August 4, 2025: “Mrs. Krikorkian,” First Day, “Courage”

I got a text from my daughter’s significant other this morning.  It contained a picture of my daughter standing against a white wall, backpack on her shoulders, smiling nervously, with the message “first day of school picture!”  Even though she’s about 24 years past Head Start, I could still see my five-year-old little girl in her face, and it broke my heart a little bit.

Sharon Olds is helped by a teacher . . . 

Mrs. Kirkorian

by: Sharon Olds

She saved me. When I arrived in 6th grade,
a known criminal, the new teacher
asked me to stay after school the first day, she said
I’ve heard about you. She was a tall woman,
with a deep crevice between her breasts,
and a large, calm nose. She said,
This is a special library pass.
As soon as you finish your hour’s work—
that hour’s work that took ten minutes
and then the devil glanced into the room
and found me empty, a house standing open—
you can go to the library. Every hour
I’d zip through the work in a dash and slip out of my
seat as if out of God’s side and sail
down to the library, solo through the empty
powerful halls, flash my pass
and stroll over to the dictionary
to look up the most interesting word
I knew, spank, dipping two fingers
into the jar of library paste to
suck that tart mucilage as I
came to the page with the cocker spaniel’s
silks curling up like the fine steam of the body.
After spank, and breast, I’d move on
to Abe Lincoln and Helen Keller,
safe in their goodness till the bell, thanks
to Mrs. Krikorian, amiable giantess
with the kind eyes. When she asked me to write
a play, and direct it, and it was a flop, and I
hid in the coat-closet, she brought me a candy-cane
as you lay a peppermint on the tongue, and the worm
will come up out of the bowel to get it.
And so I was emptied of Lucifer
and filled with school glue and eros and
Amelia Earhart, saved by Mrs. Krikorian.
And who had saved Mrs. Krikorian?
When the Turks came across Armenia, who
slid her into the belly of a quilt, who
locked her in a chest, who mailed her to America?
And that one, who saved her, and that one—
who saved her, to save the one
who saved Mrs. Krikorian, who was
standing there on the sill of 6th grade, a
wide-hipped angel, smokey hair
standing up weightless all around her head?
I end up owing my soul to so many,
to the Armenian nation, one more soul someone
jammed behind a stove, drove
deep into a crack in a wall,
shoved under a bed. I would wake
up, in the morning, under my bed—not
knowing how I had got there—and lie
in the dusk, the dustballs beside my face
round and ashen, shining slightly
with the eerie comfort of what is neither good nor evil.

I’ve been a college professor for going on 30 years now.  Doing the math, that means I have taught well over 3,000 students.  That’s a lot of young minds for me to warp and confuse.  I’m not sure I made a difference in any student’s life, but I did my damndest.  

I believe in public education.  In fact, I believe every person deserves to go to school for free, including colleges and universities.  Having educated citizens benefits any country, unless the politicians want to take advantage of their constituents’ ignorance and fear.  (I’m not referring to any specific country, I swear.)  Education saved me from being a plumber—a fate that would have made me completely miserable.

Today was my daughter’s first day of med school classes.  When I spoke to her last night on the phone, she was incredibly nervous.  I did my Fathers Knows Best best to reassure her and calm her down.  I’m not sure I succeeded all that much.

My daughter has wanted to be a doctor almost her whole life.  She’s never wavered, from middle school to undergraduate college.  Me?  I became an English major after four years of math and computer programming classes.  I worked close to 25 years in the healthcare industry. Then COVID came along, and I decided on a change of career:  library programming.  Long story short, my daughter is smarter than me in a lot of ways.  She is going to make the world a better place, one patient at a time.  

I try to make the world a better place one blog post and poem at a time.  It’s up to you, faithful disciple, to decide whether I make any difference at all.  (By the way, my daughter just texted me.  She’s exhausted but had a great day.)

Saint Marty wrote a first-day-of-school poem for tonight, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Write a poem about a drug that doesn’t exist.  Give it an abstract name like “Violence” or something unique like that”Milk Money.”  What does this drug do?  Is it more lexi in al or something more like LSD?  Is it sold legally or illegally?  Can this drug save the world or ruin it?  Begin the poem, That August . . .

Courage

by: Martin Achatz

This August morning, my daughter texts

me a picture of herself, smiling, backpack

slung over her shoulders, hair wavy

as lake sand.  First day of medical school

her caption reads.  I stare at my phone

screen a long time, at that face I know

better than the scars on my knuckles.

I scroll through my camera roll, find

her first-day-of-kindergarten picture.

I toggle back and forth between the two

images, watch her grow and shrink,

become older and younger with swipes

of my thumb, as if I’m flipping through

a picture book, animating my daughter

from age five to age 24, time-lapsed

like a seed stretching into a marigold.

