May 25, 2025: "Looking at Them Asleep," Nephew, "Last Advice to the High School Graduate"

It is the time of year for change.  The trees are greening, and the lawn mowers are droning.  The days a stretching out, and fewer and fewer nights involve frost.  Pretty soon, the last bells of the schoolyear will be ringing, and kids will be set free for a few months to work at McDonald's, try to score beer outside party stores, and start preparing for college.  And it's time for parents to let go.

Sharon Olds writes about her kids . . . 

Looking at Them Asleep

by: Sharon Olds

When I come home late at night and go in to kiss them,
I see my girl with her arm curled around her head,
her mouth a little puffed, like one sated, but
slightly pouted like one who hasn't had enough,
her eyes so closed you would think they have rolled the
iris around to face the back of her head,
the eyeball marble-naked under that
thick satisfied desiring lid,
she lies on her back in abandon and sealed completion,
and the son in his room, oh the son he is sideways in his bed,
one knee up as if he is climbing
sharp stairs, up into the night,
and under his thin quivering eyelids you
know his eyes are wide open and
staring and glazed, the blue in them so
anxious and crystally in all this darkness, and his
mouth is open, he is breathing hard from the climb
and panting a bit, his brow is crumpled
and pale, his fine fingers curved,
his hand open, and in the center of each hand
the dry dirty boyish palm
resting like a cookie. I look at him in his
quest, the thin muscles of his arms
passionate and tense, I look at her with her
face like the face of a snake who has swallowed a deer,
content, content--and I know if I wake her she'll
smile and turn her face toward me though
half asleep and open her eyes and I
know if I wake him he'll jerk and say Don't and sit
up and stare about him in blue
unrecognition, oh my Lord how I
know these two. When love comes to me and says
What do you know, I say This girl, this boy.

Olds knows her kids, each and every hair on their heads and nail on their fingers.  That's what parents do.  They spend 17 or 18 or 19 years teaching their children how to fly, and then they open the window and watch them wing away.

My daughter will be leaving in July for medical school.  Haven't really wrapped my mind around that fast-approaching cleaving.  This weekend, my nephew graduated from high school.  I attended his ceremony on Friday, and this evening I went to his graduation party.  

It's an exciting time for young people--on the cusp of their first real tastes of adulthood.  I could see it in my nephew's eyes.  They were full of joy and excitement and hope.  That's the way it should be.  Same with my daughter.  Both of them are gazing into the future, while we parents are mourning the little boy who loved playing Angry Birds and the little girl who fell asleep to Frosty the Snowman every afternoon.  

I wish I had enough money to fund both my daughter's and nephew's educations.  I would at the drop of a hat.  (For my international disciples, I should explain that, in the United States, students have to pay to go to college.  I know, I know.  It's messed up.)  Unfortunately, poets don't make a whole lot of money, unless a Pulitzer Prize is involved, so the best I can do is offer love, support, and words.

I have no doubt my nephew and daughter are going to change the world.  They're kind and intelligent and funny.  As Olds says, I know this girl, this boy.  And I couldn't be prouder.

Saint Marty took a day off from The Daily Poet to rite this poem for his nephew . . . 

Last Advice to the
          High School Graduate

by: Martin Achatz

for Caden, May 23, 2025

I know you’re tired of all the advice:
live in the moment, choose kindness,
measure success by the number of people
who love you, follow the path that’s
overgrown and rocky. You’re weary
of all those clichés from us oldsters
who will gladly show you our scars,
name them like willful kids or
monuments on a Civil War battlefield.

Instead, I want to tell you this morning
I found a rabbit in my backyard. His black
eyes panicked, he dragged himself
over the grass, hind legs useless
as driftwood. Perhaps he was dropped
there by a hungry owl after biting
and clawing and screaming, his spine
splintered by the fist of the ground.
I wanted to help mend his broken body, 

watch him bound away into the lilac bushes.
Sometimes, though, beautiful things cannot
be fixed, and all we can do is give thanks
that we have hearts that can be broken
by suffering and tongues to sing something
sacred and tender about this fragile world
you now hold in the palm of your hand.

December 16: "Don't Hesitate," Feast, Tears

Mary Oliver on joy . . .

Don't Hesitate

by:  Mary Oliver

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don't hesitate.  Give in to it.  There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be.  We are not wise, and not very often kind.  And much can never be redeemed.  Still, life has some possibility left.  Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches and power in the world.  It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins.  Anyway, that's often the case.  Anyway, whatever it is, don't be afraid of its plenty.  Joy is not made to be a crumb.

Mary Oliver doesn't believe joy is stingy.  Her advice is to gorge on joy when it appears in your life.  Don't worry about joy disappearing or being used up.  Because joy is not a crumb; it's a feast.

Today, I feasted on joy.  My daughter graduated from college this morning.  

