December 23, 2025: “The Protestor,” Illness, “Winter Solstice Haiku”

Merry Christmas Eve eve!

Yes, it is the day before the day before.  It was my intention, once my vacation started, to blog every night.  However, my son decided to bring a particularly nasty bug home from school last Friday, so my entire household has been battling fevers, coughs, runny noses, and exhaustion.  Today is the first day I have felt almost human since Saturday morning.

It was also my intention to do all kinds of Christmas prep over the weekend.  Wrapping presents.  Baking cookies.  Working on my Christmas poem.  Filling out our Christmas cards.  That all went out the window, too.  I am now on my fourth day of illness, and all I have to show for it is a pecan pie and a stack of Christmas cards that went into the mail yesterday. 

Since I’ve had a lot of time to just lay on my couch, I’ve been reflecting a lot on ghosts of Christmas.  People who are no longer a part of my life, by death or design.  I think this time of year lends itself to this kind of nostalgia.  The Christmases of today simply can’t hold a candle to the Christmases of our childhoods, when Dad and Mom and Grandmas and Grandpas made sure we got everything we wanted from Santa.

Sharon Olds gets nostalgic about a person she once knew . . . 

The Protestor

by: Sharon Olds

     (for Bob Stein)

We were driving north, through the snow, you said

you had turned twenty-one during Vietnam, you were

1-A.  The road curved

and curved back, the branches laden,

you said you had decided not to go

to Canada.  Which meant you’d decided to

go to jail, a slender guy of

twenty-one, which meant you’d decided to be

raped rather than to kill, if it was their 

life or your ass, it was your ass.

We drove in silence, such soft snow

so heavy borne-down.  That was when I’d come to

know I loved the land of my birth—

when the men had to leave, they could never come back,

I looked and loved every American

needle on every American tree, I thought

my soul was in it.  But if I were taken and

used, taken and used, I think

my soul would die, I think I’d be easily broken,

the work of my life over.  And you’d said,

This is the word of my life, to say,

with my body itself, You fuckers you cannot

tell me who to kill.  As if there were a

spirit free of the body, safe from it.

After a while, you talked about your family,

not starting as I had, with

husbands and kids, leavening everyone else out—

you started with your grandparents 

and worked your way back, away from yourself,

deeper and deeper into Europe, into

the Middle East, the holy book

buried sometimes in the garden, sometimes

swallowed and carried in the ark of the body itself.

Yes, people shuttle in and out of our lives all the time.  My life has been blessed with loving parents and siblings.  Friends who care deeply, feel deeply.  Over the last few days, as I’ve slept and hallucinated with cold medicine and ibuprofen, I have thought quite a bit about my mother, in particular.  This Christmas season, I will be playing or singing at six church services in the next five days.  My mother is the reason I’m a church organist.  She’s the one who made me take piano lessons for twelve years straight, and she’s also the one who volunteered my keyboard talents to our parish priest over 40 years ago.  The rest, as they say, is history.

So, my mom is haunting me this Christmas, as are all the memories of Christmases past.  Nothing can ever stay the same, except in a photograph or video.  Even poems don’t stay the same.  A poem that I read five years ago (maybe about a mother’s death) has a completely different meaning for me tonight.  I had wonderful Christmases as a kid.  A living room floor literally overtaken with presents.  Tupperware upon Tupperware filled with cookies.  Baked ham and rolls.  I was really lucky.

Those days are long gone now, and I have to accept that.  My business is now making those same kind of treasured memories for my kids.  I want my daughter and son to look back with joy and longing at Christmases with my wife and I.  I think we’re accomplishing that.  Earlier this evening, my daughter phoned me from the road (she’s on her way home with her significant other).  We talked for over 40 minutes, and it was all about all our family traditions, from pumpkin puff pancakes to watching Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas.  

So, I am on the mend, although, when I’m done typing this post, I’m going to go lie on the couch and stay there, probably for the rest of the night.  Tomorrow, it’s gift wrapping, house cleaning, ham baking, and music practicing.  (By the way, I got up this morning at 5:30 a.m. to work on my Christmas poem.  Three hours later, it was drafted and done.). Tomorrow night?  Two church services.  

Tonight, however, I’m just happy that I’m feeling slightly better, and I’m looking forward to some good family time over the next few days.

Saint Marty wrote a poem for the Winter Solstice.  He was just too damn sick to post it.  It’s based (very loosely) on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

In celebration of the winter solstice, write a poem that begins 96% of the universe is made up of the dark and unknown . . .  Your poem might posit what is the other 4% made of or perhaps share (with specific images) why you enjoy (or don’t enjoy) winter.

