April 3, 2026: “The Willows,” Triduum, “Good Friday”

I only get to write this once a year—happy Good Friday!

Yes, Lent is over., and were are in the middle of the Triduum of the Christian calendar.  Yesterday was Maundy Thursday.  (Pretty much all services—aside from the Catholic ones—were canceled yesterday due to a snow and ice storm.)  I did not go to church yesterday.  Today, however, I played two Good Friday commemorations, one Catholic and one Lutheran.

I have to be honest.  Lenten and Easter music just don’t excite me.  I’ve been a church musician for close to 40 years now (started playing pipe organ when I was 17 years old), and I still dread Ash Wednesday with all its minor keys and dirges.  I know Lent is supposed to be a time of preparation and sacrifice, headed toward the loudness and light of Easter morning, but I won’t cry if I never have to play “O Sacred Head Surrounded” or “Jesus Christ is Risen Today” again.  (Let me stress:  I’m against the crappy hymns and music of Lent and Easter, NOT the seasons themselves.)  You would think that, after 21 centuries, churches might have come up with a few good pieces of liturgical Eastertide music.

Now, before I start getting comments from angry churchgoers listing favorite Lent and Easter tunes, I will say that, given the choice between the funereal ditties of Lent and the overwrought anthems of Easter, I will choose the overwrought.  I can get into a rousing chorus of “Up From the Grave He Arose” as much as the next Christian, but it’s just so . . . ostentatious is the word I’m looking for, I guess.  I prefer subtlety.  What can I say?  I’m a poet.

Marie Howe gives us a subtle poem today . . . 

The Willows

by: Marie Howe

As we are made by what moves us,

willows pull the water up into their farthest reach

which curves again down

divining where their life begins.

So, under travels up, and down and up again,

and the wind makes music of what water was.

A beautiful little poem that packs a lot of joy.  It’s a celebration of “what moves us.”  Water—the one thing we (trees, plants, birds, insects, human beings) all depend upon.  We can go for days without food.  Water, on the other hand, is necessary for survival.  

Howe’s words more to me about Lent and Easter than “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” ever has.  Because it’s about the force that sustains and uplifts us.  Even the wind sings a water hymn in the last line.  That’s what this season is about—walking across a desert and finding a cool, fresh running river at the end.  Whether you’re a Christian or not, we can all understand the relief of a glass of icy water on a hot summer day.  

You see what I’m getting at, I hope.  For me, Lent and Easter aren’t about the ashes and bells and incense and chants.  This season is about being offered a hose to slurp from after sweating in the fields all day long (metaphorically speaking).  

There’s another ice storm blowing in tonight.  I’m sure the grocery stores in the area were jammed with people trying to get their last-minute Easter shopping done prior to the freezing rain.  Think Black Friday, but everyone is fighting over hams and baskets and Cadbury Creme Eggs.  My wife and I did our final shopping last weekend.  We’re not planning on going out a whole lot tomorrow.  (I may hit the laundromat, but that’s about it.)

Saint Marty wrote a poem during one of his Good Friday services today . . . 

Good Friday

by: Martin Achatz

I sit,

listen

to this

familiar

story of betrayal, love, forgiveness, redemption,

think how my mom, with knees calcified by

arthritis,

knelt in

church every

Good Friday,

knobbed 

knuckles

folded, 

accepted 

her pain

like a kiss 

from her 

dead mother.

March 23: So Fearless and So Confident, Ice Storm

Santiago contemplates fear . . . 

The line went out and out and out but it was slowing now and he was making the fish earn each inch of it. Now he got his head up from the wood and out of the slice of fish that his cheek had crushed. Then he was on his knees and then he rose slowly to his feet. He was ceding line but more slowly all the time. He worked back to where he could feel with his foot the coils of line that he could not see. There was plenty of line still and now the fish had to pull the friction of all that new line through the water.

Yes, he thought. And now he has jumped more than a dozen times and filled the sacks along his back with air and he cannot go down deep to die where I cannot bring him up. He will start circling soon and then I must work on him. I wonder what started him so suddenly? Could it have been hunger that made him desperate, or was he frightened by something in the night? Maybe he suddenly felt fear. But he was such a calm, strong fish and he seemed so fearless and so confident. It is strange.

Santiago know fishing.  Is confident.  The fish Santiago is battling is large and strong.  Yet, at this moment, Santiago wonders what has frightened the fish into jumping out of the sea into the night air.  Not just once.  Many times.

