September 5: "Poetry," Illness, Reality Check

It has been a day of illness for me.  At first, I thought I was suffering from allergies--runny nose, cough, blocked ears.  As the day and my symptoms progressed (fever, aches, more mucous than Slimer from Ghostbusters), I surrounded myself with an Appalachian range of used Kleenexes and tissues.  My eyes are gushing, and my throat stings.

Before you ask, I did test for COVID.  Twice.  Both tests came back negative.  So, I can't even claim that distinction.  Basically, I just have a very nasty cold.  Annoyingly ordinary.  Nothing to write home or a poem about.  

Billy Collins tries to define poetry . . . 

Poetry

by: Billy Collins

Call it a field where the animals

who were forgotten by the Ark

come to graze under the evening clouds.

Or a cistern where the rain that fell

before history trickles over a concrete lip.

However you see it,

this is no place to set up

the three-legged easel of realism

or make a reader climb

over the many fences of a plot.

Let the portly novelist

with his noisy typewriter

describe the city where Francine was born,

how Albert read the paper on the train,

how curtains were blowing in the bedroom.

Let the playwright with her torn cardigan

and a dog curled on the rug

move the characters

from the wings to the stage

to face the many-eyed darkness of the house.

Poetry is no place for that.

We have enough to do

complaining about the price of tobacco,

passing the dripping ladle,

and singing songs to a bird in a cage.

We are busy doing nothing--

and all we need for that is an afternoon,

a rowboat under a blue sky,

and maybe a man fishing from a stone bridge,

or better still, nobody on that bridge at all.

I couldn't even be a poet tonight, even though Collins says that poets are "busy doing nothing."  I didn't even have the energy to do nothing.  I was supposed to lead an online poetry workshop this evening.  After debating with myself for close to an hour, I came to the conclusion that I would have looked like extra from The Walking Dead if I got on Zoom and tried to write with anyone.  

So I simply grabbed a pillow and blanket and fell asleep on the couch.  Every once in a while, I would climb to the surface of consciousness long enough to take a drink of water or blow my nose.

Eventually, I woke up and decided to type this post.  Now that I'm done, I'm ready to collapse.  Literally.  I think these last few weeks of little sleep and lots of work have caught up with me.  My body is giving me a reality check.  

Here's the reality:  Saint Marty is exhausted.

October 22: "Snakes in Winter," Rimed with White, Therapy

Mary Oliver and serpents . . . 

Snakes in Winter

by:  Mary Oliver

Deep in the woods,

under the sprawled upheavals of rocks,

dozens lie coiled together.

Touch them:  they scarcely

breathe; they stare

out of such deep forgetfulness

that their eyes are like jewels--

and asleep, through they cannot close.

And in each month the forked tongue,

sensitive as an angel's ear,

lies like a drugged muscle.

With the fires of spring they will lash forth again

on their life of ribs!--

bodies like whips!

But now under the lids of the mute

succeeding snowfalls

they sleep in their cold cauldron:  a flickering broth

six months below simmer.

The world is getting ready for its long winter's nap.  Like the snakes in Oliver's poem, the woods and lakes around me will soon fall into a state a deep forgetfulness until the fires of spring lash forth again.  The flickering broth of snow and ice is just below the horizon of sunrise.

Winter used to be my favorite season of the entire rolling year.  Until I grew up and had to shovel that

shit.  Nowadays, I'm a summer addict.  I love stepping outside my front door at 1 a.m. and hearing the peepers and crickets sending up their summer ostinato to the stars and moon.  Love not having to worry about heating bills and frozen water pipes.  

Unfortunately, eight months of the year, the Upper Peninsula is rimed with white.

This evening, I led an online poetry workshop.  Several of my best poetry friends showed up to write with me.  It's one of my favorite things to do on Sunday nights,  kicking off a new week with fellowship and laughter and poems.  It puts me in a positive frame of mind to face the inevitability of another Monday.  Tonight, especially, was good therapy for me--all of the writing prompts based on some of my favorite poems by some of my favorite poets.

Yes, I said therapy, because poetry does elicit strong emotional responses from me.  As does writing.  The thought of winter does bring on doldrums in me.  Like Oliver's snakes, I just want to find a hole, crawl into it, and wait for the world to thaw.  Picking up pen and journal, or sitting down with my laptop to tap out a blog post, is therapeutic.  Often, after I'm done writing, I feel energized, as if my soul/psyche has just risen from a long hibernation.

Winter is on the way.  I can taste it in the air like wood smoke.  Soon, my little part of the world will be an Ansel Adams winterscape--all monochrome and frozen.

But Saint Marty is warm tonight because of the simmer of friends and words and poetry.