I remember I made her take a Flintstones

vitamin, watched her chew and swallow

its bitter chalk, the morning she toddled into

Mrs. Edwards’ classroom the first time.

Today, I wish I could give her a Courage

vitamin, something made out of natural 

ingredients like cactus thorn or octopus

ink, to straighten her spine, melt away

layers of insomnia.  I’d flavor it

with butterscotch, to remind her

of the cookies I always made for

first days, so she had something

sweet to look forward to when she

got home.  I’m scared she told me

last night from six hours away, and 

I fought the urge to pick out her outfit,

braid her hair, and read her a bedtime story,

the one about the caterpillar that eats

the whole damn book, because it

isn’t afraid to taste anything,

anything at all.

July 12, 2025: “The Feelings,” Dropping Off Daughter, “Phobophobia”

It’s been a pretty emotional day for me and my family.

We spent most of it traveling.  My daughter and her significant other moved downstate for her to attend medical school, so we caravanned to Mount Pleasant and helped them unload belongings into their new home.  Then we went out for dinner after returning the U-haul truck.  

Now, I’m sitting in a hotel room.  My son is swimming, and my wife is snoring (loudly) in bed.  I’ve been trying to process my current state of mind, sorting and cataloging my feelings.

Sharon Olds deals with some strong emotions . . .

The Feelings

by: Sharon Olds

When the intern listened to the stopped heart

I stared at him, as if he or I

were wild, were from some other world, I had

lost the language of features, I could not

know what it meant for a stranger to push

the gown up along the body of my father.

My face was wet, my father’s face

was faintly moist with the sweat of his life,

the last moments of hard work.

I was leaning against the wall, in the corner, and

he lay on the bed, we were both doing something

and everyone else in the room believed in the Christian God,

they called my father the shell on the bed, I was the

only one there who knew

he was entirely gone, the only one

there to say goodbye to his body

that was all he was, I held, hard,

to his foot, I thought of the Inuit elder

holding the stern of the death canoe, I

let him out slowly into the physical world.

I felt the dryness of his lips under

my lips, I felt how even my slight

kiss moved his head on the pillow

they way things move as if on their own in shallow water,

I felt his hair rush through my fingers

like a wolf’s, the walls shifted, the floor, the

ceiling wheeled as if I was not

walking out of the room but the room was

backing away around me.  I would have

liked to stay beside him, ride by his

shoulder while they drove him to the place where they would

               burn him, 

see him safely into the fire,

touch his ashes in their warmth, and bring my

finger to my tongue.  The next morning,

I felt my husband’s body on me

crushing me sweetly like a weight laid heavy on some

soft thing, some fruit, holding me

hard to this world.  Yes the tears came

out like juice and sugar from the fruit—

the skin thins, and breaks, and rips, there are

laws on this earth, and we live by them.

Yes, there are laws on this earth, and we all have to live by them.  Gravity.  Relativity.  Motion.  We don’t even think about most of these universal laws.  They just occur naturally.

There are other, unwritten laws, as well.  Don’t eat yellow snow.  Don’t shit where you eat.  (That was one of my dad’s favorites.).  Don’t vote for a convicted felon to be President of the United States and expect it to turn out well.  You get the idea.  It’s all common sense.

Kids are supposed to grow up, move out, and create lives for themselves.  That’s one of the laws of parenting, as I’ve been saying these last couple weeks.  Mothers and fathers eventually work themselves out of a job.  They become outmoded.

My daughter spread her wings today, and all I can do as her father is gaze up at the heavens and watch her fly.  And be happy.  Can’t say that I’ve reached the “happy” part of that formula yet.  I’m sort of stuck in the “where did all the time go?” phase.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m thrilled for my daughter and her significant other.  She’s had this doctor dream since she was a young girl, and seeing her dreams come true is thrilling.  I’m just struggling with the whole letting go.  (It seems like Olds is having a hard time with letting go of her father in today’s poem, as well.)  

Letting go has never been my strong suit.  I don’t like change.  Hate it when Walmart rearranges its merchandise.  I reread favorite novels because then I know what to expect, plot-wise.  I rewatch movies and TV shows for the same reason.  As the husband of one of my best friends once said, “There’s nothing wrong with sameness.”

But, today, sameness doesn’t cut it.  I have to let go.  My daughter has always been smarter than me and more together than me.  I’m still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up, but she has known the answer to that question since she was about eight or nine years old.  That doesn’t make this process any easier.

I’m sure, when my wife, son, and I get in the car tomorrow morning to head home, there are going to be tears shed.  (I think that’s a law on this earth, as well.)  This parting will be a first for all of us.  I thought it was bad when she moved just a half mile away.  Now, she’s going to be almost six hours away.  I predict weeping for a good portion of the return trip.  (Another law.)  Lots of difficult feelings to sort through.

