May 9, 2026: "What Belongs to Us," Tootsie Pop, "Driving Home from Downstate"

It is the second weekend of May.  All of my grades for the winter semester at the university have been submitted.  The poetry festival is done for another year.  I'm not ashamed to say I've been sort of taking it easy since Wednesday, not giving myself any major projects to work on or complete.  Just been chillin'.

Of course, that doesn't mean there aren't big things happening in May.  My son will be graduating from high school on May 27.  That's right.  So, I have graduation preparations (pictures, announcements) and party planning (decorations, food, invitations).  The end of this month is going to be much more hectic than the beginning.  The last hurrah of adolescence before my son is staring adulthood in the eyes.

I remember how sad I got when my daughter graduated high school six years ago.  It felt like she was slipping through my fingers like rainwater.  For 17 years, my wife and I were the center of her universe until she got that diploma in her hand and realized that the planet was round and outer space infinite.  From that moment, every day was her becoming more and more independent.  Getting jobs.  Moving out and away.  

When you think about it, we don't really own anything in this life.  Nothing belongs to us.  We're just caretaking.  Our houses, cars, lawns, communities, country, and kids.  When you're gone, someone else will live in your home, drive your car, mow and weed your lawn.  Your kids (if you have them) will build their own lives without you.  Your community and country will continue to exist (unless some maniac with nuclear codes has a bad night or needs to distract the public from a child sex abuse scandal).   

Maybe, if you're a really good person (or a really evil one), you'll live on in memories.  You'll still be making people smile or shake their heads ten or 20 years from now.

Marie Howe writes about ownership versus stewardship . . . 

What Belongs to Us

by: Marie Howe

Not the memorized phone numbers.

The carefully rehearsed short cuts home.

Not the summer, shimmering like pavement, when Lucia

pushed Billy off the rabbit house and broke his arm,

or our tiny footprints in the back files.

Not the list of kings from Charlemagne to Henry

not the boxes under our beds

or Tommy's wedding day when it was so hot and Mark played the flute

and we waved at him waving from the small round window in the loft,

the great gangs of people stepping one by one into the cold water.

I have, of course, a photograph:

you and I getting up from a couch.

Full height, I stand almost two inches taller than you

but the photograph doesn't show that,

just the two of us in motion

not looking at each other, smiling.

Not even the way we said things, leaning against the kitchen counter.

Not the cabin where I burned my arm and you said, oh, you're the type

that if it hurt, you wouldn't say.

Not even the blisters.  Look.

Howe says that even the blisters and scars on our bodies from past injuries and hurts don't belong to us.  They're temporary reminders.  That's all.  When our last breaths leave our lungs, nobody will remember we burned our arms cooking on the potbelly at camp.  That experience will be buried or burned with us once we walk through that long, lonesome valley.

My hope is for smiles and happiness.  When my son or daughter think of me 40 or 50 years from now (assuming I will not be around), I want them to remember me as a person who was kind and generous and compassionate.  And, if I've done my job as a father correctly, my kids will be kind and generous and compassionate, as well.  Because kindness and generosity and compassion aren't qualities to hoard--they're meant to be shared and given away.

I typed most of this post at a laundromat.  It was a busy day--almost all the washers and dryers spinning and cycling.  I was sitting at a community table, earbuds in, typing away on my laptop.  There was an older gentleman sitting in a nearby chair with something in his lap that he was running his fingers over.  The woman, whom I assume was his wife, was sitting at the table with me, scrolling on her phone.

At one point, the older gentleman put the item in his lap into a bag by the side of his chair, and I realized it was a book in braille.  His wife got up and emptied a load of laundry from a washer into a dryer.  When she was done, she walked over to her husband, lifted his hand, and signed a message against his palm.  That was when I realized that he was both deaf and blind.  I saw him reach into his shirt pocket and remove a grape Tootsie Pop from it.  He handed it to the woman.

 Not wanting to be rude, I retrained my attention to my laptop and continued to type.  The wife finished their laundry, brought it out to their car, and then came back in and signed into her husband's hand that it was time to go.  He stood, unfolded his cane, and followed his wife out the door.

When my laundry was done drying 36 minutes later, I carried my clothes baskets out to my Subaru, and then I went back to the community table to pack up my computer and books.  

Sitting behind my laptop was the grape Tootsie Pop.

I smiled, picked it up, and put it in my pocket.  I carried that small act of generosity and kindness home with me.

This couple reminded me that there is goodness in the world.  At a time in the United States when hatred and anger and injustice and cruelty are headlines every day, this man and woman gifted me joy and sweetness.  I can't hoard their gift.  It's not meant to be hoarded.  It's meant to be passed on in some way.  Because joy and sweetness don't belong to me, or anybody else, for that matter.

Goodness only remains good when shared.  It's the fertilizer for love and peace.  Ask Jesus.  Or Buddha.  Or Muhammad.  

Saint Marty's message for today is pretty simple:  be a Tootsie Pop giver, not an asshole. 

And a new poem . . . 