We all face fear.  Every day.  Some of those fears are tiny, focused mainly on things like the car starting on a cold morning.  The furnace dying in the middle of a January night.  The dog peeing on the couch.  Of course, there a large fears that lurk in the background all the time, as well.  Death.  Failure.  A broken heart.  It comes with the territory of being human.

Last night, a huge ice storm blew into my little corner of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  This morning, I woke to a list of cancellations as deep as Santiago's sea.  Even the university where I teach cancelled classes.  

When I stepped outside in the morning to let my puppy pee, the whole world was sheened in ice, and the wind made the trees crack their knuckles.  It's always amazing when you go to bed in one landscape and wake up in another.  That happens often during winters in the U. P.

I didn't do anything today.  Didn't face any fears.  I worked from home, watched episodes of Cash Cab, and ate.  That's about it.  I hibernated in my house, and I enjoyed every minute of it.

Saint Marty wishes he had more days like this.  

And a Lenten poem . . . 

Spring Snow Storm

by:  Martin Achatz

The weather guy, in his ugly tie,
Predicts six to twelve inches tonight,
A spring storm out of Alaska, Canada,
Winds as strong as cattle trains.
Tomorrow, I will wake to this creature,
This force of different fronts from ocean,
Mountain, glacier, tundra. I’ve heard
It said a butterfly’s wings, trembled
On African savannah, causes hurricanes
On the Gulf Coast, another flood
In the Big Easy, wipes out Mardi Gras
For good, an oil slick of jazz
On magnolia, pelican wing, bayou.
I wonder if the collective gasp in Japan
After earthquake and tsunami caused
This early spring snow, set into motion
Winds across the Pacific, bore
That shock and grief through salt,
Through supermoon, mixed it with cries
Of caribou and polar bear, brought
It to me, to my home, snow falling
On roof and car, snow on street, lawn,
Gas station, church steeple, snow
Everywhere, heavy as a thousand souls.
Tonight, when I press my lips to my son’s
Fingers, somewhere on this planet
Rain will start to fall in a desert place,
Filling the land with green life.

February 12: Wow, Snowboy, Piling Up and Up

President Zaphod Beeblebrox does not want to build a wall or shut down the government . . .

Everyone beamed at him, or at least, nearly everyone.  He singled out Trillian from the crowd.  Trillian was a girl that Zaphod had picked up recently while visiting a planet, just for fun, incognito.  She was slim, darkish, humanoid, with long waves of black hair, a full mouth, an odd little knob of a nose and ridiculously brown eyes.  With her red head scarf knotted in that particular way and her long flowing silky brown dress, she looked vaguely Arabic.  Not that anyone there had ever heard of an Arab of course.  The Arabs had very recently ceased to exist, and even when they had existed they were five hundred thousand light-years from Damogran.  Trillian wasn't anybody in particular, or so Zaphod claimed.  She just went around with him rather a lot and told him what she thought of him.

"Hi, honey," he said to her.

She flashed him a quick tight smile and looked away.  Then she looked back for a moment and smiled more warmly--but by this time he was looking at something else.

"Hi," he said to a small knot of creatures from the press who were standing nearby wishing that he would stop saying Hi and get on with the quotes.  He grinned at them particularly because he knew that in a few moments he would be giving them one hell of a quote.

The next thing he said though was not of use to them.  One of the officials of the party had irritably decided that the President was clearly not in a mood to read the deliciously turned speech that had been written for him, and had flipped the switch on the remote-control device in his pocket.  Away in front of them a huge white dome that bulged against the sky cracked down the middle, split and slowly folded itself down into the ground.  Everyone gasped although they had known perfectly well it was going to do that because they'd built it that way.

Beneath it lay uncovered a huge starship, one hundred and fifty meters long, shaped like a sleek running shoe, perfectly white and mind-boggingly beautiful.  At the heart of it, unseen, lay a small gold box which carried within it the most brain-wrenching device ever conceived, a device that made this starship unique in the history of the Galaxy, a device after which the ship had been named--the Heart of Gold.

"Wow," said Zaphod Beeblebrox to the Heart of Gold.  There wasn't much else he could say.

He said it again because he knew it would annoy the press.  "Wow."

