December 4, 2024: "Here and There," Best Poet Friends, Imagination

I spent some time this morning writing with one of my best poet friends.  Now, I didn't write anything of any worth, but it felt good simply to sit in the same room with her and be myself, without having to put on any masks.

Or I didn't do that.

Billy Collins goes sailing--or he doesn't . . . 

Here and There

by: Billy Collins

I feel nothing this morning 

except the low hum of the ego, 

a constant, shameless sound behind the rib cage. 

I even keep forgetting my friend in surgery 

at this very hour. 

In other words, a perfect time to write 

about clouds rolling in after a week of sun 

and a woman beating laundry on a rock 

in front of her house overlooking the sea— 

all of which I am making up— 

the clouds, the house, the woman, even the laundry. 

Or take the lights strung in a harbor 

that I once saw from the bow of a sailboat, 

which seemed unreal at the time and more unreal now. 

Even if I were there again at the ship’s railing 

as I am sitting here in a lawn chair, who would believe it? 

Vast maple tree above me, are you really there? 

and you, open cellar door, 

and you, vast sky with sun and a fading contrail— 

no more real than the pretend city 

where she lies now under the investigating lights, 

an imaginary surgeon busy 

breaking into the vault of her phantom skull.

This whole poem by Collins speaks to the power of the imagination.  Is that maple tree outside my window real, or have I invented it, imbued it with enough detail to make it alive?  Is Collins' friend really having brain surgery, or is Collins just embellishing once more?  And does it really matter?  It's still the truth.

A couple weeks ago, I fell asleep on my living room couch, and I woke up in the middle of night, swearing that I heard someone pounding on the front door of my house.  My puppy even growled at the sound.  I never checked to see if anyone was standing on my front step.  All I did was make sure the inside door to the house was locked.

Imagination is a powerful force.  In the Book of Genesis, God literally speaks everything into being.  He says the word, and suddenly there's light.  Earth.  Heavens.  Land.  Water,  Stars.  Birds.  Fish.  Beasts.  Adam.  Eve.  God writes a poem, coughs breath into it, and the poem becomes as real as the freckle on my left wrist.

So tonight, as a snowstorm rages outside--or doesn't--I'm grateful for my poet friend.  For the bad poems I wrote this morning with her.  They're still sitting in my journal, without any breath in their lungs.

Now, if only Saint Marty could simply say "Let there be happiness in my heart" and feel it fluttering against his ribs like a trapped bird.

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.

December 2, 2024: "Central Park," Self Pity, Jody

I apologize if my posts these last few days have been downers.  Some people might even say that I'm wallowing in self pity.  

Believe me, that is not my intent.  I'm simply trying to write my way out of the deep valley in which I'm currently stuck.  It's no fun to feel overwhelmed as soon you open your eyes in the morning.  Or to wake up in the middle of the night and cry for an hour or so.  How about feeling inadequate in just about everything you attempt to do?

I'm not looking for attention.  I'm just just trying to survive.

Billy Collins feels sorry for himself . . . 

Central Park

by: Billy Collins

It’s hard to describe how that day in the park
was altered when I stopped to read
an official sign I came across near the great carousel,
my lips moving silently like the lips of Saint Ambrose.

As the carousel turned in the background,
all pinions and mirrors and the heads of horses
rising to the steam-blown notes of a calliope,
I was learning how the huge thing
was first designed to be powered
by a blind mule, as it turned out,
strapped to the oar of a wheel in an earthen
room directly below the merry turning of the carousel.

The sky did not darken with this news
nor did a general silence fall on the strollers
or the ball players on the green fields.
No one even paused to look my way,
though I must have looked terrible
as I stood there filling with sympathy
not so much for the harnessed beast
tediously making its rounds,

but instead of the blind mule within me
always circling in the dark —
the mule who makes me turn when my name is called
or causes me to nod with a wooden gaze
or sit doing nothing on a bench in the shape of a swan.

Somewhere, there must still be a door
to that underground room,
the lock rusted shut, the iron key misplaced,
last year’s leaves piled up against the sill,
and inside, a trace of straw on the floor,
a whiff of manure, and maybe a forgotten bit
or a bridle hanging from a hook in the dark.

Poor blind beast, I sang softly as I left the park,
poor blind me, poor blind earth turning blindly on its side.

Unlike Collins, I'm not walking around, quietly singing, poor blind me.  In fact, for most of today, I put on my game face.  I taught, answered emails, interacted with coworkers and students.  And nobody noticed anything amiss.

