February 1: Unlucky Mammals, Mastadons, an Artifact,

The two scouts, loving the walnut stocks of their rifles in the ditch, whispered that it was time to move out again.  Ten minutes had gone by without anybody's coming to see if they were hit or not, to finish them off.  Whoever had shot was evidently far away and all alone.

And the four crawled out of the ditch without drawing any more fire.  They crawled into a forest like the big, unlucky mammals they were.  Then they stood up and began to walk quickly.  The forest was dark and old.  The pines were planted in ranks and files.  There was no undergrowth.  Four inches of unmarked snow blanketed the ground.  The Americans had no choice but to leave trails in the snow as unambiguous as diagrams in a book on ballroom dancing--step, slide, rest--step, slide, rest.

Not a whole lot going on in that little section from Slaughterhouse.  Billy Pilgrim and his companions have been hiding in a ditch, waiting for more sniper fire.  None has come.  So they continue on their way, only this time they aren't following a road.  They slog through winter woods, leaving behind tracks that anybody could follow, friend or foe.  The pines are their only protection.

Being from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, I can easily imagine the scene.  The thick cover of snow, untouched by anything human.  And the pines, methodically planted, like a Christmas tree farm.  Rows and rows of them, dusted white, too.  Fresh snow can make even piles of garbage look beautiful. 

I must be honest tonight:  I'm not feeling inspired in any way.  Therefore, this post will not be filled with great insight into the human condition.  There will be no wisdom about art or poetry or writing.  Some days--like today--it's just a matter of stringing together a few words, leaving a trail in the snow, so to speak.  Something to say that I'm still alive, here on this first day of February in the year 2017.

That's what Billy and his companions are doing.  Big, unlucky mammals, as Vonnegut writes.  We're all mastadons, lumbering through the pines.  Maybe some other unlucky mammal will follow in my footsteps, read these few words that I'm sending out into the great void of the Internet. 

Maybe this blog post will be an artifact.  A skeleton on display in some Museum on Unnatural History. 

Tonight, Saint Marty is grateful for the sandwich he ate for lunch.  Chicken on homemade wheat bread.  The bread was sweet and brown.

December 2: Searching for Grace, Joy Harjo, "Grace"

Searching for grace is difficult.  Because grace isn't something that can be found.  Grace is something that just happens.  Unexpectedly.  And it can take any form.  A cup of water on a scorching July afternoon.  A neighbor shoveling you out from a snow storm.  A song on the radio.  Or just a moment of quiet in the middle of a busy day.

I often labor under the belief that grace is something that can be earned.  It isn't.  Grace is something that's given freely.  Call it what you want.  God's love.  The Holy Spirit.  The Muse.  It's simply a gift.

Tonight, I'm not feeling grace too much.  I'm tired, anxious, sad.  Ready to go home after a long, long day.  I have another hour to kill in my office before I can do that.  Once I'm done with this post, I'm going to work on my Christmas poem.  I'm not feeling particularly inspired.  But I have to get started on it.  Poetry is about grace and inspiration, but poetry is also about hard work.  If you read a poem that seems absolutely effortless, I can guarantee you that poem is the result of a lot of sweat, tears, and perhaps anger.

The poem below is about grace in its many forms.  It feels effortless and beautiful.

But Saint Marty knows better than that.

Grace

by:  Joy Harjo

for Darlene Wind and James Welch

I think of Wind and her wild ways the year we had nothing to lose and lost it anyway in the cursed country of the fox. We still talk about that winter, how the cold froze imaginary buffalo on the stuffed horizon of snowbanks. The haunting voices of the starved and mutilated broke fences, crashed our thermostat dreams, and we couldn’t stand it one more time.So once again we lost a winter in stubborn memory, walked through cheap apartment walls, skated through fields of ghosts into a town that never wanted us, in the epic search for grace.

Like Coyote, like Rabbit, we could not contain our terror and clowned our way through a season of false midnights. We had to swallow that town with laughter, so it would go down easy as honey. And one morning as the sun struggled to break ice, and our dreams had found us with coffee and pancakes in a truck stop along Highway 80, we found grace.

I could say grace was a woman with time on her hands, or a white buffalo escaped from memory. But in that dingy light it was a promise of balance. We once again understood the talk of animals, and spring was lean and hungry with the hope of children and corn.

I would like to say, with grace, we picked ourselves up and walked into the spring thaw. We didn’t; the next season was worse. You went home to Leech Lake to work with the tribe and I went south. And, Wind, I am still crazy. I know there is something larger than the memory of a dispossessed people. We have seen it.

Not the Grace I'm talking about...