Driving Home from Downstate

by: Martin Achatz

It's a long, listless journey, little

to see except sedans, SUVs speeding

toward some town near Topinabee, 

maybe to visit a mother or maiden aunt

who now needs help to knead

dough with digits stiffened and curled

with age, with sweeping and window

cleaning, perhaps collecting dog crap

after a hard winter of endless white.

After the day is done, the drive home

waiting like a headache, perhaps the driver

will hug Mom or Aunt Hester, hold

on a little too long because life

is short and you never know

when winter will return.

January 11, 2025: "Grandmother Love Poem," Be Kind, "Streets of Gold"

It's kind of a cliché, but it's true:  you never really appreciate people until they're gone.  I pretty much spent most of my adult life working for my sister at an outpatient surgery center.  Over ten hours a day for close to 20 years.  Then she got very sick.  Then she died.

Now, as I sit in a laundromat typing this post, I think of how I would give almost anything to spend just ten more minutes with her, to tell her about her niece being accepted into medical school, her nephew starting college on Monday.  To have my sister look over her glasses at me one more time because of something stupid I said or did.  To be her little brother one more time.

Sharon Olds and her grandmother . . . 

Grandmother Love Poem

by: Sharon Olds

Late in her life, when we fell in love,
I'd take her out from the nursing home
for a chaser and two bourbons. She'd crack
a joke sharp as a tin lid
hot from the teeth of the can-opener,
and cackle her crack-corn laugh. Next to her
wit, she prided herself on her hair,
snowy and abundant. She would lift it up
at the nape of the neck, there in the bar,
and under the white, under the salt-and-
pepper, she'd show me her true color,
the color it was when she was a bride:
like her sex in the smoky light she would show me
the pure black.

If there's one lesson I've learned in life it's this:  be kind and say "I love you" a lot.  Both of those things cost nothing but mean so much.  That might sound easy.  Sentimental.  Silly even.  Maybe you heard your kindergarten teacher tell you the same thing a long time ago, or maybe it was your mom or dad.

The problem is that people forget.  Life steps in, and, suddenly, you're 57 and have lost loved one after loved one.  Kindness becomes not the rule, but the exception.  You go for days--weeks? months?--without saying "I love you" or having "I love you" said to you.  You don't know your neighbors or coworkers or the person who takes your money at the grocery store.  You've made yourself into an island, and you've stranded yourself there.

Tonight, thinking of my sister, I want everyone reading this post to know that you are loved.  Perhaps you feel like you're unworthy of that love, that you've done things in your life that are simply unforgiveable.  I've been there.  Or maybe you're in such a dark space that you can't even imagine light of any kind touching you again.  I've been there, too.  I see you. 

Be kind to yourself.  Reach out to someone--even if it's the lady sitting in the seat next to you at the laundromat, scrolling on her phone.  At the end of the day, it isn't hatred or anger that's everlasting.  It's love.  That lady on her phone might need to know that she's important.  That the world is a better place with her in it.

And, if you need to hear it right now, listen to these words:  the world IS a better place because of you.  Hold onto that, because it's true.  Don't judge.  Don't allow yourself to be judged.  Just the tiniest word of cruelty or love can move mountains.  Choose love.

Saint Marty writes about loving neighbors, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

In 1949, Los Angeles documented its first recorded snowfall.  Choose a city you are familiar with and write a poem about something you can't imagine happening there.  It can relate to weather or be an event no one would expect.  For example, you could write a poem in which all of Seattle's coffee shops go out of business and they begin selling steamed seawater.  You could write a poem in which all New Yorkers wear flip-flops, or Las Vegas decides to turn off its lights Easter Weekend and instead offers an outside prayer service, or maybe Texas decides it's had enough of the cowboy hat and insists all ranchers now wear plaid berets.  Use your imagination and see where your poem goes.

Streets of Gold

by: Martin Achatz

Churches sprout like dandelions in my hometown--

two Catholic, four Lutheran, one Methodist, one

Assembly of God, an Old Fashioned Baptist,

a Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, two non-

denominational, and an Episcopal.  In the old days,

when Moses was in the bulrushes, angels would often

knock on doors, beg for dinner and a room to spend

the night.  More often than not, extra matzah

would be thrown in the pot, another goat or chicken

slaughtered, and the angels would fill their bellies

then be escorted to the best room in the house

where fresh sheets had been smoothed on the mattress,

chocolate left on the pillow, the youngest son or daughter

offered as a companion.  Hospitality marked the homes

of the most devout, the ones who were safe from being

changed into pillars of salt or drowned in floods

or incinerated by the finger of God.  As I was walking

my dog this afternoon, I passed an old man bundled

in boots, winter jacket, scarf wrapped around his head.

I paused, wondered at the bony humps of his shoulders,

as if he was wearing football pads.  I wished the man

a good day, let him reach down, scratch my dog's

ears.  As I turned away, I felt a rush of wind 

at my back, heard the sound of 1000 flags snapping

in my ears.  My dog started singing "Ave Maria"

as we continued on.