July 17: "Boyhood," Sister's Birthday, Living and Afterliving

Billy Collins plays with his model train . . . 

Boyhood

by: Billy Collins

Alone in the basement,

I would sometimes lower one eye

to the level of the narrow train track

to watch the puffing locomotive

pull the cars around a curve

then bear down on me with its dazzling eye.

What was in those moments

before I lifted my head and let the train

go rocking by under my nose?

I remember not caring much

about the fake grass or the buildings

that made up the miniature town.

The same went for the station and the master,

the crossing gates and flashing lights,

the milk car, the pencil-size logs,

the metallic men and women,

the dangling water tower,

and the round mirror for a pond.

All I wanted was to be blinded

over and over by this shaking light

as the train stuck fast to its oval course.

Or better still, to close my eyes,

to stay there on the cold narrow rails

and let the train tunnel through me

the way it tunneled through the mountain

painted the color of rock,

and then there would be nothing

but the long whistling through the dark--

no basement, no boy,

no everlasting summer afternoon.

I remember those long, long days as a kid.  Summer vacation seemed to last forever, each moment an eternity.  As you get older, time has a way of speeding up like a runaway train.  One day, you're twelve, and the next, you're planning for retirement.

Today was one of those long, quiet days that seemed to stretch and stretch, where the horizon never gets any closer.  I was supposed to take my son and niece on a Pictured Rocks boat cruise in the afternoon.  Had the tickets all purchased.  Then I received a text a little after 8 a.m. saying that all the cruises had been canceled for the day due to rain and high winds.

And it did rain and blow pretty much all day.  Thought about going geocaching, but the weather just didn't cooperate.  Instead, we watched a movie--Letters from the Big Man.  Yes, it was another Bigfoot movie, and I think my niece liked it.   Then, I picked up my wife from work.

On the way home, I stopped by the cemetery to wish my sister, Sally, a happy birthday.  She would have been 63 today.  In my mind, I imagine she would have been retired for a few years by now,  Maybe bought an RV and gone cross-country camping.  Or scheduled monthly trips to Disney World (one of her favorite places).  Or taken up oil painting.  Or just relaxed, all day, every day--something she never really allowed herself to do all that much.

She's been close by me all day long.  I woke thinking about her.  Scribbled things in my journal about her during the day.  When I dug a hand into my son's bucket of leftover Independence Day parade candy, I pulled out a banana Laffy Taffy--Sally's favorite.  Even though she's been gone for nine years, she's never really been gone for me.  

Tonight, one of my oldest friends (the best man at my wedding), stopped by for dinner and games.  He's visiting from New Zealand.  So, he brought Chinese food, and my kids and niece and wife and sister-in-law (who's been my little sister since my wife and I started dating) and Brian and I played games and laughed.  A lot.  He stayed late--left a little after midnight.

This week is a treasure trove of grace for Saint Marty, filled with love and some of his favorite people, living and afterliving.  

NOTE:  I had some internet and router issues last night, so that's why this is so late in being posted.

May 15: "Spacing," Sister's Birthday, "Tulip on my Desk"

Billy Collins stuck in traffic . . . 

Spacing

by: Billy Collins

When the traffic

in Los Angeles thickens

and comes to a stop,

the drivers in the other cars

look like they are pretending

to be from earth,

and not from some other planet

where this kind of thing never occurs.

When I am no longer a part of this life, I hope I'm not remembered as a road rager.  Or a grumpy old guy who chased kids off his lawn.  Or a misanthrope who hated human beings just out of principle.  I might as well just say it:  I hope I'm not remembered as a Republican.

Today, I celebrate a person who never had a mean bone in her body.  She loved everyone, and every one loved her.  In her time on this planet, she loved writing letters to friends and family, worked on latch hook rugs, and guzzled Diet Coke.  When you arrived or left any place, she always lifted her arms for a hug.

Her name was Rose, and she was my sister.  Today would have been her 59th birthday.

Rose taught me about a lot of things:  compassion, joy, love, understanding, patience.  On her last morning, she taught me how to die well--surrounded by family, not struggling, breathing peacefully until she simply . . . stopped.

I think of her every day and hope I can live up to the unconditional love she blessed me with.

Here is the poem I wrote for Rose's funeral:

Ascension

by:  Martin Achatz

for Rose, February 5, 2022

I wonder what Jesus did as he ascended
on that elevator of cloud. Did he wave
to the disciples as he rose and rose
like some kite broken free of its string,
becoming smaller, smaller until he
was swallowed by the great blue
throat of heaven? And did the disciples
keep their eyes trained on him,
unblinking, until tears transformed
that mountaintop into the Sea of Galilee?
After he was gone, did the disciples stand
there, look at each other dumbly, try
to recall his last word? Was it
earth or dirt or air or mother?
They didn’t have phones to take
pictures or videos. Weren’t able to
scroll through their albums
to remind themselves how dark
his skin and eyes were or how
laughing made him blaze
like Pentecost. Instead, they gospelled
each other, tried to recall with letters
God’s whiskered face.
                    Today, we gather
in this church for you, dear sister, two
weeks after the metronome of your lungs
ceased and you ascended on that cold
morning. I stood by your bed, held
your hand, mapped its pulse
with my fingertips. I don’t remember
the last word you spoke to me,
or even second to last. It may
have been my name or mother
or ham or simply yes. Like the disciples
now, I’m greedy for every
last scrap of you, your crooked
smile, how you cackled even
when you didn’t get the joke. I
spent my entire life knowing
you, but not really knowing.
Until the end, when you were
rising and rising away from me,
getting smaller, smaller. I
watched until you vanished
from sight, taken back
to that place you came
from, that infinity between zero
and one. Only then did I realize
how lucky I’d been. To have
you with me every day, drinking
Diet Cokes, listening to ABBA
songs, begging me to wrap
my arms around your
shoulders. I could spend the rest
of my days writing gospels and gospels
about how much you loved me.

Saint Marty is going to drink a Diet Coke in his sister's honor tonight.

Tulip on my Desk

by: Martin Achatz

Its head droops down

as if it has just remembered

it's my dead sister's birthday.

July 17: "Softest of Mornings," Sister's Birthday, Crossword Puzzles

Mary Oliver on the . . .

Softest of Mornings

by:  Mary Oliver

Softest of mornings, hello.

And what will you do today, I wonder,

     to my heart?

And how much honey can the heart stand, I wonder,

     before it must break?

This is trivial, or nothing:  a snail

     climbing a trellis of leaves

          and the blue trumpets of its flowers.

No doubt clocks are ticking loudly

     all over the world.

I don't hear them.  The snail's pale horns

     extend and wave this way and that

as her finger-body shuffles forward, leaving behind

     the silvery path of her slime.