Winter Solstice Haiku

by: Martin Achatz

snow and wind all day

rabbit tracks in the backyard

winter syllables

moon trapped in branches

pine needles stitch the heavens

embroidered solstice

coughing at midnight

my eyes water with fever

my body blizzards

angel tree topper

face coffee brown like Jesus

ICE storm tomorrow

December 19, 2025: "Where Will Love Go?", Long Weeks, "Reincarnation"

I am writing this post the end of a long couple weeks--after final teaching and grading, last holiday events at the library, and the terrible murders of Rob Reiner and his wife last weekend in California.  In short, I'm exhausted with life and the world, and Christmas is fast approaching.  

Today, in particular, was very challenging for me in many ways that aren't interesting enough to discuss here.  But, when I got home this evening, I went into my office and ate dinner alone because I was not fit to be around other people.  I withdrew so I didn't say or do something that would hurt my wife or son.  On top of all that, I've been thinking a lot about my friend, Helen, who always lifted my spirits when I was in a state of ennui such as this.  I miss her joy and love.

Sharon Olds meditates on the conservations of love . . . 

Where Will Love Go?

by: Sharon Olds

Where will love go?  When my father

died, and my love could no longer shine

on the oily, drink-contused slopes of his skin,

then my love for him lived inside me,

and lived wherever the fog they made of him

coiled like a spirit.  And when I die

my love for him will live in my vapor

and live in my children, some of it

still rubbed into the grain of the desk my father left me

and the oxblood pores of the leather chair which he

sat in, in a stupor, when I was a child, and then

gave me passionately after his death--our

souls seem locked in it, together,

two alloys in a metal, and we're there

in the black and chrome workings of his forty-pound

1932 Underwood,

the trapezes stilled inside it on the desk

in the front of the chair.  Even when the children

have died, our love will live in their children

and still be here in the arm of the chair,

locked in it, like the secret structure of matter,

but what if we ruin everything,

the earth burning like a human body,

storms of soot wreathing it

in permanent winter?  Where will love go?

Will the smoke be made of animal love,

will the clouds of roasted ice, circling

the globe, be all that is left of love,

will the sphere of cold, turning ash,

seen by no one, heard by no one,

hold all

our love?  Then love

is powerless and means nothing.

The ending of that poem is pretty bleak.  Right now, at the end of 2025, there is a climate crisis.  Most of the rest of the world is trying to save this planet from humankind's greed, sloth, and stupidity.  Yet, in my home country, the people currently in charge are hell-bent on drilling and AIing and mining and Facebooking and manufacturing the world into oblivion.  Love does not enter the equation, and that mean that there is a love crisis on top of the global climate crisis.  (Proof of a the love crisis:  ICE raids, mass shootings, unaffordable healthcare.)

It's difficult not to be a cynical Scrooge this holiday season with all of that going on.  Yet, over the next couple weeks, I will endeavor to buoy my yuletide spirits in any way that I can--cookies, chocolates, It's a Wonderful Life, rereading my favorite Christmas book of all time (Mr. Ives' Christmas by Oscar Hijuelos), which never ceases to restore my faith in humanity.

I'm hoping my difficult mood this evening is simply a fluke, brought on by the stress of last-minute work responsibilities and a severe lack of sleep.  (I think, over the last week or so, I've been averaging about four to five hours of slumber a night.)  Tomorrow, I will wake, finish up my last library chores for the year, and throw myself into Christmas overdrive--addressing cards, wrapping presents, planning menus, watching Charlie Brown learn what Christmas is all about from Linus.  and reading some Mary Oliver poems.

'Tis the season, as my part of the globe tips away from darkness, to embrace the return of light and, hopefully, love and goodness.  A love crisis is easily reversed--just don't behave like an asshole.

Saint Marty wrote a poem for this evening about faith and belief, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Are you for or against getaway weekends in Vegas?  Do you believe wolves should be reintroduced in the western US?  What's your idea of a perfect day?  Write a credo poem that shares the core beliefs that guide your actions.

Reincarnation

by: Martin Achatz

I used to believe I was Flannery O'Connor,

practiced walking with crutches, spoke

with a thick Southern accent, ate grits

for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, tried

to talk my parents into raising peafowl

in our backyard so we could watch

them shiver their feathers into stained

glass.  When I turned 24, I waited for

red butterflies to appear on my cheeks

and forehead, for my hair to thin,

fall out in clumps.  More than anything, 

though, I kept an eye out for a hitchhiker

who looked a lot like Kevin Spacey to shoot

me in the chest every day of my life, 

just to keep me honest and good. 