Saint Marty wrote a poem about feelings and fears for tonight, based on the following prompt from July 9 of The Daily Poet:

This exercise is inspired by the poetry of Aimee Nezhukumatathil, author of At the Drive-in Volcano (Tupelo Press, 2007).  Write a poem about one or more phobias.  Do you have alliumphobia, a fear of garlic?  Or how about enetophobia, a fear of pins?  You can access a complete list of phobias at:  www.phobialist.com.  For inspiration, take a peek at Aimee’s wonderful poem “Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia,” published at www.slate.com/articles/arts/poem/2004/01/hippopotomonstrosequippedaliophobia.html

Phobophobia

by: Martin Achatz

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

               — Franklin Delano Roosevelt

I discovered I am afraid of heights

on top of the Empire State Building

on a cold March afternoon, which is like

finding out you’re afraid of water

by booking passage on the Lusitania

or realizing clowns terrify you

when you enroll in Ringling Bros.

Clown College.  FDR tried to comfort

shanty towns and soup kitchens

by ranking fear as Public Enemy

Number One, before Pretty Boy Floyd

and John Dillinger.  This morning, 

I’m scheduled for a root canal.  When I say

those two words, friends wince,

look at me as if I’ve just announced

a terminal diagnosis.  I see it 

written on their faces—capital “F”

fear—even though I’m the one

facing shots and drilling.  Perhaps

it’s contagious, like whooping

cough or measles.  Soon we’ll be

in the middle of a global fear 

pandemic, everyone sheltering 

in place to avoid black cats, broken

mirrors, cracks in the sidewalk.  

We’ll sit at home, binge Tiger King

again, get all nostalgic for when

that fat spider in the bathtub was

the only thing we had to worry about.

June 21: "Song for Autumn," Summer Solstice Sun, Haiku Workshop

Mary Oliver's love song to autumn . . .

Song for Autumn

by:  Mary Oliver

In the deep fall

     don't you imagine the leaves think how

comfortable it will be to touch

     the earth instead of the

nothingness of air and the endless

     freshets of wind?  And don't you think

the trees themselves, especially those with mossy,

     warm caves, begin to think

of the birds that will come--six, a dozen--to sleep

     inside their bodies?  And don't you hear

the goldenrod whispering goodbye,

     the everlasting being crowned with the first

tuffets of snow?  The pond

     vanishes, and the white field over which

the fox runs so quickly brings out

     its blue shadows.  And the wind pumps its

bellows.  And at evening especially,

     the piled firewood shifts a little,

longing to be on its way.

This is why I love Mary Oliver--poems like this.  The world is unpredictable and beautiful, and every time I encounter Mary on the page, I find myself stunned into wonder.  

I took a haiku writing workshop this afternoon.  I've always loved the simplicity of haiku--its concentration on image and surprise.  At the end of a haiku, I feel as if I will never see the world quite the same way.  I am altered.

Now, I'm not going to turn this post into a lecture on poetic form.  Not going to recite my favorite haiku,  (It's "The Pope's Penis" by Sharon Olds, although some may argue with me about its haiku-ness.)  Not going to talk about syllabics or nature imagery.  If you want a poetics lesson, there are plenty of good books out there on the subject, written by people much smarter than me.  

What I will say is that I think Mary Oliver writes extended haiku.  Her poems are firmly grounded in nature and the seasons, and, when I read them, I am transported.  Sometimes stunned and breathless.  She does that at the end of today's poem, making the firewood hungry for flames.  I will never think of autumn in quite the same way, and autumn has been my favorite season all my life.

So, during today's poetry workshop, we were given 40 minutes to go outside to the library's flower gardens and write haiku, as many as we could.  There I sat with a large group of poets, under the summer solstice sun, trying to capture the mystery of creation in three short lines of verse.  

Now, at the end of the longest day of the year, I will confess that, although they are short and fairly simple in imagery and language, haikus are a bitch to write.  I always imagined Mary Oliver sort of living a life of constant wonder, each waking moment a haiku.

Of course, I'm sure that Mary struggled with language and writing, as all writers do.  Her simple, beautiful poems are the result of divine inspiration and many, many hours of poetic blood, sweat, and tears (not always in that order).  Effortless writing requires a lot of effort.

Saint Marty wants to be Mary Oliver when he grows up.

Some haiku from this afternoon . . . 

Summer Solstice Haiku

by:  Martin Achatz

In the blooming violets

     a chipmunk

gorges on purple. 

A small green caterpillar

     on a friend's thumb

          crawls toward butterfly.

A finger of lupine

     points at me.

"Write!" it says.

Church steeple

     against June sky

makes me thirsty for wine.

Blue birdbath 

     in library shadow

washes away words.

Spider on my journal

     page doesn't care

about syllables or lines.

Poets

     in a June garden

          picking poems.