This evening, one of my oldest friends taught a needle felting class at the library.  Jody and I have known each other for over 30 years.  We worked together at a local bookstore.  That's where we first met.  Tonight, before her class, when we were visiting in my office, I told her about my current struggles and started to cry.

Jody came over to me, put her arms around my shoulders, and just held on.  She kept saying, "You're going to be alright.  You're going to be alright.  You'll get through this."  It was a healing mantra and made me feel a little less alone.

I know Jody would do anything for me, and she knows I would do the same for her.  That is the kind of friend everyone should have in their lives:  someone who just loves you, even when you're at your lowest.  

Saint Marty might be lost in a dark wood right now, but he has a friend who has left a candle burning in the window for him.

December 1, 2024: "Digging," Grace, "Looking for a Friend in a Crowd of Arriving Passengers: A Sonnet"

I often think of the past.  It's not because I'm an Indiana Jones geek.  It's because I'm a poet, and most poets I know are haunted by ghosts--people and places and events that have left strong imprints on our psyches.  I think the holidays especially are a time when the veil between the physical world and whatever exists beyond is much thinner.  Almost transparent.  My atheist friends would probably tell me that it's an acute awareness of mortality.

However it's labeled, December is rife with shades from the past.

Billy Collins does some archeology . . . 

Digging

by: Billy Collins

It seems whenever I dig in the woods
on the slope behind this house
I unearth some object from the past—
a shard of crockery or a bottle with its stopper missing,

sometimes a piece of metal, maybe handled
by the dairy farmer who built this house
over a century and a half ago
as civil war waged unabated to the south.

So it’s never a surprise
when the shovel-tip hits a rusted bolt,
or a glass knob from a drawer—
little hands waving from the past.

And today, it’s a buried toy,
a little car with a dent in the roof
and enough flecks of paint to tell it was blue.
Shrouded in a towel, the body of our cat

lies nearby on the ground where I settled her
in the mottled light of the summer trees,
and I still have to widen the hole
and deepen it for her by at least another foot,

but not before I stop for a moment
with the once-blue car idling in my palm,
to imagine the boy who grew up here
and to see that two of the crusted wheels still spin.

This Collins poem is certainly a reminder of death in a lot of ways--returning to the dust and mud from which all sprang.  It's also full of apparitions:  the dairy farmer, the Civil War, the boy who owned the toy car, and the cat awaiting burial.  

I'm pretty tired tonight.  I spent the morning playing music for church services.  Then I did some grocery shopping and took my son to buy good cologne.  (Yes, he's at that age when teenagers become aware of bodily smells.)  When I got home, I cooked dinner and folded laundry.

That might not sound like I accomplished much today, but it's all I could manage.  Small, easily-completed tasks.  I'm trying to practice some selfcare.  The very idea of trying to do much else overwhelms me.  I had so much hope and joy before November 5, and now I call it a victory if I toast a piece of bread and butter it.

And I've been thinking a lot about my ghosts of Christmases past, as well.  They've been with me quite a bit today.  Even as I sit on my couch typing this post, I can still feel them reading every word on my laptop screen.  When I'm done, I plan on rewatching a documentary about the life of Flannery O'Connor.  Because, in a weird way, it lifts my spirits a little--this gravely ill Southern writer who never let her life circumstances slow down her creativity.

Flannery once said, "All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful."  She suffered from lupus for 12 years before finally succumbing to it at the age of 39.  In that time, she became one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.  I believe that she saw her affliction as grace.  It gave her the freedom to write her strange, violent, God-haunted fictions.

I'm not sure I have O'Connor's faith to accept my current struggles as grace.  It sure didn't feel like grace when I was weeping uncontrollably about an hour ago.  Yet, here I am, finishing the last few sentences of this grief-haunted blog post.

I can't really bring myself to contemplate tomorrow or the next day or the day after that.  For right now, I can only face the next moment.  That's pretty much all that anybody can do.  And it's enough.

Here's another Billy Collins poem that made Saint Marty laugh tonight:

Looking for a Friend in a Crowd of

Arriving Passengers:  A Sonnet

by: Billy Collins

Not John Whalen.

Not John Whalen.

Not John Whalen.

Not John Whalen.

Not John Whalen.

Not John Whalen.

Not John Whalen.

Not John Whalen.

Not John Whalen.

Not John Whalen.

Not John Whalen.

Not John Whalen.

Not John Whalen.

John Whalen.

And another reminder for myself and anyone else who needs it . . .