December 12, 2025: “You Kindly,” Abtraction, “Democracy”

We all deal with abstractions daily.

In the morning, I say “I love you” to my wife when I drop her off at work.  During the day, there will be moments of joy or sorrow or anger or wonder or disappointment or freedom—all abstractions for states of mind and heart.  And, at night, right before he goes to bed, my 17-year-old son says “I love you” to me, and he stands there, waits for me to say “I love you back to him.”  

Abstractions haunt us.

Sharon Olds writes about sex . . . 

You Kindly

by: Sharon Olds

Because I felt too weak to move

you kindly moved for me, kneeling

and turning, until you could take my breast-tip in the

socket of your lips, and my womb went down

on itself, drew sharply over and over

to its tightest shape, the way, when newborns

nurse, the fist of the uterus

with each, milk, tug, powerfully

shuts.  I saw your hand, near me, your

daily hand, your thumbnail,

the quiet hairs on your fingers—to see your

hand its ordinary self, when your mouth at my

breast was drawing sweet gashes of come

up from my womb made black fork-flashes of a

celibate’s lust shoot through me.  And I couldn’t

lift my head, and you swiveled, and came down

close to me, delicate blunt

touch of your hard penis in long

caresses down my face, species

happiness, calm which gleams

with fearless anguished desire.  It found

my pouring mouth, the3 back of my throat,

and the bright wall which opens.  It seemed to

take us hours to move the blonde

creatures so their gods could be fitted to each other,

and then, at last, home, root

in the earth, wing in the air.  As it finished,

it seemed my sex was a grey flower

the color of the brain, smooth and glistening,

a complex calla or iris which you

we’re creating with the errless digit

of your sex.  But then, as it finished again,

one could not speak of a blossom, or the blossom

was stripped away, as if, until

that moment, the cunt had been clothed, still,

in the thinnest garment, and now was bare

or more than bare, silver wet-suit of

matter itself gone, nothing

there but the paradise fall.  And then

more, that cannot be told—may be,

but cannot be, things that did not

have to do with me, as if some

wires crossed, and history

or war, or the witches possessed, or the end

of life where happening in me, or I was

in a borrowed body, I knew

what I could not know, did-was-done-to

what I cannot do-be-done-to, so when

we returned, I cried, afraid for a moment

I was dead, and had got my wish to come back,

once, and sleep with you, on a summer

afternoon, in an empty house

where no one could hear us.

I lowered the salt breasts of my eyes

to your mouth, and you sucked,

then I looked at your face, at its absence of unkindness,

its giving that absence off as a matter

I cannot name, I was seeing not you

but something that lives between us, that can live

only between us.  I stroked back the hair in

pond and sex rivulets

from your forehead, gently, raked it back

along your scalp,

I did not think of my father’s hair

in death, those oiled paths, I lay

along your length and did not think how he

did not love me, how he trained me not to be loved.

Olds is dealing with a lot of big abstractions in this poem—love and sex and sadness and passion.  Most poets and writers will tell you that they write in order to know what they think.  That’s what Olds is doing here, capturing this very intimate moment between herself and her significant other, deciphering its meaning for herself and her readers..  

The abstractions that has been haunting me this week is grief.  On Tuesday, I received an email from a good friend, telling me that his wife (and good friend to my family, as well) had transitioned from this life.  She had been struggling for about three years with rheumatoid arthritis which caused a very rare respiratory condition.  The news of her death, while not completely unexpected, still cast a pall over the rest of the week for me.  

No matter what I type here, I will never be able to communicate what a light she was in the world.  On occasion, my wife and I had dinner and drinks with these friends.  The thing that always struck me about our meetups was that my friend’s wife never complained or spoke about her health issues.  In fact, more than anything else, she just seemed annoyed by the physical limitations of her illness.  Yet, in my mind, she always remained vibrant and engaged and full of joy.  I’m sure she had her dark moments during the last year or so, but she still enjoyed a glass of wine, sweet potato fries, and good conversation.

That’s how I’ll always remember her—laughing, loving life, cherishing friends and family.  I grieve that I will no longer be able to see her smile, hear her laugh.  And I grieve for my friend, who is simply one of the best people I’ve ever had the privilege to know.

That’s my abstraction for tonight—loss and sadness.  

Saint Marty wrote a poem for tonight, based on the following prompt from December 8 in The Daily Poet:

Begin a poem “Dear Time” or “Dear Eternity” but instead of continuing in the realm of abstraction, make your letter specific and concrete.  Perhaps you are unhappy with these concepts.  Voice your opposition!  If you get stuck, include one or more of the following words in your letter:  skin, geography, regret, tugboat, pudding, fibrous, pumice.

