February 10, 2025: "Poem to My Husband from My Father's Daughter," My Biggest Fan, "Darwinopterus modularis"

I think I take after my mother more than my father.  

My father was a flint of a man, hard and volatile at times.  I know he loved me, but his way of expressing that love was working his ass off to support his family.  He generally didn't indulge in physical demonstrations of affection.  No kisses or hugs, at least not with his sons.

My mother was a thinker, examining situations from all angles.  She read a lot.  Laughed a lot.  Loved her kids a lot.  Mom was the one who convinced me to study computer science when I started college, so I had something to fall back on if this writing/poetry thing didn't work out.  I hardly ever saw her lose her temper, but, when she did, it was terrifying to behold--silent and furious.

Sharon Olds recognizes her father in herself . . . 

Poem to My Husband

from My Father's Daughter

by: Sharon Olds

I have always admired your courage.  As I see you

embracing me, in the mirror, I see I am

my father as a woman, I see you bravely

embrace him in me, putting your life in his

hands as mine.  You know who I am--you can

see his hair springing from my head like

oil from the ground, you can see his eyes,

reddish as liquor left in a shot-glass and

dried dark, looking out of my face,

and his firm sucking lips, and the breasts

rising frail as blisters from his chest,

tipped with apple-pink.  You are fearless, you

enter him as a woman, my sex like a

wound in his body, you flood your seed in his

life as me, you entrust your children to that

man as a mother, his hands as my hands

cupped around their tiny heads.  I have never

known a man with your courage, coming

naked into the cage with the lion, I

lay my enormous paws on your scalp I

take my great tongue and begin to 

run the rasp delicately

along your skin, humming:  as you enter

ecstasy, the hairs lifting

all over your body, I have never seen a

happier man.

Olds can see much of her father in the mirror of her husband's eyes.  Even though her relationship with her father wasn't functional in any way, she is still his daughter and carries his physicality in her body.  She can't escape him.

When I look in the mirror, I see my mother's face--her cheeks and chin cleft and smile.  I'm pretty mild-mannered, like her, and think deeply about things before making decisions, also like her.  She read all the time, with a penchant for mysteries and romances, and she could talk to anyone with ease.

While I'm not a big fan of cozy mysteries or love stories, I did inherit my love of words from her.  She read everything I wrote and came to every reading I gave until she physically couldn't.  She was my biggest fan.  

Saint Marty wrote a poem for tonight that his mother would have loved, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Spend time doing a little research today.  Possible subjects:  Egyptian pharaohs, astronomy, reptiles, geologic features of South America.  Incorporate lesser-known facts about your chosen subject into your poem.  If you are nowhere near a library and don't have Internet, write a poem on a subject you know little of nothing about, making up facts as you please.

Darwinopterus modularis

by: Martin Achatz

A crow the size of a gargoyle

perches above my office window,

a scrap of midnight at noon.

I watch as it watches the street

below, its onyx eyes hungry

for something smaller, weaker,

the way pterosaurs skimmed

seas for beds of plankton, flash

of silver fish in the briny foam, 

a ruling reptile, all membrane, 

keratinous fibers, claws like

thunderbolts.  I wonder if the crow

feels its royal blood, how

the kings and queens in its

line gazed on high from sclerotic

rings at the cretaceous kingdoms,

leafed and scaled and furred.

Did they know (does the crow?)

we would spend eons trying

to become angels and gods

like them?  When I step outside, 

will I be blessed with feather,

beak, tail, evolve into Gabriel,

six-winged seraph, chimera?

Will I soar into the heavens

to find the face of God, claw

at his vitreous humor until

it rains down, flooding the world

again for 40 days and 40 nights?

The crow opens its mouth, makes

a sound like the Second Coming.

May 13: Something Special, Mother's Day, "Heart to Heart"

Three years ago, I wrote the poem below for a Mother's Day church service.  I wrote it, read it that Sunday, and then forgot about it.  A couple weeks ago, I was hunting around for a poem to read at an Open Mic.  Since Mother's Day was approaching, I was looking for anything that had to do with motherhood.  I found this poem.

We are having a barbecue this afternoon with my mother.  Hamburgers, corn on the cob, watermelon.  I don't think she really knows that it's Mother's Day.  I gave her a card and flowers.  My brother brought her a Whitman sampler.  She knows there's something special happening today, and that she's a part of it.

Perhaps that's enough.  She is a woman who raised nine children.  She's outlived two of those children and her husband of over 60 years.  I remember the night when I read from my MFA thesis.  It was late April, and the Upper Peninsula was in the grips of a late spring snowstorm.  Even though she'd had two knee replacements and ankle fusion, she braved the wind and ice and snow.  Sat in the front row and smiled the entire time.  My success was her success.

She has always been Saint Marty's biggest fan.

Heart to Heart

by:  Martin Achatz

Luke says Mary kept every-
thing—angels roaring in
the night, shepherds crawling
through dung and hay, camels,
comets—all these things,
gospels and gospels, stored in
the four chambers of her heart.
I wonder if Einstein’s mother
had room enough in her
ventricles for quanta and
atoms, light’s slow passage
through the eye of the universe.
Or Darwin’s mother enough
space in her atria for
all the creatures of the Galapagos—
tortoises and iguanas, butter-
flies and cormorants.  Lincoln’s
mother died before she had
to squeeze Gettysburg and
emancipation under her ribs,
and I believe Shakespeare’s
mother departed this mortal
coil without Romeo or
the Globe nestled beneath
her breast.  My mother is
still packing things in
the attic of her chest.  Just
yesterday, she asked me if
I still write poems.  Yes, I told
Her.  I’m writing a poem
about you right now,
I said.  She nodded, looked away.
I imagined her opening a box
with my name on it, wrapping
this poem in newspaper, placing
it beside the lanyard I made
for her in third grade, closing
the box again, putting it
back on the shelf in her bosom.
When she gets to heaven,
my mother will meet Mary
on a street corner,
and they’ll unpack their
hearts.  This, mother will
say, is a poem my son wrote
for me for Mother’s Day.  Mary
will hold out her hand, show
my mother the first tooth
her son lost, a tiny grain
of enamel in her palm.  They
will find a diner to have
coffee together.  They will sit
in a booth, brag about how
their kids changed the world.