Oh, softest of mornings, how shall I break this?

How shall I move away from the snail, and the flowers?

How shall I go on, with my introspective and ambitious life?

Even the softest of mornings, filled with honey and the slow crawl of a snail, can break your heart.  In fact, it is the softest of mornings that can break your heart the most.

Today would have been my sister Sally's 62nd birthday.  I woke up on this softest of mornings knowing that, thinking that, feeling that.  She's been gone for eight years now, but I still have this gaping space in my introspective and ambitious life.  She was glue, and she was foundation.  In every sense of the word, she held our family together.  Christmases happened because of her.  Birthdays and Thanksgivings and Halloweens.  She was Santa Claus AND the Great Pumpkin AND the Easter Bunny.

I could spend hours talking about her generosity of spirit.  If I ever ran into financial problems because of emergency car or home repairs, she would transfer money into my account without even telling me.  No strings attached.  No questions asked.  If my kids wanted something extra special for their birthdays or Christmas (or any other day of the year), she would get it for them because their joy was her joy.  If I was struggling with a major life decision, she would sit me down, listen to me, and then offer me advice, without any pressure to follow that advice.

But I'm not going to talk about any of that.  I want to talk about a softest of mornings moment with Sally.

Sally and I worked together at an outpatient surgery center for close to 15 years.  She was the director, and I was the business office person.  This arrangement may not have worked all that well with other siblings, but she and I understood each other.  Kept it professional when we were on the job.

On Saturday mornings, Sally and my family used to meet up at McDonald's for breakfast.  We would pile into the playroom, and she would buy my kids pancakes and chocolate milk and Diet Coke.  If we stayed long enough for the breakfast menu to change over to lunch, she would buy them chicken nuggets and fries.  While the kids crawled through the play structure, we would sit at a table and do crossword puzzles together.  (She would save the daily crosswords from the newspaper all week, so we usually had a pile of them to complete.)  

That was our Saturday mornings, and sometimes a little of our Saturday afternoons, as well.  Nothing earthquaking happened.  We talked a lot.  Laughed a lot.  Sometimes ate a lot.  And it was like watching a snail crawl up the trumpet of a blue flower.  Gorgeously slow and beautiful.  A deep breath after a week of stress and hard, hard work.  We didn't talk about office stuff.  We just enjoyed the honey of each other's company and love.

I think back on those softest of mornings now.  They weren't monumental.  No, they were so ordinary that they blend together in my mind.  I thought that I would always have those Saturday mornings with her, just like I thought Sally would be around when my daughter graduated from high school, when my son got his driver's license.  

It didn't work out that way.

I have moved past from those snail Saturdays with Sally, when it seemed like we had all the time in the world to be together.  

Yes, on the softest of mornings, time does stand still, even though the planet is still spinning on its axis at one thousand miles per hour and our lives with it.  That's the way the universe works.  

But Saint Marty would give anything to do one more crossword puzzle with you, Sally.  Happy birthday.

Strawberry Picking

by:  Martin Achatz

for Sally

You took me strawberry picking
once, drove out to a farm
where we paid to squat in green
beds laced with tongues of red.
I could feel my ears and neck
tighten under the punishing
sun as we filled Morning Glory
ice cream buckets with our
harvest, each berry looking to me
like some vital body part,
an organ or muscle necessary
for life. You sat on your haunches,
fingers staining red, as if you
were some battlefield surgeon
patching up the fallen with only
your hands. Every now and then,
you would lift a berry to your lips,
eat it in a hummingbird moment,
smiling the smile of the freshly
healed at Lourdes, where miracles
are common as empty wheelchairs
or dandelions in a July field.

The days since you’ve been gone,
I see strawberries everywhere,
in a welt of blood on my lip
after shaving, a stop sign,
a friend’s dyed hair,
my son’s sunburned shoulders,
oxygen in the gills of a perch.
Last night, I stood outside, under
ribbons of borealis, watched
them glide between the stars
like garter snakes in a midnight
Eden. The Bible says that, in the cool
of the day, Adam and Eve heard
God taking a stroll through
the garden. There were probably
peacocks nesting in the pines,
a stream talking with moss and stone,
the scurry of mole and spider
in the ferns.

That’s what I believe you heard
in your last moments of breath.
You heard peafowl screams,
brook trout leaps. Grasshopper wing
and corn silk. And you heard
his divine toes in the grass, walking
along. When he came to you,
he couldn’t resist. He reached down,
plucked you from the stem. You were
ripe. Sweet. Ready. He put you
in his Morning Glory bucket, continued
on into the dew and sunlight.

May 15: "Almost a Conversation," Sister's Birthday, Simplicity

Mary Oliver learns something from an otter . . . 

Almost a Conversation 

by:  Mary Oliver 

I have not really, not yet, talked with otter

      about his life.

He has so many teeth, he has trouble

     with vowels.

Wherefore our understanding

     is all body expression--

he swims like the sleekest fish,

he dives and exhales and lifts a trail of bubbles.

Little by little he trusts my eyes

and my curious body sitting on the shore.

Sometimes he comes close.

I admire his whiskers

and his dark fur which I would rather die than wear.

He has no words, still what he tells about his life 

     is clear.

He does not own a computer.

He imagines the river will last forever.

He does not envy the dry house I live in.

He does not wonder who or what it is that I worship.

He wonders, morning after morning, that the river

is so cold and fresh and alive, and still

I don't jump in.

Really, what Mary Oliver is getting at here is simplicity.  

The otter's life is simple.  He doesn't have a car that needs new brakes.  Or a house with a leaky roof.  (And if the otter's roof leaks, that's okay.  Nothing to worry about.)  When the otter wakes in the morning, he lets his body's needs tell him what to do.  If he's hungry, he finds a fat frog to eat.  If he's still tired, he probably goes back to sleep.  And if he hears the river slapping and singing, the otter goes for a swim and feels cold, fresh, and alive.

Human beings embrace complexity.  Thrive on it, actually.  After her otter conversation, Oliver doesn't jump into the river.  Nope.  She stays on the shore and eventually returns to her nice dry house.  Her computer.  And she writes a poem.

Today would have been my sister Rose's 58th birthday.  I barely remember my own kids' birthdates, but I will never forget Rose's.  Because she reminded everyone constantly about it for months.  It was a magic day for her, when she got cake and ice cream and her favorite dinner.  Usually, Kentucky Fried Chicken, if she was given a choice.  And people sang to her and gave presents.

Rose knew about simplicity and happiness.  A can of Diet Coke could make her smile for hours, or at least until it was empty.  She could watch the same movie, over and over, and experience the same intense pleasure each time.  Everything was always cold and fresh and alive for her.