Yes, as I sat listening and watching the ceremony, I cried.  Yes, when her name was announced and she walked across the stage, I cried.  Yes, when she came up and hugged me after it was all over, I cried.  Yes, when I was grading papers after I got home, I thought about holding my newborn daughter, all the hope and joy housed in her tiny body.  And I cried again.

Basically, I spent the whole day near tears or in tears.  Good tears.  Happy ones, full of pride and astonishment.  I am the father of a college graduate.  Oliver is right:  you do notice joy in the instant when love begins.  From the moment my daughter came into my life, love began, and joy was close behind.  She has filled each day of my life with joy.

Tonight, our friends and family came together at a local restaurant to celebrate my daughter.  So many people filled the room--all because of love for her and joy in her accomplishment.  And I felt myself close to tears many times again.

Sitting in my office at home typing this post now, I'm not holding back the tears anymore.  Joy has been my constant companion today.  My daughter is an amazing human being, and I'm so proud to have had even the smallest part in making her who she is.  

She is one of Saint Marty's best poems.

May 31: Bull's-Eye, Dress Shopping, Classic Saint Marty, New Cartoon

Over the last couple of weeks, I've felt like God has something against me.  Bad news piled on top of catastrophe.  I finally have my house cleaned up from the collapsed ceiling.  It took seven hours of cleaning and vacuuming, two loads of laundry, and several wine coolers.  I don't know how much it's going to cost to get my house repaired.  The roof has to be fixed first, then the kitchen.  I'm not sure how much the insurance company is even going to pay.  I'm in a state of limbo.

Took my daughter dress shopping this afternoon.  Her eight-grade graduation is this Wednesday.  She picked out a  beautiful little pink dress, and we bought some shoes to go with it.  She was not thrilled with the trip.  When we got in the car, I looked at her and said, "Do me a favor.  For a couple of hours, try to get in touch with your inner girl."  She did, sort of.  She was more excited about the Rubik's Cube I bought her than her new dress.

This week isn't going to be much better.  Dance rehearsals.  Graduation.  Two days of dance recitals.  Things won't calm down until about 8 p.m. next Sunday.  Plus, I have to get an estimate on my kitchen, and I have a large payment to make on a bill.  All kinds of stresses, worries, and fears.

Today's episode of Classic Saint Marty first aired three years ago.  Surprise, surprise--it's all about fears.

May 31, 2012:  Dragging Chains, Ghosts, Nightmares

This might have lasted half a minute, or a minute, but it seemed an hour.  The bells ceased as they had begun, together.  They were succeeded by a clanking noise, deep down below; as if some person were dragging a heavy chain over the casks in the wine-merchant's cellar.  Scrooge then remembered to have heard that ghosts in haunted houses were described as dragging chains.

The cellar-door flew open with a booming sound, and then he heard the noise much louder, on the floors below; then coming up the stairs; then coming straight towards his door.

A terrifying little moment preceding the appearance of Jacob Marley's ghost at the beginning of A Christmas Carol.  Charles Dickens knew how to play upon the fears of his readers.  For me, there's nothing more frightening than this scenario:  knowing some unseen threat/creature/force is coming to get you.  Scrooge has to sit in his dusty room, listening to the approach of Marley with growing dread.  For me, it's the literary equivalent of hearing the theme from Jaws, knowing that the shark is somewhere in your vicinity.  DA-DUM.  DA-DUM.  DA-DUUUUMMMMM.

Fear comes in many shapes and sizes.  There's the faceless fear demonstrated in the above passage.  I would call that fear of the unknown, one of my particular specialties.  Then there's more tangible (still irrational) phobic fears:  rats, spiders, lightning, Nicholas Sparks novels, Justin Bieber songs.  Another kind of fear is generated by watching scary movies or reading scary books.

My daughter has been suffering from the latter these last few nights.  It seems my older sister thought it was a great idea to watch a film about demon possession with my daughter last Friday.  Since Sunday, my daughter has appeared at the foot of my bed, begging me to come sleep with her because of nightmares.  Last night was the first night of uninterrupted sleep I've had in four days.  I'm tired.

Yup, I grew up watching stuff like this

I'm not against horror movies or books.  Quite the contrary.  I grew up watching the British Hammer horror films in all their blood-drenched glory.  I was weaned on Stephen King novels, from Carrie onward.  I even read the loathsome Firestarter.  I am a fan of this brand of fear.  It's harmless and fun.  If you're a teenager or adult.  Not an eleven-year-old girl who's into ballet.

There's really no point to this little diatribe.  Fear happens.  Whether ghosts in the wine-merchant's cellar or bill collectors pounding on your front door, we all are afraid of something.  I have an entire wing of fears in my psyche, the largest room reserved for the Ghost of Change Yet to Come.  Fear can be healthy and useful (gun-wielding muggers  and rabid dogs and clowns), or fear can be limiting and detrimental (new jobs or new people or new chocolate bars).   Fear eventually drives Scrooge to become a new person:  kind and generous and good-humored.

Today, fear is driving Saint Marty to a two-liter of Diet Mountain Dew.

Confessions of Saint Marty