction in the world to keep it safe from enemies who threaten its peace and stability.

Don't get me wrong.  I believe that there are just causes for the use of military intervention.  Nazi Germany needed to be stopped.  As did Japan and Italy.  However, overlooking the human cost of war is a mistake.  Innocent people die.  It's inevitable.  I think that world leaders should always keep that in mind when making military decisions.

A pissing contest with nuclear weapons is not something that should monopolize international relationships.  There's too many real, human tragedies that need attention.  Millions of refugees who have been suffering for years and years.  A planet that is rapidly being killed by its inhabitants--pollution, global warming, climate change.  Gun violence.  The rise of a new generation of Nazis, despite the defeat of Adolf Hitler over 70 years ago.

I have no answers here.  I'm just tired of the Rumfoords of the world being in charge, making decisions that impact millions of people without really considering their repercussions.  In fact, that frightens me.  A lot.  It should frighten you, too.

Saint Marty is thankful this morning that nobody has launched a nuclear warhead today.

October 19: Bombings and Sky Battles, Synchronicity, Barack Obama

Just about the time poor Valencia was pronounced dead, Lily came into Billy's and Rumfoord's room with an armload of books.  Rumfoord had sent her down to Boston to get them.  He was working on a one-volume history of the United States Army Air Corps in World War Two.  The books were about bombings and sky battles that had happened before Lily was even born.

Really, this passage is all about dovetailing.  All of the details of Billy's life sort of funnel together in this moment.  Billy in the hospital bed.  His wife just dead.  His roommate a history professor writing a book about the bombings of World War II, Dresden, I'm sure, among them.  There's a certain synchronicity in what is happening.

In writing, I love this kind of happenstance, when the elements of a novel or essay or poem all coalesce and things become a little clearer.  Now, this passage doesn't necessarily tie up the loose ends of Slaughterhouse, but it certainly feels like the beginning of the end.

This kind of dovetailing rarely happens in real life.  There's too much chaos.  Too much entropy.  Things tend to fall apart in the world, not come together.  I know that sounds pessimistic, but recent events in the United States bear this observation out.  At the end of the Presidency of Barack Obama, the country seemed to be in a good place.  We were on the road to a kind of universal health care.  Job growth for eight years.  Climate change was a priority.  Tolerance and love were the norm.  And almost the entire world respected us.

Now . . . well, Donald Trump.

I'm not going to devolve into an anti-Trump rant.  What I'm saying is that things don't feel like they're coming together any more.  I'm not living in the epilogue to the Obama Presidency.  I'm living in the prologue to Mein Kampf.

Saint Marty is thankful for the synchronicity of Barack Obama.

May 26: Old Saying, Carol Ann Duffy, "History"

There's an old saying that if you don't know history, you are bound to repeat it.  Something like that.

I believe that statement is true.  It's true for people, for countries, for the whole human race.  We need to learn from our mistakes.  Wars that we've fought.  Genocides.  Slavery.  Famine.  Drought.  Poverty.  Climate change.  We need to learn from all of the things that humanity has wrought on this little chunk of rock we call home.

If we don't learn, we will kill each other.

'Nuff said from Saint Marty tonight.

History

by:  Carol Ann Duffy

She woke up old at last, alone,
bones in a bed, not a tooth
in her head, half dead, shuffled
and limped downstairs
in the rag of her nightdress,
smelling of pee.

Slurped tea, stared
at her hand- twigs, stained gloves-
wheezed and coughed, pulled on
the coat that hung from a hook
on the door, lay on the sofa,
dozed, snored.

She was History.
She'd seen them ease him down
from the Cross, his mother gasping
for breath, as though his death
was a difficult birth, the soldiers spitting,
spears in the earth;

been there
when the fisherman swore he was back
from the dead; seen the basilicas rise
in Jerusalem, Constantinople, Sicily; watched
for a hundred years as the air of Rome
turned into stone;

witnessed the wars,
the bloody crusades, knew them by date
and by name, Bannockburn, Passchendaele,
Babi Yar, Vietnam. She'd heard the last words
of the martyrs burnt at the stake, the murderers
hung by the neck,

seen up-close
how the saint whistled and spat in the flames,
how the dictator strutting and stuttering film
blew out his brains, how the children waved
their little hands from the trains. She woke again,
cold, in the dark,

in the empty house.
Bricks through the window now, thieves
in the night. When they rang on her bell
there was nobody there; fresh graffiti sprayed
on her door, shit wrapped in a newspaper posted
onto the floor.

May 7: Extravagance, Platypus, Donald Trump

Nature is, above all, profligate.  Don't believe them when they tell you how economical and thrifty nature is, whose leaves return to the soil.  Wouldn't it be cheaper to leave them on the tree in the first place?  This deciduous business alone is a radical scheme, the brainchild of a deranged manic-depressive with limitless capital.  Extravagance!  Nature will try anything once.  This is what the sign of the insects says.  No form is too gruesome, no behavior too grotesque.  If you're dealing with organic compounds, then let them combine.  If it works, if it quickens, set it clacking in the grass; there's always room for one more; you ain't so handsome yourself.  This is a spendthrift economy, though nothing is lost, all is spent.



Dillard has been observing a grasshopper clinging to her study window.  She observes it in all its alien-ish detail--with its mandibular mouth parts and spiked feet and armored abdomen.  It's no wonder that they made a movie in the 1950s about radiated, giant grasshoppers destroying the earth (Them!).  Dillard, however, sees the extravagance of nature in the grasshopper.  Nature's willingness to try anything once.  Everything gets recycled--leaves, trees, insects.  As Dillard says, "nothing is lost, all is spent."

Saturday.  The sun is out.  The world is opening up.  When I got up this morning, I could hear the birds outside in a raucous symphony.  I like to think they're talking to each other, calling out things like "There's worms over here!" or "Hey, baby, I'd like some of your tail!" or "Stay away from my branch, you little pecker!"  It was loud and constant.  A sign that the machine of nature is hard at work.

Dillard is right about the universe, I think.  God doesn't let anything go to waste.  Dinosaurs become fossils become fossil fuels become crude oil become gasoline become car exhaust become global warming become melting polar ice caps become climate change become drought and flooding become human extinction become rise of the grasshopper.  Or something like that.  Sometimes, I think God looks down on this little ball of cosmic rock, shakes His head, and thinks, "I should have stopped with the platypus."

Speaking of the rise of alien insects--now that Donald Trump is pretty much the Republican nominee for President of the United States, he has amped up his campaign of nastiness.  This morning, I heard on the news that he's attacking Hillary Clinton for Bill Clinton's marital infidelity, somehow calling into question her morals.  I don't get that.  Supposedly, he's a Christian, and yet he's criticizing a woman for forgiving her husband and preserving her marriage.  The last time I checked, Donald Trump has been married three times.  So, I guess Mr. Trump doesn't have a problem with recycling, at least when it comes to wives.

Dillard says that Nature will try anything once, just to see what happens.  I'm hoping that the American people don't follow Nature's example.  I don't think that the United States will recover that quickly from four years of President Locust.

Saint Marty is preparing for the possibility, though.  He's buying a supply of Raid.

Confessions of Saint Marty