December 3, 2024: "Osprey," Splintered the Clouds, Wonder and Astonishment

I saw something beautiful this morning.  After several days of gray skies and heavy snow, the clouds opened up, and the sun splintered the clouds with light.  

Billy Collins goes birdwatching . . . 

Osprey

by: Billy Collins

Oh, large brown, thickly feathered creature
with a distinctive white head,
you, perched on the top branch
of a tree near the lake shore,

as soon as I guide this boat back to the dock
and walk up the grassy path to the house,
before I unzip my windbreaker
and lift the binoculars from around my neck,

before I wash the gasoline from my hands,
before I tell anyone I'm back,
and before I hang the ignition key on its nail,
or pour myself a drink—

I'm thinking a vodka soda with lemon—
I will look you up in my
illustrated guide to North American birds
and I promise I will learn what you are called.

Poets are always on the lookout for wonder and astonishment, be it an osprey or snail or marshmallow or sunrise.  If wonder and astonishment are in short supply, then it's the poet's job to hunt them down, wherever they can be found.

As the faithful disciples of this blog (and there are at least two) know, I've been more than a little preoccupied with darkness since Thanksgiving night.  Not by choice, mind you.  Nobody would volunteer to be sad all day and night.  To wake up at 2 a.m. and cry for an hour or so.  

So, this morning, I watched the sun rise over Lake Superior after I dropped my son off at school and my wife at work.  I do this frequently at the library, since I have access to the roof of the building.  In the spring and autumn, it's a glorious way to start a day.  It allows light into the deepest corners of the heart.  In the winter, it's a different experience.  Still beautiful, but coupled with an aching cold.  

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I was able to embrace beauty today, despite freezing my ass off.  Unlike Collins, I didn't need to look up the name of anything.  No osprey to identify.  It was just me.  The cold.  The lake.  And the sun.  

For those few, brief, shining moments, Saint Marty was flooded with wonder.

October 11: Eloise Klein Healy, "Asking About You," National Coming Out Day

Asking About You

by:  Eloise Klein Healy

Instead of having sex all the time I like to hold you and not get into some involved discussion of what life means. I want you to tell me something I don’t know about you. Something about the day before that photograph in which you’re standing on your head. I want to know about softball and the team picture. Why are you so little next to the others? Were you younger? Were you small as a girl? What I want most is to have been a girl with you and played on the opposite team so I could have liked you and competed against you at the same time.

_________________________

Today is National Coming Out Day.

I have seen some of my closest friends rejected by their families after coming out.  Have seen their pain.  I don't understand how anyone can hate people simply for being who they are.  Do you hate a pine tree for not being an apple tree?  Do you hate a blue jay for not being a cardinal?  The moon for not being the sun?

Tonight, I celebrate people who have the courage to be themselves.

Saint Marty thinks that's pretty miraculous.

August 18: Darkness, Poet of the Week, Mary Oliver, "The Uses of Sorrow"

OK, so I wrote about dreams in my previous post.

I'm not feeling very dreamy this evening.  I'm feeling a little dark.  This week's Poet of the Week, Mary Oliver, knows a few things about darkness.  Sometimes, it's difficult to see the sun through the clouds.  But clouds are important, too.

Tonight's poem is short, but it captures my thoughts perfectly.

Mary Oliver sometimes makes Saint Marty think he should give up writing.

The Uses of Sorrow

by:  Mary Oliver

(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.

There can't be light without darkness

March 13: Kale Chips, Lawnmower Tongue, Sun

The Upper Peninsula is in the middle of a March heat wave.  For the fourth or fifth day in a row, temperatures have been pushing close to sixty degrees.  Today is no different.  The snow banks are quickly vanishing, and water is running down the streets.  Pretty soon, the piles of dog crap will start to emerge in people's backyards.

Run like the wind from these!

The reason I'm focusing on the weather and warmth is that I tried a snack today that reminds me of summer.  One of my coworkers made kale chips last night.  If you don't know what kale chips are, you're lucky.  Basically, my coworker baked kale, adding sea salt or something to it.  It's supposed to be a "healthy" alternative to Pringles or Cheetos or Fritos.  Well, I decided to be adventurous this afternoon.  Yup, I ate a kale chip.

It was green.  It was light.  It was salty.  It tasted like shit.

I don't mean literal shit.  I mean it tasted like I'd stuffed my mouth with grass clippings.  I walked around for the next hour or so with lawnmower tongue.  I have just now erased the lingering sting from my taste buds.  It took a lot of water and some candy corn.

The point of my post is that, just because it seems like spring outside, you don't have to cram manure in your mouth to fertilize your stomach.

That's just how Saint Marty sees it.