She's been gone a little over a year now.  Long enough that her voice has started to fade from my memory a little bit.  I wish I had learned to enjoy each day the way Rose did--as if it was the first and best day ever.

Saint Marty's sister was grace and blessing.  He misses her a great deal.

Two Evenings after the Day You Died

by: Martin Achatz

I stand in my backyard, my dog
on the end of her leash, pulling,
digging in the snow. The wind
in the lilac branches, limbs of maple
scratches and moans. It’s a sound
that makes the cold seem colder,
the stars, fragile as frost. I don't
move. My dog stops, as well.
The moment lasts only 20 or 30
seconds, but it stretches out
like piano keys of darkness
on the winter solstice. I listen
to the world sing, sigh, and sob
like cantors at vespers, and I think
of you. How your last breath came
and went so softly that morning that I am
still waiting, two days later, for you
to wake.

July 17: Let Us Hope, Too Busy, Hopeful Suppression

Santiago speaks his hopes , , ,

Maybe if I can increase the tension just a little it will hurt him and he will jump, he thought. Now that it is daylight let him jump so that he'll fill the sacks along his backbone with air and then he cannot go deep to die.

He tried to increase the tension, but the line had been taut up to the very edge of the breaking point since he had hooked the fish and he felt the harshness as he leaned back to pull and knew he could put no more strain on it. I must not jerk it ever, he thought. Each jerk widens the cut the hook makes and then when he does jump he might throw it. Anyway I feel better with the sun and for once I do not have to look into it.

There was yellow weed on the line but the old man knew that only made an added drag and he was pleased. It was the yellow Gulf weed that had made so much phosphorescence in the night.

"Fish," he said, "I love you and respect you very much. But I will kill you dead before this day ends."

Let us hope so, he thought.

Santiago does a lot of hoping in this passage:  he hopes to increase the tension on the line; make the fish jump; and kill the fish before the day ends.  The old man knows what he's doing.  All of his hopes come from his decades of fishing on the ocean.  

As I said in my post last night, it is my sister's birthday today.  However, I didn't spend the day dwelling on that fact--not on her presence in so much of my life, and not in her absence these past seven years, either.  I was too busy.

I went to two church services this morning.  I played at one, sang at the other.  Then, when I got home, I mowed my lawn in 85-degree heat.  After that, I finished my preparations for a poetry workshop, took a shower, and drove to a friend's house for a meeting of my book club.  (In case you are wondering, we discussed Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake.)  On the way to book club, I stopped at the cemetery to visit my sister's grave.  And after book club, I sped home and led the poetry workshop.  

So, you see, I couldn't be too sad today, except for those few moments at the cemetery.  Is busyness a sign of hope?  I'm not sure.  It could be my way of avoiding difficult feelings, too.  Take your pick.  I could be hopeful, or I could be suppressing.  Or a little of both.  Hopeful suppression, or suppressive hope.  

Sitting on my couch, typing this post, I realize that I'm often in this state, whatever it is.  If a busy life is a sign of hope, I am the most hopeful person alive.  It may also be a coping mechanism.  Either way, at the end of the day, I am usually too tired to be feel anything.

Tonight, therefore, I am a mixed bag.  Exhausted.  Hopeful.  Sad.  Grateful for friends and poetry.

Saint Marty's blessing tonight:  really great friends who love books.

July 16: God Let Him Jump, Christmas Waiting, Sister's Birthday

Santiago waits for the fish to jump . . . 

He'll stay with me too, I suppose, the old man thought and he waited for it to be light. It was cold now in the time before daylight and he pushed against the wood to be warm. I can do it as long as he can, he thought. And in the first light the line extended out and down into the water. The boat moved steadily and when the first edge of the sun rose it was on the old man's right shoulder.

"He's headed north," the old man said. The current will have set us far to the eastward, he thought. I wish he would turn with the current. That would show that he was tiring.

When the sun had risen further the old man realized that the fish was not tiring. There was only one favorable sign. The slant of the line showed he was swimming at a lesser depth. That did not necessarily mean that he would jump. But he might.

"God let him jump," the old man said. "I have enough line to handle him."

We all wait for things to happen.  Santiago waits for the fish to jump.  On overcast days, I wait for rain.  In December, I wait for Christmas.  For a while now, I wait for everyone to go to bed so that I can watch a sad movie or read a sad book.  Today, I waited for tomorrow, which would have been my sister's birthday. She would have been 61 this year.

Every year, when that day approaches, I sort of hit a emotional speed bump that forces me to slow down.  Not in a take-time-to-smell-the-roses kind of way.  More like a count-all-your-losses-and-get-overwhelmed kind of way.

I guess what I'm saying is that there's Christmas waiting, and then there's thunderstorm waiting.  

Today, the sky turned dark about mid-afternoon, and since that time, I've been waiting for God to unleash some rain.  It hasn't happened yet, and it's well past 11 p.m.  I'm about ready to give up on cloudy with a chance of meatballs.  

You see, waiting for something to happen doesn't always mean that it will happen.  In my experience, as a matter of fact, when I'm expecting something to happen, it rarely does.  About seven years ago, when my sister was about to turn 54, I was waiting for a miracle to happen--for the lymphoma in her brain to somehow vanish.  I prayed for it.  It never happened.

Perhaps, my sister's birthday, and the upcoming anniversary of her death in August, are contributing to my current struggles.  Even after seven years, there are some days where I just . . . want to talk to her.  Tell her that I'm sorry that she didn't have more time on this planet.

You see, near the end of the time that she was in the hospital in Ann Arbor, I advocated for hospice care.  Even though I know to this day that it was the right thing to do, I still feel guilty that she didn't get to see my kids grow up.  That she never got to enjoy the retirement that she saved for her whole life.  That she didn't get more Christmases.  She loved Christmas.

I'm waiting for midnight, and I miss singing "Happy Birthday" to my sister.  Eating strawberry shortcake with her.

Saint Marty's blessing of the day:  flowers blooming outside of church tonight.

July 15-18: Greenest Shamrock, Surrender, "On Your 60th Birthday"

Merton gets a letter from the draft board . . . 

The weeks went by, and I wrote some more poems, and continued to fast and keep my Lent. All I prayed was that God should let me know His will —and, if it pleased Him, there was only one other thing I asked for myself besides: if I had to go to the army, I begged Him at least to let me make a retreat with the Trappist monks before I went. 

However, the next thing I got from the Draft Board was a notice to present myself for medical examination before the doctors in Olean. 

