January 19, 2025: "Best Friends," Lost Friends, "Mary Oliver Aria"

My life has been/is abundant with good friends.  

So many people have filled my days with laughter and love and kindness.  Yes, some of these individuals have disappeared--through circumstance, time, and loss--but I still hold their memories dear, like rare stamps on old letters.  A childhood friend who died of AIDS.  A college friend who drowned in Lake Superior on a late summer night.  A poet friend who battled cancer bravely, joyfully.  

I try to honor all of them, every day.

Sharon Olds honors a lost childhood friend . . .

Best Friends

by: Sharon Olds

(for Elizabeth Ewer, 1942-51)

The day my daughter turned ten, I thought of the
lank, glittering, greenish cap of your
gold hair. The last week of
your life, when I came each day after school,
I'd study the path to your front door,
the bricks laid close as your hairs. I'd try to
read the pattern, frowning down
for a sign.
               The last day--there was not
a mark on that walk, not a stone out of place--
the nurses would not let me in.

We were nine. We had never mentioned death
or growing up. I had no more imagined
you dead
than you imagined me
a mother. But when I had a daughter
I named her for you, as if pulling you back
through a crack between the bricks.
                                                       She is ten now, Liddy.
She has outlived you, her dark hair gleaming like
the earth into which the path was pressed,
the path to you.

A polar vortex is setting up shop right now across a good portion of the United States, including my little portion of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  Over the next couple days, temperatures and wind chills are going to reach 40 degrees below zero in some places.  Schools have already begun cancelling classes, and several churches cancelled worship services this evening.

I'm not going to turn tonight's post into a maudlin reflection on loss.  As I said, my life has been abundantly blessed with friendship.  I truly don't know what I have done to deserve such a wealth of love.  Perhaps because of my Catholic upbringing, I often feel . . . undeserving.  I fuck up.  A lot.  I let people down.  A lot.  But I try my best to be a good, true, and loyal friend.

Tonight, I led a Zoom poetry workshop.  Several close poet friends showed up.  The evening's theme of "self worth."  Basically, we all wrote praise poems about ourselves.  That's a tall order for a person who doesn't even like looking at himself in the mirror.  Suffice to say, it was struggle.

So, if you are friend of mine, thank you for overlooking my many failings.  I treasure your love and support and infinite patience.  If I've upset or angered  or disappointed you in any way, please accept my apology.  It wasn't my intention to harm you in any way.  I cherish and honor your presence in my life.

Saint Marty honors one of his favorite poetic friends--Mary Oliver--with a poem based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Today is the birthday of Edgar Allan Poe.  From 1949 to 2009, the "Poe Toaster," an unknown person, visited the grave of Edgar Allan Poet near midnight, leaving three roses and a half-filled bottle of cognac on Poe's grave.  Make up a legend or strange story about a famous person or family member, and/or share a unique way to pay tribute to someone after he or she has died.

Mary Oliver Aria

by: Martin Achatz

My dog charged into the iceberg

of morning, her bark sharp

as a pickax, cracking nosebleed

air into shards.  Mary, you

would have been right there

with her, the tail of your body

wagging, waiting for the ball

of day to be thrown so you

could chase it across the field

into the trees, the soft animal

of you hungry to connect 

with this frozen world where

your imagination was always 

most alive.  I kneel at the edge 

of Blackwater Pond, lower

my head to the water, lap

long and hard, tasting its

rocks and leaves and fire,

as you often did.  I let its

winter rattle my ribs, fill

my blood with wild geese

crying for you over and over--

Mary  Mary  Mary  Mary--

until something green

and beautiful  begins 

to thaw inside me.

January 18, 2025: "The End," Anatomizing Grief, "Polar Vortex"

It's cold out, and its going to get a lot colder in the next couple days.  According to the forecast, it's not going to get much warmer than -3 degrees on Monday, -4 on Tuesday, with wind chills approaching 40 below zero at times.

That means people are going to die from exposure in the next few days.  

Sharon Olds writes about death . . . 

The End

by: Sharon Olds

We decided to have the abortion, became
killers together. The period that came
changed nothing. They were dead, that young couple
who had been for life.
As we talked of it in bed, the crash
was not a surprise. We went to the window,
looked at the crushed cars and the gleaming
curved shears of glass as if we had
done it. Cops pulled the bodies out
bloody as births from the small, smoking
aperture of the door, laid them
on the hill, covered them with blankets that soaked
through. Blood
began to pour
down my legs into my slippers. I stood
where I was until they shot the bound
form into the black hole
of the ambulance and stood the other one
up, a bandage covering its head,
stained where the eyes had been.
The next morning I had to kneel
an hour on that floor, to clean up my blood,
rubbing with wet cloths at those glittering
translucent spots, as one has to soak
a long time to deglaze the pan
when the feast is over.

