January 16, 2025: "The Winter After Your Death," Best Part of My Day, "Apple Ode"

It was a day where nothing seemed to go the way I expected.

You see, the first thing I do every morning is make a list of tasks.  Then, I prioritize those tasks, from "Absolutely HAS to get done today" to "Get this done some time in the next six months."  From library work to teaching, everything seemed to take longer, be more complicated, than anticipated.

Sharon Olds misses her friend . . . 

The Winter After Your Death

(for Katie Sheldon Brennan)

The long bands of mellow light
across the snow
narrow slowly.
The sun closes her gold fan
and nothing is left but black and white–
the quick steam of my breath, the dead
accurate shapes of the weeds, still, as if
pressed in an album.
Deep in my body my green heart
turns, and thinks of you. Deep in the
pond, under the thick trap
door of ice, the water moves,
the carp hangs like a sun, its scarlet
heart visible in its side.

Olds' elegy for her dead friend is quite moving.  If you read my post from yesterday, you know it celebrated the birthday of my friend, Helen.  Helen passed a few years ago, but she is still all around me daily.  I opened a poetry book from my shelf today, and inside the cover was a card from Helen, written in her beautiful cursive.  ". . . And Happy Easter!!!  Rebirth, new beginnings, replenishment."

Even though today didn't go according to plan, I didn't have a bad day,  It just wasn't what I expected.  There's that word again:  expect.  Expectations, as I wrote a couple days ago, generally lead to disappointments.  However, I wasn't disappointed or upset today.  I was just . . . okay.  

Recently, the best part of my day has been occurring at lunch--it's my apple, which has been filling me with a great deal of satisfaction.  That may sound really simplistic, but who says that happiness has to be fireworks and marching bands all the time?  Sometimes, all you need is a really sweet, juicy apple.  I know my friend, Helen, would have agreed with me on this.

Saint Marty wrote a poem for today about his apple, using the following prompt from The Daily Poet.

Brainstorm ten words that come to mind when you think of snow and ten words that come to mind when you think of oil.  Write a poem that uses a word from the "snow list" in the first line and a word from the "oil list" in the second line.  Continue doing this until you have used all (or most) of the words.

Apple Ode

by: Martin Achatz

I press my lips to your cold

skin, lick until you're slippery

as an icicle in spring, tender

flesh sweet as a baby's milky

breath against a tundra of breast.

O apple, the orchard where Tin Man

stood frozen in rust, in need of

lubricant against the witch's curse,

is a blizzard of you, so tempting

to Dorothy she ignores the black

sulfur drifting through forest air

in a vinegary haze, reaches up

to pluck one ruby fruit from a dry 

stem, bite an olive-sized piece

off, let it plow her tongue's field.

Perhaps the witch, with her petroleum

robes and permafrost heart, would

change her mind about needing

those slippers if only, O dear apple,

she sampled your white honey's

sticky friction, let it flood her body 

the way her flying monkeys

flood the emerald heavens.

June 27: "Elegy," Black Perennial, "Belated Birthday Poem"

Billy Collins on melancholia . . . 

Elegy

by: Billy Collins

I have turned over

all 52 cards

on the kitchen table.

Still, I think

you must be hiding

somewhere in the deck.

If you have ben reading my posts this past week, you know that I've been struggling with some darkness for about five or six days.  Not anything new for me.  I go through these blue periods regularly.  Sometimes, I can pinpoint the reason for my sadness, and other times, it seems to descend out of nowhere.

This time, I know what sparked this bout of melancholia.  (Again, not going into details--too personal.)  However, now that it has been ongoing for so long, I think there's something a little more complex happening inside my head and heart.  A kind of gray pall hovers over me.

Today, I realized that on Tuesday, June 25, my mother would have turned 93 years old.  I can't believe she's been gone for almost three years now.  Grief is a strange thing.  I can go for weeks, sometimes months, at a time without feeling a twinge of it, and, suddenly, it returns like a black perennial in full bloom.  

So, Collins' poem hits home tonight.  I think that I've been dealing with my mother's loss, at least subconsciously, for a few days.  Looking for her, the way Collins looks for his missing loved one in that deck of cards.  

Saint Marty stopped by the cemetery today and sang "Happy Birthday" to him mom.

Belated Birthday Poem

by: Martin Achatz

Two days ago, I woke

as my mother's ghost blew

out each starry candle still

burning in the purple

meringue of morn.

February 28: Saying Goodbye, Tomas Tranströmer, "Elegy"

Saying goodbye is not easy.  Ever.  Especially if it's a permanent goodbye.

Yet, there are people who can lighten the goodbye.  Remind you of better, happier times.

Tonight, Saint Marty was blessed with such friends.

Elegy

by:  Tomas Tranströmer

I open the first door.
It is a large sunlit room.
A heavy car passes outside
and makes the china quiver.

I open door number two.
Friends!  You drank some darkness
and became visible.

Door number three.  A narrow hotel room,
View on an alley.
One lamppost shines on the asphalt.
Experience, its beautiful slag.

July 18: Great Numbness, Situational Depression, Adrienne Su, "Elegy," New Cartoon

He [Ives] went to church and prayed for guidance, begging God to bring forgiveness into his heart.  He would kneel before the creche, the crucifix, and wonder how and why all these things had happened.  At night he would dream of black threads twisting in the air and slipping into his body from afar.  Though he bowed his head and trembled at the funeral, though he spoke kindly with the priests and repeated to himself a thousand times that God was good and that the manifestations of evil that come to men are ultimately explicable in some divine way.  His wisdom greater than what any of them would ever know, Ives felt a great numbness descending over him.