I had not been expecting things to develop that way, and at first I interpreted this to mean that my request for consideration as a non-combatant had simply been ignored. There were three days before the examination, and so I got permission to go down to New York. I thought I might see the Draft Board and talk to them: but that was not possible. In any case, it was not necessary. 

So the week-end turned out to be a sort of a festival with my friends. I saw Lax, who was now working for the New Yorker, and had a desk of his own in a corner of their offices where he wrote letters to pacify the people who complained about the humor, or the lack of it, in the pages of the magazine. Then we went out to Long Beach and saw Seymour. And then Seymour and I and Lax all together got in a car and went to Port Washington and saw Gibney. 

The next day was St. Patrick’s Day, and the massed bands of all the boys and girls in Brooklyn who had never had an ear for music were gathering under the windows of the New Yorker offices and outside the Gotham Book Mart. And I, an Englishman, wearing a shamrock which I had bought from a Jew, went walking around the city, weaving in and out of the crowds, and thinking up a poem called April, although it was March. It was a fancy poem about javelins and leopards and lights through trees like arrows and a line that said: “The little voices of the rivers change.” I thought it up in and out of the light and the shade of the Forties, between Fifth and Sixth avenues, and typed it on Lax’s typewriter in the New Yorker office, and showed it to Mark Van Doren in a subway station. 

And Mark said, of the shamrock I was wearing: “That is the greenest shamrock I have ever seen.” 

It was a great St. Patrick’s Day. That night I got on the Erie train, and since I was so soon, I thought, to go to the army, I paid money to sleep in the Pullman. Practically the only other Pullman passenger was a sedate Franciscan nun, who turned out to be going to St. Elizabeth’s: and so we got off at Olean together and shared a taxi out to Alleghany. 

On Monday I prepared to go and be examined for the army. I was the first one there. I climbed the ancient stairs to the top floor of the Olean City Hall. I tried the handle of the room marked for the medical board, and the door opened. I walked in and stood in the empty room. My heart was still full of the peace of Communion. 

Presently the first of the doctors arrived. 

“You got here early,” he said, and began to take off his coat and hat. 

“We might as well begin,” he said, “the others will be along in a minute.” 

So I stripped, and he listened to my chest, and took some blood out of my arm and put it in a little bottle, in a water-heater, to keep it cosy and warm for the Wassermann test. And while this was going on, the others were coming in, two other doctors to do the examining, and lanky young farm boys to be examined. 

“Now,” said my doctor, “let’s see your teeth.” 

I opened my mouth. 

“Well,” he said, “you’ve certainly had a lot of teeth out!”

And he began to count them. 

The doctor who was running the Medical Board was just coming in. My man got up and went to talk to him. I heard him say: 

“Shall we finish the whole examination? I don’t see much point to it.” 

The head doctor came over and looked at my mouth. 

“Oh, well,” he said, “finish the examination anyway.” 

And he sat me down and personally took a crack at my reflexes and went through all the rest of it. When it was over, and I was ready to get back into my clothes, I asked: 

“What about it, Doctor?” 

“Oh, go home,” he said, “you haven’t got enough teeth.” 

Once again I walked out into the snowy street. 

So they didn’t want me in the army after all, even as a stretcher bearer!  The street was full of quiet, full of peace. 

And I remembered that it was the Feast of St. Joseph. 

Saint Joseph, patron of, among other things, fathers (he was God's stepfather), unborn children (considering what he went through to protect in utero Jesus, not surprising), workers (a carpenter his whole life), immigrants (crossed a desert to Bethlehem, fled to Egypt to protect his family), and a happy death (supposedly, Jesus was at Joseph's bedside when he passed).  Joseph surrendered to God's will.  Merton is ready to surrender to whatever God has in store for him in this passage.  And what God has in store for Merton is a bus ticket back to teaching and the pursuit of a religious life.  Because of his bad teeth.

I get surrender.  Have done it a lot in my life.  Sometimes by choice.  Other times, because of metaphorical bad teeth.  Free will is a thing that all humans possess.  Joseph could have chosen to quietly break off his engagement with Mary and spend the rest of his life making birdhouses.  Instead, he gave his life over to something else.  That's not easy to do.

Yet, sometimes life doesn't give you many options.  You have to accept whatever plate comes out of the kitchen and is put before you, even if you're vegan and the entre is prime rib.  In that case, surrender is easy.  Because you have no choice.  It's when you're faced with a potluck that surrender is more complicated.  You can go with the salad, which is better for you.  However, the brownie trifle is so much more appealing.

Right now, I'm facing a salad/brownie trifle situation, and I'm not finding the lettuce that appetizing.  Not going to get into details, but let me just say that, come fall, I think my life is going to look a lot different.

Yesterday, my sister, Sally, would have been 60 years old.  She probably would have retired this year and started planning long road trips with her trailer.  But she never got to make that choice.  Seven years ago, she died of lymphoma of the brain.  It was one of those situations where God didn't give her any options.  She got sick.  She died.  It wasn't a matter of surrender.

Some people hate having options.  Some people have no options.  And, somehow, we have to trust that God's watching over us.  Is present in every decision we make, good or bad.  Was with my sister to the end.

Saint Marty is wondering if he can send back his salad.  Maybe trade up for a plate of pasta.

And a poem for my sister . . . 

On Your 60th Birthday

by:  Martin Achatz

This birdsong morning, you have been free

of rib and lung for almost seven years.  You've seen

the face of God or disappeared down oblivion's throat.

Soar with seraphim or feed the veins of hungry cedars.

You walk with Saint Francis through Eden's orchards

or sun yourself on the backs of Galapagos turtles.

Mystery doesn't exist where you are now,

or you have become part of mystery.  Remember

the first question we learned in catechism?

Who made you?  Answer:  God made me.

Second question:  Who is God?  Second answer:

God is the supreme being who made all things.

We recited those words as if they were simple

as vanilla pudding, could be rolled around

on our tongues, swallowed as easy as breath.

Perhaps it is that plain.  Perhaps, after your last

sigh, as color drained from the dusk

of your face, the knot of the universe unraveled 

before you, you were looking down on me

from some divine glossary page, marveling 

at how it was just a matter of footprints.

Heel.  Instep.  Ball.  Toes.  You followed

them.  Didn't ask where you were going.  Trusted.

Ahead of you, right where Bluff Creek

curves and forest takes over, something waited,

hand outstretched, ready to lead you

into the pines.  Show you that place

where hosts of blueberries sing

hosannas, loud and round and sweet.

July 17: Sister's Birthday, Sugarloaf Mountain, "Vigil Strange I Kept in Ann Arbor One Morning"

Today would have been my sister Sally's 59th birthday.  It's hard to believe that she left us five years ago.  I still think of her every day.  She and I worked together for almost 20 years, eight-, nine-, and ten-hour days sometimes.