I find myself in the same situation I've been in many times these past couple weeks.  I'm sitting at my kitchen table, typing this blog post.  My kids are home, dismissed early from school because of a snowstorm.  I just looked out my window at the white stuff piling up, and what just went through my mind is exactly what Zaphod voices about the Heart of Gold:  "Wow."

I'm getting tired of winter storm warnings and ice storm warnings and the sound of plows chewing up the streets.  Since the ice storm last Monday, I think schools across the Upper Peninsula of Michigan have been closed more than they've been open.  And there's a good chance tomorrow morning that they will all be closed again because this storm is supposed to continue all night long.

This possibility does not upset the young people of my household.  My daughter is upstairs, playing video games with her boyfriend.  My son is outside, diving into snowbanks like he's some kind of winter superhero named Snowboy.  It doesn't matter how red his face gets, he will continue to leap tall snowdrifts in a single bound.  Of course, when he comes back inside his Fortress of Warmth, he'll insist on hot chocolate and, maybe, some dry clothes.  He'll morph back into his human alter ego--Little Brother.

In about an hour, the gentleman who does my plowing will be by.  I'll have to put on my boots and coat and go outside to move the vehicles in my driveway to get everything cleared.  Thank goodness for him.  When I got home this afternoon, I spent a good 45 minutes just shoveling out my daughter's car and pushing snow out of the way.  I wouldn't have the energy to keep up with winter this year if I didn't have the aid of a person with a pickup truck and a plow.  In fact, I'd probably just curl up in a fetal position every time snow was in the forecast.

This afternoon, as the winter storm was just getting started outside, my boss at the surgery center where I work appeared for another meeting, to outline the plans for dismantling the place.  Packing stuff up.  Throwing stuff out.  Now, I know that I cannot change this situation.  It's going to happen whether I help with the process or steadfastly refuse to participate.  There's a part of me, however, that simply wants to say, "If you want to shut this place down, you better find a whole army of people to help you."

I won't do that, of course.  I need the work and health insurance.  It's just that I remember when my sister cut the ribbon to open the surgery center over 20 years ago.  I remember how happy she was, proud of her accomplishment.  And I also remember how she fought to keep the place up and running.  I don't really relish being a part of the undoing of all her hard work.

This whole moment in my life feels like a snowstorm that just won't stop.  Everything piling up and up.

Saint Marty is tired of shoveling.

February 4: Damogran the Remote, Ice Storm, Hunker Down

The world is still about to end. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Galaxy . . .

Far away on the opposite spiral arm of the Galaxy, five hundred thousand light-years from the star Sol, Zaphod Beeblebrox, President of the Imperial Galactic Government, sped across the seas of Damogran, his ion drive delta boat winking and flashing in the Damogran sun.  

Domagran the hot; Damogran the remote; Damogran the almost totally unheard of.

Damogran, secret home of the Heart of Gold.

The boat sped on across the water.  It would be some time before it reached its destination because Damogran is such an inconveniently arranged planet.  It consists of nothing but middling to large desert islands separated by very pretty but annoyingly wide stretches of ocean.

The boat sped on.

Because of the topographical awkwardness Damogran has always remained a deserted planet.  This is why the Imperial Galactic Government chose Damogran for the Heart of Gold project, because it was so deserted and the Heart of Gold project was so secret.

The boat zipped and skipped across the sea, the sea that lay between the main islands of the only archipelago of any useful size on the whole planet.  Zaphod Beeblebrox was on his way from the tiny spaceport on Easter Island (the name was an entirely meaningless coincidence--in Galacticspeke, easter means small, flat and light-brown) to the Heart of Gold island, which by another meaningless coincidence was called France.

One of the side effects of work on the Heart of Gold was a whole string of pretty meaningless coincidences.

But it was not in any way a coincidence that today, the day of culmination of the project, the great day of unveiling, the day that the Heart of Gold was finally to be introduced to a marveling Galaxy, was also a great day of culmination for Zaphod Beeblebrox.  It was for the sake of this day that he had first decided to run for the presidency, a decision that had sent shock waves of astonishment throughout the Imperial Galaxy.  Zaphod Beeblebrox?  Not the President?  Many had seen it as clinching proof that the whole of known creation had finally gone bananas.  

Zaphod grinned and gave the boat an extra kick of speed.

Zaphod Beeblebrox, adventurer, ex-hippie, good-timer (crook? quite possibly), manic self-publicist, terribly bad at personal relationships, often thought to be completely out of touch.

President?

No one had gone bananas, not in that way at least.