Yeah, I get what Ives is going through in this passage.  In the face of incredible loss, Ives has to remind himself of God's goodness.  It is the beginning of Ives' decade-long battle with depression, that great numbness that takes over his being.  Ives holds onto his belief in God's wisdom and goodness, despite the ever-present darkness of mental illness.

I have been waging a little battle myself this summer with the great numbness.  It's easier to see God's wisdom and goodness when I'm busy, around other people.  When I'm working or worshiping or cleaning my house, the dark thoughts are held in check.  When I'm by myself, trying to read or pray or write, they come charging back like a pack of feral dogs.

My therapist would probably call this situational depression.  I'm not sure when situational depression transitions into full-blown depression.  It's not like I'm curled up on my couch under a blanket, crying uncontrollably.  Unless I become a completely nonfunctional piece of clay, I won't worry.

I actually think I'm going to try to write a poem for my sister.  Sometimes, when I'm dealing with difficult emotional situations, I find sitting down with my journal and pen cathartic.  When my brother passed away last year, writing his elegy really helped me deal with the loss.  Tonight, after I help my daughter pack for Bible camp, I may sit down on my couch and have a night of poetry.

When I was writing my brother's elegy, I struggled for days.  I couldn't come up with a way to communicate my emotions, which were all over the place.  I'm sort of in the same spot with my sister right now.  Hope mixed with sadness mixed with anger mixed with grief.  I'm not sure what kind of poem is going to come out of me.

Or maybe Saint Marty will just pick up some wine coolers, sit on my couch, watch The Lawrence Welk Show, and drink himself into a different kind of numbness.

Elegy

by:  Adrienne Su

You said the last word with your last
breath and I was not there to bury
it.  You spent your life writing
the note and intended
to go alone; you knew what
to say but poof! you were out

of breath--the night went out,
the chills passed, the last
gesture stopped.  What
took a little longer was to bury
you.  Everyone thought you intended
to stay; you were writing

me letters and though I wasn't writing
back, you said you had risen out
of despair and intended
to forget the last
ten years, in which you had buried
so many skeletons you didn't know what

you were born for.  Anyway.  What
you didn't count on was writing
the note, dying, and no one coming to bury
you.  The police didn't check out
the shed until the last
of the month; they intended

to go home by dark, then opened your untended
grave at dinnertime.  What
gets me is not that I was your last
woman, not that I was off writing
term papers when you walked yourself out
of the world, not even that they'd bury

you and not invite me, but that you buried
your body where you intended
to be found and were sniffed out
belatedly, faceless, unmanly.  What-
ever threw that wrench, I'm writing
you out of my memory as fast

as I can.  That last word's been buried
but it's in your handwriting.  You intended
to get what you got.  Now get out.

Confessions of Saint Marty

November 20: Deep in the Dung, E. B. White, Low Self Esteem

So Charlotte sang a lullaby, while crickets chirped in the grass and the barn grew dark.  This was the song she sang.

"Sleep, sleep, my love, my only,
Deep, deep, in the dung and the dark;
Be not afraid and be not lonely!
This is the hour when frogs and thrushes
Praise the world from the woods and the rushes.
Rest from care, my one and only,
Deep in the dung and the dark!"

I have always loved this passage.  The lullaby is so beautifully melancholy.  I can almost hear Charlotte singing it in a minor key, softly as dusk falls in the Zuckerman barn.  It captures the whole tone of the book.  An elegy to the power of love and friendship.

E. B. White is an incredible writer.  Not only is his prose fantastic, but his poetry is also pretty damn good, as well.  Over this past year of Charlotte's Web, I've been confronted by that fact over and over.  The book is genius in its simplicity.  Yet, there are moments like the one above, where White weaves in a complex, emotional depth.

When I read great authors like E. B. White, it makes me want to write.  Then, when I start writing, I kind of go into a tailspin of despair because I am not E. B. White or Robert Frost or William Faulkner.  It becomes an exercise in low self-esteem.

I'm going to be working on my Christmas essay again when I'm done with this post.  I am still struggling with it.  I can't seem to find the right voice.  I'm not sure what I'm looking for, but I'll know it when I find it.  It will just feel right.  I'm hoping tonight will be the night.

Wish Saint Marty luck.

A good affirmation

November 3: New Poem, "All Hallow's Snow"

I'm sorry I didn't post a new poem as promised last night.  I struggled all day with my writing.  I struggled all day today with my writing.  I finally finished the poem a few minutes ago.  Well, maybe it's not quite finished, but it's not embarrassing anymore.  Thus, I will release it now.

The origins of this poem come from the disaster on the East Coast of the United States.  Hurricane Sandy struck on October 30 and created so much devastation.  It's difficult to even look at the pictures and news footage.  I have been thinking about Sandy and the winter storm it generated in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan on Halloween.  Those two things sort of stuck with me.  The result is this poem.

Be kind to Saint Marty.  He hasn't written a poem in a few months.

All Hallow's Snow

for the victims of Hurricane Sandy
October 30, 2012

All Hallow's Eve, the snow falls
Like volcanic ash on Pompeii,
Where parents curled around children,
Cocooned them against that instant
Of God unhinged, writing in magma
A poem of dinners uneaten,
Naps unfinished, men and women
Uncoupled, frozen in need,
Bodies joined forever under
The bright trumpet of disaster.

My son and daughter, in costume, greedy
For Milky Way and candy corn, don't pay
Attention to the snow this night,
Don't know we stand in a comma,
A punctuation of ocean and arctic.
Don't know that, last night, this wind drove
The Atlantic between mother and son and daughter,
Revised with wave and darkness, created
An elegy of salt and sea and ruin.
Here is what my children know:
They go to a door, hold out their bags
To strangers, receive sweetness.
I stand behind them
In the cold, listen for Vesuvius
To open its mouth,
To sing again.

The victims of Vesuvius