Tonight, in honor of Sal, I'm doing something crazy.  At around 11 o'clock, I'm going to drive to the base of Sugarloaf Mountain, and my family and I are going to climb it in the dark.  Our goal:  to see something wondrous.  A burning wheel in the sky.  A miracle.

And when Saint Marty sees that comet, he will think of his sister's smile and give thanks.

Vigil Strange I Kept in Ann Arbor One Morning

by:  Martin Achatz

after Walt Whitman

I sat by the bed railings, listened to you breathe.

Not the watery gasps of two weeks later, but breaths doing

the work they were meant to do, carrying oxygen to organs,

limbs, pink fingernails, fissured lips, to your damaged

and damaging brain where your voice nestled between

tumors, walled up against the apocalypse of your body.

I sat.  Held your hand.  Made small talk about the humid air

of Ann Arbor, school and work, because I couldn’t bring myself

to make big talk about goodbyes or letting go.  No, I talked to you

the way I talked when we used to eat lunch together, the smells

of vinaigrette and flax seed and bananas around us.  Everyday talk,

because I wasn’t ready for last day talk.

I told you about the film classes I would teach in the fall, listed

the movies we would watch.  Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights,

Singin’ in the Rain, Citizen Kane.  I sang a song to you,

the one Gene Kelly sings to Debbie Reynolds.  You’re my lucky

star.  I saw you from afar.  I got the words wrong.

I vigiled there for an hour, while your body went about the business

of closing up shop.  Never once did I say “I love you” or “I’m sorry for”

or “Don’t go.”  Instead, I talked about Charles Foster Kane and his sled.

Rosebud burning in the furnace at the end, crackling, peeling, ashing.

And, in those last minutes before the official acts of hospice and dying

took over, I asked you one question--“Do you want some ice?”—and you grunted

at me.  I placed a cube on your chapped tongue and watched it 
melt down your chin.

July 17: Saints, Demigods,and Prophets, Sister's Birthday, Sister's Ghost

There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method.

The more I dive into this matter of whaling, and push my researches up to the very spring-head of it so much the more am I impressed with its great honorableness and antiquity; and especially when I find so many great demi-gods and heroes, prophets of all sorts, who one way or other have shed distinction upon it, I am transported with the reflection that I myself belong, though but subordinately, to so emblazoned a fraternity.

The gallant Perseus, a son of Jupiter, was the first whaleman; and to the eternal honor of our calling be it said, that the first whale attacked by our brotherhood was not killed with any sordid intent. Those were the knightly days of our profession, when we only bore arms to succor the distressed, and not to fill men's lamp-feeders. Every one knows the fine story of Perseus and Andromeda; how the lovely Andromeda, the daughter of a king, was tied to a rock on the sea-coast, and as Leviathan was in the very act of carrying her off, Perseus, the prince of whalemen, intrepidly advancing, harpooned the monster, and delivered and married the maid. It was an admirable artistic exploit, rarely achieved by the best harpooneers of the present day; inasmuch as this Leviathan was slain at the very first dart. And let no man doubt this Arkite story; for in the ancient Joppa, now Jaffa, on the Syrian coast, in one of the Pagan temples, there stood for many ages the vast skeleton of a whale, which the city's legends and all the inhabitants asserted to be the identical bones of the monster that Perseus slew. When the Romans took Joppa, the same skeleton was carried to Italy in triumph. What seems most singular and suggestively important in this story, is this: it was from Joppa that Jonah set sail.

Akin to the adventure of Perseus and Andromeda- indeed, by some supposed to be indirectly derived from it- is that famous story of St. George and the Dragon; which dragon I maintain to have been a whale; for in many old chronicles whales and dragons are strangely jumbled together, and often stand for each other. "Thou art as a lion of the waters, and as a dragon of the sea," said Ezekiel; hereby, plainly meaning a whale; in truth, some versions of the Bible use that word itself. Besides, it would much subtract from the glory of the exploit had St. George but encountered a crawling reptile of the land, instead of doing battle with the great monster of the deep. Any man may kill a snake, but only a Perseus, a St. George, a Coffin, have the heart in them to march boldly up to a whale.

Let not the modern paintings of this scene mislead us; for though the creature encountered by that valiant whaleman of old is vaguely represented of a griffin-like shape, and though the battle is depicted on land and the saint on horseback, yet considering the great ignorance of those times, when the true form of the whale was unknown to artists; and considering that as in Perseus' case, St. George's whale might have crawled up out of the sea on the beach; and considering that the animal ridden by St. George might have been only a large seal, or sea-horse; bearing all this in mind, it will not appear altogether incompatible with the sacred legend and the ancientest draughts of the scene, to hold this so-called dragon no other than the great Leviathan himself. In fact, placed before the strict and piercing truth, this whole story will fare like that fish, flesh, and fowl idol of the Philistines, Dagon by name; who being planted before the ark of Israel, his horse's head and both the palms of his hands fell off from him, and only the stump or fishy part of him remained. Thus, then, one of our own noble stamp, even a whaleman, is the tutelary guardian of England; and by good rights, we harpooneers of Nantucket should be enrolled in the most noble order of St. George. And therefore, let not the knights of that honorable company (none of whom, I venture to say, have ever had to do with a whale like their great patron), let them never eye a Nantucketer with disdain, since even in our woollen frocks and tarred trowers we are much better entitled to St. George's decoration than they.

Whether to admit Hercules among us or not, concerning this I long remained dubious: for though according to the Greek mythologies, that antique Crockett and Kit Carson- that brawny doer of rejoicing good deeds, was swallowed down and thrown up by a whale; still, whether that strictly makes a whaleman of him, that might be mooted. It nowhere appears that he ever actually harpooned his fish, unless, indeed, from the inside. Nevertheless, he may be deemed a sort of involuntary whaleman; at any rate the whale caught him, if he did not the whale. I claim him for one of our clan.
But, by the best contradictory authorities, this Grecian story of Hercules and the whale is considered to be derived from the still more ancient Hebrew story of Jonah and the whale; and vice versa; certainly they are very similar. If I claim the demigod then, why not the prophet?

