February 4: Valentine's Day, Adonis, "Song"

I haven't written a poem in a while.  I've been scribbling ideas for poems in my journal, but I've not sat down and written a poem in a few months.  That happens sometimes when life gets busy.  Since the beginning of the semester, I've had trouble just putting out a couple blog posts a day.

On Valentine's Day, I will be finding out whether I will be the next Poet Laureate of the U. P.  I'm going to tape an episode of a local news program, and the top three finalists will be present.  And then, I'm imagining, somebody will tear open an envelope, and the name of the winner will be announced.

I hold no expectations.  I know I got votes, or else I wouldn't be in the final three.  But winning is not something that I'm prepared for.  For the next ten days, I'm going to be practicing my Oscar loser face.  You know what I'm talking about--when they announce the winners at the Academy Awards, and all the losers sit in their seats, faces stretched in a weird rictus of a smile, clapping politely.

At least Saint Marty might get a new poem out of the experience.  

The last poem from the Poet of the Week, Adonis.

Song

by:  Adonis

          from “Elegy for the First Century”

 

Bells on our eyelashes

and the death throes of words,

and I among fields of speech,

a knight on a horse made of dirt.

My lungs are my poetry, my eyes a book,

and I, under the skin of words,

on the beaming banks of foam,

a poet who sang and died

leaving this singed elegy

before the faces of poets,

for birds at the edge of sky.

December 31: Trumpets of Praise, Peace in the Middle East, Acceptance and Love

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Emerson saw it.  "I dreamed that I floated at will in the great Ether, and I saw this world floating also not far off, but diminished to the size of an apple.  Then an angel took it in his hand and brought it to me and said, 'This must thou eat.'  And I ate the world."  All of it.  All of it intricate, specked, gnawed, fringed, and free.  Israel's priests offered the wave breast and the heave shoulder together, freely, in full knowledge, for thanksgiving.  They waved, they heaved, and neither gesture was whole without the other, and both meant a wide-eyed and knee-eyed thanks.  Go your way, eat the fat, and drink the sweet, said the bell.  A sixteenth-century alchemist wrote of the philosopher's stone:  "One finds it in the open country, in the village and in the town.  It is in everything which God created.  Maids throw it on the street.  Children play with it."  The giant water bug ate the world.  And like Billy Bray I go my way, and my left foot says "Glory," and my right foot says "Amen":  in and out of Shadow Creek, upstream and down, exultant, in a daze, dancing, to the twin silver trumpets of praise.

I thought it was fitting to end the year of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek with its final paragraph, which is a beautiful call to praise and thanksgiving, to embracing all of the world's great, intricate, messy blessings.  And it's a fitting paragraph for New Year's Eve, when we all, hopefully, can offer up prayers of praise and thanksgiving for the closing year.

I will be ringing in 2017 as I do every year, with my family--eating pizza, playing board games, arguing, kibitzing, loving, and then eating some more.  Since January 1st falls on a Sunday this year, I will also be playing the organ for Mass this evening.  Another opportunity for praise and thanksgiving.

Tomorrow morning will dawn, cold and white.  Newness in the midst of oldness.  Of course, I hope for great things in the coming year.  Health and happiness.  Peace in the Middle East.  Impeachment of Donald Trump.  You know, the things that all good people hope for.  Sure, I want to lose weight.  Exercise more.  Publish more.  Be named the next Poet Laureate of the U. P.  All that would be good, as well.

But, above all, I think the prayer I will send up at the stroke of midnight this evening is for acceptance and love, which I think has been in short supply in the world--and especially in the United States--in 2016.

So, may all your lives be filled with unconditional love--Jew or Muslim or Christian or atheist or refugee or Democrat or Republican or gay or straight.  Peace and amen.

Please vote for Saint Marty (Martin Achatz):

Vote for next Poet Laureate of the U. P.

December 16: The Gaps, Leftover Pizza, Breaking Through

Ezekiel excoriates false prophets as those who have "not gone up into the gaps."  The gaps are the thing.  The gaps are the spirit's one home, the altitudes and latitudes so dazzlingly spare and clean that the spirit can discover itself for the first time like a once-blind man unbound.  The gaps are the clifts in the rock where you cower to see the back parts of God; they are the fissures between mountains and cells the wind lances through, the icy narrowing fiords splitting the cliffs of mystery.  Go up into the gaps.  If you can find them; they shift and vanish too.  Stalk the gaps.  Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock--more than a maple- a universe.  This is how you spend this afternoon, and tomorrow morning, and tomorrow afternoon.  Spend the afternoon.  You can't take it with you.

That's quite the challenge that Dillard outlines.  Basically, she's telling us to go seek out God.  Find those spaces where the infinite can be glimpsed, if only for a moment and from behind.  That, for her, is a good way to spend an afternoon.  Stalking grace, just like she stalks muskrats in the summer.

I have just spent the entire day scanning medical records and assembling patient charts.  It was more than a little tedious.  Not much opportunity to go into the gaps.  The closest I got to the gaps was when I ate a couple of pieces of leftover pizza at lunch.  It was really good pizza, and I was really hungry.

I suppose the point is that you can go into the mountains, the valleys between the mountains, searching out the back parts of God, as Dillard says.  However, sometimes those gaps are smaller, closer to home.  For instance, last night at my poetry reading, I shared my latest Christmas essay.  As I approached the last line, I looked out at the audience.  One of my best friends was in the second row, and I could tell that she was crying.  That did it for me.  I had to stop reading for a moment.

I was struck by the power of words.  How stringing together nouns and verbs in a certain way can evoke such strong emotional responses.  When I am writing, I am not in control sometimes.  I slog and push through the swamp of my mind, and then, for a few brief moments, I see a path.  It's clear and absolutely right.  I think that Dillard and Ezekiel might call that path going into the gaps.

It took me a several seconds to recover last night.  I stood there, knowing the last five words that I had to speak, but I couldn't do it, didn't want to.  I wanted to hang on to that moment of breaking through.  Of grace.  Eventually, I managed to finish.

It's those kind of moments that keep me writing.  All the struggle and frustration and sleepless nights are worth those ten of fifteen seconds of grace.  Pick up a pen.  Go into the gaps.

Please vote for Saint Marty (Martin Achatz)

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