Okay, if you read the above passage and immediately jumped to the conclusion that I was somehow going to draw some kind of comparison between Zaphod Beeblebrox and Donald Trump, you would be wrong.  I like Zaphod Beeblebrox.  I wouldn't sully his good fictional character by conflating him with the current President of the United States.  That wouldn't be fair to good literature anywhere.

Sure, there are passing similarities.  I still walk around sometimes thinking, "Donald Trump?  President of the United States?  President?"  I am not alone in this bewilderment.  But that is not the focus of today's post.  

This morning, in my little remote corner of the world (my Damogran, if you will--see how I made that connection?), an ice storm blew in.  And it's been blowing in all day long.  Schools are closed (the university where I teach canceled both day and evening classes), businesses are shut down, and we are being warned to stay home.  I believe one warning actually used the word "hunker," as in "hunker down and wait for the storm to pass."  

Therefore, I am at home right now.  Left work early.  Drove through freezing pellets of ice and snow.  Currently, I'm sitting at my kitchen table, hoping that the branches of the trees along the side of my property don't break off and commit some vandalism on my home.  Several limbs are hanging very low, almost touching the ground.  Up the street, a power line is slicing the street in half.  It isn't down, but it's bowed to the point of almost snapping.  We haven't lost power,  Yet.

As a lifelong resident of the Upper Peninsula, this weather doesn't shock me.  I've driven to a movie theater in worse weather (a blizzard, actually) just to see the movie Oh, God! with George Burns and John Denver.  That's what Yoopers do.  We don't let weather get in the way of living.  If we did, we'd all just go inside come December and not come back out until April or May.  

Right now, it's slushy and wet outside.  In a couple hours, the temperature is supposed to start dropping.  That means we will experience what meteorologists are terming a "flash freeze"--everything's just going to go from water to ice in the space of a couple hours.  That worries me a little.  Of course, the kids in my household are simply thinking about whether or not school will be canceled again tomorrow.  (My son is even doing a snow day dance.)  Me?  I'm hoping I don't end up with a tree on my roof.

All that being said, I'm grateful to be home tonight with my family.  Grateful for this little mini-holiday.  Christmas in February, if you will.  Minus the presents.  (I still have my Christmas trees up, so it's not that much of a stretch.  Don't judge me!)  Of course, there's still work to be done.  E-mails to write to students.  Poems to get a start on.  Campaigning to do.  But I'm home, and that makes a huge difference.

Saint Marty is thankful tonight for unexpected vacations.

Please vote for Saint Marty (Marty Achatz) for 2019/2020 Poet Laureate of the Upper Peninsula at the link below:

Voting for Poet Laureate of the U. P.

January 23: Carol Dipping Again, Ice Storm, Teaching

Well, this morning, as soon as I got moving, I decided to try Carol dipping one more time.  I thought it was an interesting exercise yesterday afternoon, and it yielded some thoughtful reflection on my part (plus a good comment).

So, this morning, my question was:  Will my teaching go well today?

The answer from A Christmas Carol was:

"Well!  Never mind so long as you are come," said Mrs. Cratchit.  "Sit ye down before the fire, my dear, and have a warm, Lord bless ye!"

Mrs. Cratchit makes this statement to her oldest daughter, Martha, on Christmas Day.  Martha, it appears, lives and works outside the Cratchit home.  Martha explains to her mother about the work that caused her to be late for Christmas dinner, and Mrs. Cratchit gives the above response.

Now, the dilemma is how to interpret this answer to my question.  Of course, the obvious interpretation is that, as long as I show up, my teaching will go well, and I should just sit down and relax a little.  I do like that attitude.  I tend to become a little too tense about teaching, worrying about lesson plans and readings, preparing and preparing again.  The best classes I've ever taught were the ones where I just stepped into the room with a vague plan about what I wanted to accomplish.  I'm on my toes, and the students are engaged.

Care to have a warm with me?

The other, more appropriate, interpretation (at the moment) is that I shouldn't worry about teaching.  Classes were cancelled at the university a few minutes ago due to an ice storm.  Therefore, I should just sit down before the fire and have a warm, as Mrs. Cratchit says.  I like that answer a little better.

My day has suddenly opened up.  No teaching.  No university office hours.  No school for my kids.  No religion or dance classes for my daughter.  I am considerably free of obligations today.  Not free of work, but of obligations.

Saint Marty is going to have a good day.