Nor do heroes, saints, demigods, and prophets alone comprise the whole roll of our order. Our grand master is still to be named; for like royal kings of old times, we find the head-waters of our fraternity in nothing short of the great gods themselves. That wondrous oriental story is now to be rehearsed from the Shaster, which gives us the dread Vishnoo, one of the three persons in the godhead of the Hindoos; gives us this divine Vishnoo himself for our Lord;- Vishnoo, who, by the first of his ten earthly incarnations, has for ever set apart and sanctified the whale. When Brahma, or the God of Gods, saith the Shaster, resolved to recreate the world after one of its periodical dissolutions, he gave birth to Vishnoo, to preside over the work; but the Vedas, or mystical books, whose perusal would seem to have been indispensable to Vishnoo before beginning the creation, and which therefore must have contained something in the shape of practical hints to young architects, these Vedas were lying at the bottom of the waters; so Vishnoo became incarnate in a whale, and sounding down in him to the uttermost depths, rescued the sacred volumes. Was not this Vishnoo a whaleman, then? even as a man who rides a horse is called a horseman?

Perseus, St. George, Hercules, Jonah, and Vishnoo! there's a member-roll for you! What club but the whaleman's can head off like that?

Melville is making leaps here, including saints and prophets and demigods in the ranks of whalemen.  He is doing what all poets and writers do--drawing lines, making comparisons, providing a new way of looking at some aspect of the world/universe.  Thus, St. George's dragon was a whale.  Perseus uses Medusa's head to slay a whale.  Vishnu transforms into a whale to read mystical books at the bottom of the sea.  The whale becomes the beginning and the end.  Alpha and omega. 

Allow me this evening to make some leaps, as well.  Today would have been my sister's 57th birthday.  Now, I am greatly opposed to retrospective falsification.  That is the act of looking at the past with blinders on.  Seeing only the golden times and forgetting everything painful and negative.  I suppose some people would use the term "nostalgia," which sort of has the same meaning.

My sister was not a saint.  She could swear like a whaleman, and she frequently did.  She was a workaholic, which probably was a factor in her early death.  She refused to recognize that she was getting sick.  Kept working long days because she was afraid of losing her job, which she eventually did.  When she was lying in a hospital bed, suffering from undiagnosed lymphoma of the brain, she received her termination letter in the mail.

I honestly think that, if Sally were able to talk to me today, she would tell me that her greatest regret in life is the fact that she wasted so much of it at her desk in her office, worrying over insignificant problems.  She loved her family more than anything else.  Spent most of her adult life making other people happy.  At Christmas, she made sure that Santa was good to every person.  The presents spilled across the floor in a Himalayan heap.  Her generosity really was boundless.  I'm not kidding.  When I suffered financial setbacks with my family, Sally always bailed me out.

So, if you will allow me, I want to make a leap here.  This afternoon, I went to the cemetery to visit my sister.  It was sunny but cool.  Someone was mowing grass nearby.  When I got out of my car, I looked over at the trees along the far gates, behind my sister's cremation stone.  And, for an instant, I swear I saw her standing there, in her teal blue hoodie and Hawaiian shorts.

It was momentary, a swimming vision that was gone as soon as I blinked.  She was there, and then she wasn't.  I walked over to her grave marker, stood looking down.  Someone had left a dime near her name.  It sort of caught the sun and sparked.

I would love to say that I felt Sally's presence.  That she was standing beside me, smiling, wanting to ask about my daughter and son, because she loved them more than anything.  However, I can't say that.  She wasn't there anymore, if she had been there at all in the first place.  She was gone.

Yet, ever since my trip to the cemetery, she's been with me, swimming around in my head, like some great white whale.  Like Bigfoot in the treeline, just out of sight.  It's almost as though she wants to tell me something.  Maybe that's why I saw her this afternoon.  Or maybe it's just my tired mind, grasping at some optical illusion.  I'm not sure.

All I can say is that I miss her.  Swearing like George Carlin.  Smiling her huge smile.

Saint Marty is thankful tonight that he had such a wonderful sister who is still teaching him how to live a good life.

July 17: Widower, Sister's Birthday, Campfires

Howard W. Campbell, Jr., now discussed the uniforms of the American enlisted in World War Two:  Every other army in history, prosperous or not, has attempted to clothe even its lowliest soldiers so as to make them impressive to themselves and others as stylish experts in drinking and copulation and looting and sudden death.  The American Army, however, sends its enlisted men out to fight and die in a modified business suit quite evidently made for another man, a sterilized but unpressed gift from a nose-holding charity which passes out clothing to drunks in the slums.

When a dashingly-clad officer addresses such a frumpishly dressed bum, he scolds him, as an officer in any army must.  But the officer's contempt is not, as in other armies, avuncular theatricality.  It is a genuine expression of hatred for the poor, who have no one to blame for their misery but themselves.

A prison administrator dealing with captured American enlisted men for the first time should be warned:  Expect no brotherly love, even between brothers.  There will be no cohesion between the individuals.  Each will be a sulky child who often wishes he were dead.

Campbell told what the German experience with captured American enlisted men had been.  They were known everywhere to be the most self-pitying, least fraternal, and dirtiest of all prisoners of war, said Campbell.  They were incapable of concerted action on their own behalf.  They despised any leader from among their own number, refused to follow or even listen to him, on the grounds that he was no better than they were, that he should stop putting on airs.


And so on.  Billy Pilgrim went to sleep, woke up a widower in his empty home in Ilium.  His daughter Barbara was reproaching him for writing ridiculous letters to the newspapers.

Billy is in the prison hospital.  A German major is reading Nazi propaganda to the English prisoners, who don't hold a high opinion of their American compatriots.  Billy is still recovering from exhaustion, possibly a nervous breakdown.  And then Billy is home--his wife dead and his daughter worrying about his mental state.  So it goes.

Today would have been my sister Sally's 56th birthday.  She has been gone for almost two years now.  Billy is able to time travel to be with his wife, Valencia, again.  I don't have that power.  I have not had any close encounters of the Tralfamadorian kind.  Thus, I am not unstuck in time.

It seems a little unreal to me that my sister has been dead for two years already.  In fact, the whole last year of her life seems like some kind of horrible hallucination induced by strong narcotics.  I have tons of guilt about that time.  I should have visited her more in the hospital and nursing home.  I should have spent more time with her when she was well.  I should have . . . I should have . . . I should have . . .

Hindsight is a terrible thing.  It doesn't make you feel better about the choices you've made.  It always fills you with regret.  It's a fruitless exercise in self-punishment.  So, instead of spending the rest of this blog post beating myself up, I'm going to share one of my favorite memories of my sister.

Sally loved to go camping in her trailer.  Loved to sit in her lawn chair, watch her nieces and nephews swing on the playground or swim in the pool or lake.  Every weekend, from late May to early September, she lived at the local campground, barbecuing hotdogs and bratwurst, drinking Diet Coke, and sometimes hiking in the woods.  I think it was her favorite place to be.

My favorite memory is sitting around the campfire with her.  She loved that time of night, after the kids were in bed and the stars came out.  We would just watch the flames send sparks into the heavens and talk and laugh.  Sometimes, we would listen to Garrison Keillor on Saturday night, and we would laugh and roast marshmallows.