Olds' poem is almost painful to read.  She's examining the psychological effects of loss, comparing abortion to a fatal car crash.  Don't apply your own moral or political beliefs to this poem.  It isn't political.  It's anatomizing grief in all its permutations.  I know people who've had abortions, and, while it was the correct decision for them, they still mourn.

(I'm not looking to jump into a debate about abortion.  I do not have a vagina, and it's none of my business.  Or your business, for that matter.  If you don't believe in abortion, then don't choose to have one.  It's that simple.)

Loss is loss.  It hurts.  It sucks.  It takes a long time to heal from.  That's pretty much the thrust of today's poem and this post.  I miss all my departed, sometimes so much it's physically painful.  Time doesn't heal all wounds.  It simply dulls the pain for a little while, like a shot of Novocaine.  

Saint Marty wrote about death tonight, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

In 1919, twenty-one people were killed and one hundred fifty injured when a large molasses tank in Boston, Massachusetts, broke open and a wave of brown stickiness rushed through the streets.  Write a poem that features an unusual death.  The death or details of the event can be fictional or true.

Polar Vortex

by: Martin Achatz

I think of what 35 below

zero will feel like tomorrow

as the priest in the pulpit

talks about Mary using

her mother voice, scolding

her son into performing a wedding

miracle, saving the party 

from going dry.  I wonder

if she did that often when he

was younger, guilted him into

making the fig tree in their backyard

bloom with fruit. or their chicken

lay double yolkers every time.

Maybe she even made him

call down rain when her feet

were too sore to walk to the well,

or make her dough rise

when she was short on yeast.

Perhaps when the heavy cold

sits on our shoulders, Mary 

will shake her head, wag

a finger at her son, point

at a homeless man, Walmart 

bags wrapped around his feet,

blood thick as slush in his still

heart.  She won't have to say

a word, and her son will taste

her disappointment, as if he left

dirty dishes in the sink or forgot

to make his bed in the morning.

January 31: Last Orders, Coldageddon, Flaming Rum Punch

So, Ford has finally convinced some of the people in the pub that the world will soon be coming to an end in a couple of minutes . . .

The man sitting next to Ford was a bit sozzled by now.  His eyes weaved their way up to Ford.

"I thought," he said, "that if the world was going to end we were meant to lied down or put a paper bag over our head or something."

"If you like, yes," said Ford.

"That's what they told us in the army," said the man, and his eyes began the long trek back toward his whiskey.

"Will that help?" asked the barman.

"No," said Ford, and gave him a friendly smile.  "Excuse me," he said.  "I've got to go."  With a wave, he left.

The pub was silent for a moment longer and then, embarrassingly enough, the man with the raucous laugh did it again.  The girl he had dragged along to the pub with him had grown to loathe him dearly over the last hour, and it would probably have been a great satisfaction to her to know that in a minute and a half or so he would suddenly evaporate into a whiff of hydrogen, ozone and carbon monoxide.  However, when the moment came she would be too busy evaporating herself to notice it.

The barman cleared his throat.  He heard himself say, "Last orders, please."

It has been a long week of Armageddon.  Actually, it was more like Coldageddon.  This morning was the coldest of the week.  Negative twenty-one degrees by my car thermometer, and that doesn't even take into account the wind chills.  With the wind chill, it was around -45 degrees.  It was enough for me to want to drive to a pub and order a round of drinks.  Warm ones.  As Clarence Odbody, the angel from It's a Wonderful Life says, "Flaming rum punch!"

I spent a good portion of my day putting the finishing touches on my annual evaluation narrative for the English Department where I teach.  It's one of those rituals required by union contract.  A hoop to jump through.  However, I can never just half-ass something.  I gathered data, highlighted student papers, updated my curriculum vitae, and did some serious self-reflection.  At 6:30 p.m., I e-mailed the finished product to the department secretary.  BOOM!  Done!

And now, I can relax a little.  Read some.  Make myself that flaming rum punch (or its Bailey's Irish Cream equivalent).  Kick back.  Start thinking about the next big project I have to complete.  I don't know what it will be, but I'm sure that it will present itself in the next day or so.  My guess is that it will be my plans for a poetry workshop that I'm running next Thursday.

In the mean time, the Polar Vortex is moving off, and the temperatures are going to be rising.  We are supposed to hit a balmy 38 degrees by Sunday.  That's about a 60-degree shift from this morning.  I'm sure it's going to feel like summer.  I think there's even a prediction of some rain.

For tonight, however, it's warm socks, a hoodie, and spiked hot chocolate for Saint Marty.

Vote for Marty Achatz for 2019/2020 Poet Laureate of the U. P.

December 13: A Bear Who Went Over the Mountain, Polar Vortex, Land of Poetry

Like the bear who went over the mountain, I went out to see what I could see.  And, I might as well warn you, like the bear, all that I could see was the other side of the mountain:  more of the same . . .