That is my favorite memory of my sister.  The memory that is most alive for me.

Tonight, Saint Marty is thankful for the time he had with his sister.

April 21: Sleep Standing Up, Sister's Birthday, Banana Ganache

So Billy Pilgrim had to sleep standing up, or not sleep at all.  And food had stopped coming in through the ventilators, and the days and nights were colder all the time.

It was a long day of work.  I felt, at times, like I was asleep standing up.  The only thing that kept me going was Diet Mountain Dew and chocolate, and I didn't have to get that through a ventilator.  It was snowing this morning.  Just a dusting, enough to make everything look very Currier & Ives.  As Vonnegut says, the days and nights were colder.

The snow didn't stick around long.  The sun came out, and, by the time I left work, there was not a snowflake to be found.  There was a brisk wind, however, making the air feel like late autumn versus early spring.  It was a beautiful afternoon, but not a record-breaker temperature-wise. 

It is my sister's birthday. We celebrated with a chicken dinner and a banana ganache cake.  It was a quiet little party, but nice.  I have to say that my sister has always been really good to me and my family, helping us through some very difficult times.  Yes, she has problems of her own, but she has a very generous spirit.  Always has.

Example:  two weekends ago, my family and my sister went to the Kalahari Resort at the Wisconsin Dells for my daughter's dance competition.  We drove down in a nice car, stayed in a nice hotel room, ate some good food, and came home with some nice souvenirs.  All thanks to my sister.

So, tonight, I am thankful for my sister.  For her open heart.  For her love of my kids.

Saint Marty is a lucky, lucky brother.

July 17: Sister's Birthday, New Poem, "Last Breath," Classic Saint Marty

Today would have been my sister's fifty-fifth birthday.  Last year, she was entering the last month of her life.  The lymphoma was blossoming in her brain, and she could only speak one or two words.  It was a really difficult time.

Last night, I sat down with my journal, intending to record my thoughts about my sister.  Instead I wrote a poem:

Last Breath

for Sally, July 17, 2016

It's been almost a year
since your last breath
pushed out from between
your lips, spread its wings,
took flight, a wet
slap of a sound, almost
like something being born,
full of the salt and blood
of the newly alive, and you
were no longer, were emptiness
with a kind of gravity,
a burned-out building,
a sunken row boat, a shoe
on the side of the road, perhaps
tossed out of a car window
or left behind after an encounter
between two teenagers who thought
they loved each other but found
only a grain of pleasure followed
by fumbles for pants and tee shirts
in the night, a sense that their lives
were shorter, had moved
closer to nothingness, to that last
fist of oxygen in the lungs,
and our mother sat beside
your bed before the Farley brothers
came to take you away, she sat,
talked to you about coffee, the slant
of sun on your face, how
she was glad for your stillness,
and she held your hand,
the way my son holds
the string of a circus balloon,
afraid to let go, see it wheel,
spin away like a goshawk
hunting for rabbits among the stars.

A year ago, I was focusing on happiness.  It's what my sister would have wanted.  Today, I choose to do the same.

July 17, 2015:  Kind of Magnificence, Diamonds on the Soles, Gnomish Fairy Tale, Adrienne Su, "Under the Window"

Annie could not help but hide behind a car like a child, red-faced and laughing, trying her best to smack Ives on the head.  Ives received her shots with joy and mounted his own assault.  Raising his portfolio like a shield, he shouted at the top of his lungs, and, charging toward her, pulled her down into a drift of snow, where they briefly kissed and he felt the first fleeting heat of her tongue.  Then they rested, side by side, on the frigid pavement like dummies, wistfully looking upward at nature's swirling activity.  A kind of magnificence, heaven, as it were, coming down on them.

A really joyful passage from the book.  A young Ives and Annie, just getting to know each other.  They let go of all their cares and worries and simply behave like kids, throwing snowballs at each other, tackling each other in the wintery night.  It's one of those rare life moments:  complete and total happiness.  All their future pain and sadness not even a shadow on the radar of their lives.

Driving home from work this afternoon, I had a moment like that with a friend.  We had the windows of my car rolled down, and Paul Simon's album, Graceland, cranked on my CD player.  The wind was cool.  The sun was bright.  We cruised along and sang at the top of our lungs:  "She's got diamonds on the soles of her shoes....Diamonds on the soles of her shoes...."  It felt so good.

Tonight, I will not focus on my sister's illness.  It's her birthday.  Instead of talking about her chemotherapy or inability to speak, I choose to think of her in better times.  Camping in her trailer on a July weekend.  Swimming in the pool or lounging by the hot tub.  At night, listening to Garrison Keillor on the radio around the campfire.  Those are the memories I am going to celebrate.

We had cake tonight for my sister.  Called and sang to her.  The cake was yellow and chocolate, covered with chocolate frosting and a thick layer of sprinkles.  It was really good.  I know she would have enjoyed it.  A lot.

Tonight, when I get home, I'm going to continue the happiness.  After I clean the bathroom, listening to ABBA music (my sister's favorite), I will sit on the couch and read a good book.  Maybe I'll put on an episode of Kolchak the Night Stalker, one of her favorite TV shows when we were kids.  The only rule for the evening:  no sadness invited.

Once upon a time, in a dark forest, lived a dark little gnome named Marvin.  Marvin was known far and wide as the saddest person in the gnome kingdom.  While the other gnomes got naked and danced in the moonlight, Marvin sat in his burrow and worried about the color of the mole on his stomach.

One day, a beautiful little gnome name Bertha knocked on Marvin's door.  When he answered, Bertha said, "Marvin, I love you.  Would you take my hand and dance the dance of wedlock in the daffodils with me?"

Marvin shook his head.  "I can't dance.  Bad ankles."

Bertha persisted.  "Would you go down to the waterfall and swim in Love Lake with me?"

Marvin shook his head.  "I don't know how to swim."

Bertha tried again.  "Would you come out of your burrow and sit in the pines with me?"

"I can't," Marvin said.  "I'm allergic to bug bites and tree sap."

Bertha tried one more time.  "Marvin, will you kiss me in the gnomish way right now?"

Marvin said, "I don't have any gnomedems for protection."

Bertha went away, and Marvin closed his door and lived the rest of his life in complete darkness, never knowing a single minute of joy.

Moral of the story:  Girl gnomes are tramps.

And Saint Marty lived happily ever after.

Under the Window

by:  Adrienne Su

Day and night in the green hospital
the woman whose name means Fortunate Jade
grows smaller.  Her son forgets

more Chinese with every visit.
He sits by the bed and cries tearlessly.
He is fifteen and remembers his birthplace

as the sputter of its two taxis,
chickens in a wire box, deep-fried
oysters, and guttural speech.

Even in health, his mother looked
small in the supermarket aisles.

She hated the food; she said the people
were dumb as animals.  For the last

year, her flesh has been slowly
making its way back to China.

Her son does not tell her
she is still beautiful
even though he knows the words.

He rearranges the camellias,
asks her if she wants TV.
He jumps up, sits down, changes

the water in her glass.  He is in love
for the first time and can't talk
about it in any language.

This is the boy she prayed for,
implored all the gods,
even the foreign one, to deliver.

He arrived with a clear cry,
the first son of his generation.
The house filled with blessings

and fat red envelopes.  Her husband
found work in America, where
they learned to drive cars--

and now this.  Perhaps it was ill luck,
a bad ancestor, the nameless daughter
she had prayed out of existence.

It could be the water
from the strange pipes
or the foul teas she'd sipped

to turn the not-yet child
into a boy.  It could be
the songs she had crooned

to her belly, not thinking
of the unblessed rice paddies,
the slighted earth, the moon

that now glared into her window
through each night, saying,
You will not sleep.  You will not sleep.

Bertha, you ignorant slut!

July 17: Kind of Magnificence, Diamonds on the Soles, Gnomish Fairy Tail, Adrienne Su, "Under the Window"

Annie could not help but hide behind a car like a child, red-faced and laughing, trying her best to smack Ives on the head.  Ives received her shots with joy and mounted his own assault.  Raising his portfolio like a shield, he shouted at the top of his lungs, and, charging toward her, pulled her down into a drift of snow, where they briefly kissed and he felt the first fleeting heat of her tongue.  Then they rested, side by side, on the frigid pavement like dummies, wistfully looking upward at nature's swirling activity.  A kind of magnificence, heaven, as it were, coming down on them.

A really joyful passage from the book.  A young Ives and Annie, just getting to know each other.  They let go of all their cares and worries and simply behave like kids, throwing snowballs at each other, tackling each other in the wintery night.  It's one of those rare life moments:  complete and total happiness.  All their future pain and sadness not even a shadow on the radar of their lives.

Driving home from work this afternoon, I had a moment like that with a friend.  We had the windows of my car rolled down, and Paul Simon's album, Graceland, cranked on my CD player.  The wind was cool.  The sun was bright.  We cruised along and sang at the top of our lungs:  "She's got diamonds on the soles of her shoes....Diamonds on the soles of her shoes...."  It felt so good.

Tonight, I will not focus on my sister's illness.  It's her birthday.  Instead of talking about her chemotherapy or inability to speak, I choose to think of her in better times.  Camping in her trailer on a July weekend.  Swimming in the pool or lounging by the hot tub.  At night, listening to Garrison Keillor on the radio around the campfire.  Those are the memories I am going to celebrate.

We had cake tonight for my sister.  Called and sang to her.  The cake was yellow and chocolate, covered with chocolate frosting and a thick layer of sprinkles.  It was really good.  I know she would have enjoyed it.  A lot.

Tonight, when I get home, I'm going to continue the happiness.  After I clean the bathroom, listening to ABBA music (my sister's favorite), I will sit on the couch and read a good book.  Maybe I'll put on an episode of Kolchak the Night Stalker, one of her favorite TV shows when we were kids.  The only rule for the evening:  no sadness invited.

Once upon a time, in a dark forest, lived a dark little gnome named Marvin.  Marvin was known far and wide as the saddest person in the gnome kingdom.  While the other gnomes got naked and danced in the moonlight, Marvin sat in his burrow and worried about the color of the mole on his stomach.

One day, a beautiful little gnome name Bertha knocked on Marvin's door.  When he answered, Bertha said, "Marvin, I love you.  Would you take my hand and dance the dance of wedlock in the daffodils with me?"

Marvin shook his head.  "I can't dance.  Bad ankles."

Bertha persisted.  "Would you go down to the waterfall and swim in Love Lake with me?"

Marvin shook his head.  "I don't know how to swim."

Bertha tried again.  "Would you come out of your burrow and sit in the pines with me?"

"I can't," Marvin said.  "I'm allergic to bug bites and tree sap."

Bertha tried one more time.  "Marvin, will you kiss me in the gnomish way right now?"

Marvin said, "I don't have any gnomedems for protection."

Bertha went away, and Marvin closed his door and lived the rest of his life in complete darkness, never knowing a single minute of joy.

Moral of the story:  Girl gnomes are tramps.

And Saint Marty lived happily ever after.

Under the Window

by:  Adrienne Su

Day and night in the green hospital
the woman whose name means Fortunate Jade
grows smaller.  Her son forgets

more Chinese with every visit.
He sits by the bed and cries tearlessly.
He is fifteen and remembers his birthplace

as the sputter of its two taxis,
chickens in a wire box, deep-fried
oysters, and guttural speech.

Even in health, his mother looked
small in the supermarket aisles.

She hated the food; she said the people
were dumb as animals.  For the last

year, her flesh has been slowly
making its way back to China.

Her son does not tell her
she is still beautiful
even though he knows the words.

He rearranges the camellias,
asks her if she wants TV.
He jumps up, sits down, changes

the water in her glass.  He is in love
for the first time and can't talk
about it in any language.

This is the boy she prayed for,
implored all the gods,
even the foreign one, to deliver.

He arrived with a clear cry,
the first son of his generation.
The house filled with blessings

and fat red envelopes.  Her husband
found work in America, where
they learned to drive cars--

and now this.  Perhaps it was ill luck,
a bad ancestor, the nameless daughter
she had prayed out of existence.

It cold be the water
from the strange pipes
or the foul teas she'd sipped

to turn the not-yet child
into a boy.  It could be
the songs she had crooned

to her belly, not thinking
of the unblessed rice paddies,
the slighted earth, the moon

that now glared into her window
through each night, saying,
You will not sleep.  You will not sleep.

Bertha, you ignorant slut!

July 17: Quick Post, Happy Birthday, New Cartoon

I'm in the middle of a birthday party for my sister.  Today, she turned 50, so that opened up a whole wealth of birthday cards to choose from.  We are waiting for the strawberry shortcake.  We (my other sister and I) bought my sister a Kindle.  I can hardly wait for her to get it.

I spent most of the afternoon swimming with my daughter and her two friends.  (I affectionately refer to this trio as the Three Stooges.)  Larry, Moe, Curly, and I had a really good afternoon.

I have a new cartoon for you.  Still haven't heard anything about the poetry chapbook contest yet.  God is really trying to teach me to be patient.

Saint Marty needs to go eat some strawberry shortcake now.