The pretty much describes winter in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  Snow sort of washes away most features of the landscape.  Hills, fields, bushes, rocks, ruts, roads--all blank sheets of paper until a car plows through or a third grader tromps through.  Each side of the mountain is the same.

You have to be pretty hardy to live in this place.  The common joke is that we get nine months of winter and three months of relatives.  There's a polar vortex spinning over a good portion of the country.  Tonight, the wind chills are supposed to be about 20 below zero.  That means that, after about 30 minutes, any exposed skin will develop frostbite.

This morning, after the plows went through, I spent about 40 minutes shoveling.  That was about 3:30 a.m.  It was pretty friggin' cold.  By the time I was done, my hands were numb, even though I was wearing gloves.  Tomorrow, the cold is supposed to be even worse.

I've been thinking about what it means to be the Poet Laureate of this region.  It's not a place that's overrun by poets and poetry lovers.  The Green Bay Packers are religion up here.  Even pastors know that, on game Sundays, sermons have to be shorter.  Opening day of whitetail deer season is pretty much a national holiday, as well.  Some schools even close down.

Yet, I think that the Upper Peninsula is a land of poetry.  Grendel could prowl the shores of Lake Superior.  Whitman could floss his teeth with our leaves of grass.  King David could dance naked on our beaches and mountains, through our pine forests.  I step outside my front door every morning and see poetry.

That's what being the Poet Laureate of the U. P. means.

Please vote for Saint Marty at the link below:

Martin Achatz for Poet Laureate of the U. P.

January 3: Snow, Daughter's Friend Who's a Boy, Classic Saint Marty

Woke this morning to a fresh coating of fluffy white precipitation.  About an inch or so.  It wasn't bad.  Easy to shovel and quite beautiful sitting in the trees, dusting the cars parked along the street, drifting in the wind like dandelion fluff.  Of course, I'm not too happy about the lake effect snow warning issued by the National Weather Service for tonight.  There's an additional three to nine inches of beauty headed my way, with blowing and drifting.

I had my daughter's friend who's a boy help my shovel this afternoon.  He took the snow scoop and went to work.  As I said, the snow was really light, so the work was easy.  It took us about a half hour to finish the job.  He's a small kid, but, when given a task, he throws himself into it.  My daughter just sat in the house, happy there was somebody else to do her share of the shoveling.  I have a feeling, when his parents pick him up this evening, my daughter is going to be a little sad.  Moodier than normal, if that's possible.

Of course, an extra day off school would improve her mood for sure.  I'm not sure that's going to happen with the current weather forecast, but there's always a possibility.  It depends on the amount of snow we receive and the strength of the winds.

According to today's episode of Classic Saint Marty, four years ago we were dealing with extreme cold.  As a matter of fact, if I remember correctly, Christmas vacation was extended about three days because of a polar vortex spinning over the Great Lakes.  Every night, my kids were glued to the TV, waiting for school to be canceled again.

They may not be quite so lucky this year...

January 3, 2012:  At McDonald's Again, Cold is Cheap, Scrooge

I'm currently at McDonald's, racing my laptop's battery to get this posted.  I have 37 minutes.  I've had a really productive hour or so here.  I just uploaded my post from this morning.  I submitted some poems for an anthology of U.P. poets that's coming out this year.  (I'm pretty much assured of getting published.  I know the guy who's putting it together, and he likes my stuff.)  And now, I'm trying to get my second post done.

Thirty-four minutes.  The view outside the window here at McDonald's highlights all the new snow we received yesterday.  The whole hill on the opposite side of the highway is pure white, covered with black pine trees.  The temperature this morning was about -6 degrees Fahrenheit.  It's warmed up to around 3 degrees now.

Sometimes, Scrooge got it right

Speaking of warmth, I'm sort of a Scrooge when it comes to heat in my house.  It's not because I don't like being warm.  It's because my heating bills are so astronomically high January through March/April.  I'm reminded of what Dickens says about darkness and Scrooge:  "Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it."  When my wife or daughter complain about the coldness of our abode, my response is always the same:  "Coldness is cheap, and Martin likes it."  When I'm feeling particularly generous, I will allow my daughter to turn the thermostat up a few degrees.  It's like Christmas morning all over again for her.  Just another way to keep Christmas alive.

Eleven minutes.  Saint Marty is done.

July 14: Nothing Too Deep

It's after 11 p.m.  The late news is on.  It's getting cold outside.  My little part of the world is going to get pretty chilly tonight.  Record low temperatures.

The meteorologists aren't calling it a polar vortex.  They're calling it something like a polar dip or trough or something like that.  Whatever its name, it is definitely going to be frigid.  It is mid-July.  It's supposed to be 90 degrees and muggy.

Instead, it looks like there's going to be frost on the dandelions tomorrow morning.

Saint Marty put his ice scraper away a couple weeks ago.  That might have been a mistake.

Frosty isn't welcome here