Democracy

by: Martin Achatz

This December, I festoon my front porch

     with white lights.

Down the street, my neighbor’s front porch

     blazes red, green, blue, gold.

I had lunch with a friend today:

     a burger, hold the pickles and mustard.

My friend’s burger dripped mustard,

     extra pickles littered his plate.

I watch a snowstorm approach on radar

     like unwanted relatives at Christmas.

A poet friend waxes her skis, puts them

     in her car for tomorrow morning’s glide.

My wife sleeps on her side, breath

     easy as sunlight.

My friends wife chews each bite of air

     as if it’s her last.

Tonight, my backyard is a blank

     sheet of Foolscap.  

By dawn, rabbits will have scribbled

     haiku on it all the way to the alley.

December 7, 2025: “The Spouses Waking Up in the Hotel Mirror,” Almost Migraine, “Writing Life of Charles Dickens”

Being a poet and blogger is sort of like constantly looking at yourself and your life in a mirror, but not in an egotistical way.  You look to understand and interpret, maybe to find something beautiful.

I’ve been a writer my whole life.  I have a box of old diaries and journals under a bed.  They go all the way back to the fifth or sixth grade.  It was at that time that I decided I wanted to record my thoughts and feelings and experiences.  Gabriel Garcia Marquez has a short story about a family who finds an angel in the backyard; they tie the angel up and charge people money to see him.  I first read that story when I was in ten or eleven, right around the time I started my career as a diarist.  (By the way, I’ve never had the courage to go back and reread those old notebooks.  I’m afraid of what I’ll find out about myself.)

Sharon Olds spends some time gazing at herself in a mirror . . . 

The Spouses Waking Up in the Hotel Mirror

by: Sharon Olds

The man looked like himself, only more so,

his face lucent, his silence profound as if

inevitable, but the woman looked

like a different species from an hour before,

a sandhill crane or a heron, her eyes

skinned back, she looked insane with happiness.

After he got up, I looked at her,

lying on her back in the bed.

Her ribs and breasts and clavicles had

the molded look of a gladiator’s

torso-armor, formal bulge of the 

pectoral, forged nipple, her deltoid

heron-elongated,

I couldn’t get her provenance

but the pelvic bone was wildly curled,

wrung.  I could see she was a skeleton

in there, that hair on her body buoyant

though the woman was stopped completely, stilled as if

paralyzed.  I looked at her face,

bloom-darkened, it was a steady face,

I saw she was very good at staring

and could make up her mind to stare at me

until I would look away first.

I saw her bowled, suffused forehead,

her bony cheeks and jaws, I saw she could

watch her own house burn

without moving a muscle, I saw she could light

the pyre.  She looked very much like her father, that

capillary-rich face, and very

much like her mother, the curlicues

at the corners of the features.  She was very male

and very female.

very hermaphroditical,

I could see her in a temple, tying someone up

or being tied up or being made nothing

or making someone nothing,

I saw she was full of cruelty

and full of kindness, brimming with it—

I had known but not known this, that she was human,

she had it all inside her, all of it.

She saw me seeing that, she liked that I saw it.

A full life—I saw her living it,

and then I saw her think of someone who

ignores her rather as her father ignored her,

and the clear, intransigent white of her eyes

went murky grey, the sections of her face pulled

away from each other like the continents

before they tore apart, long before they drifted.

I saw that she had been beaten, I saw her

looking away like a begging dog,

I averted my eyes, and turned my head

as the beloved came back, and came over to her

and came down to me, I looked into his iris

like looking at a rainstorm by moonrise, or a still

winter lake, just as its cleavages

take, or into crystal, when crystal

is forming, wet as nectar or milk

or semen, the first skein from a boy’s heart.

Looking at yourself closely can be an unpleasant experience.  Olds sees the woman in the mirror not as a reflection of herself.  Rather, she’s able to step outside of her body and appraise herself honestly, without flinching, each hair and scar and blemish mapping her skin like roads and rivers.  The spouse in the poem ignores these imperfections.  He comes to her at the end, his irises looking like “a rainstorm by moonrise, or a still winter lake . . .”  To put it another way, he sees her true self.

So, now it’s my turn to look at myself in the mirror today.  I played keyboard for two church services this morning.  Then I attended the annual Tuba Christmas concert, live-streaming it for the library.  (If you’ve never read heard 30 tubas and euphoniums in one enclosed space playing Christmas carols, you don’t know what you’re missing.  Or maybe you do.)  Then, some shopping.  (I purchased two really ugly Christmas sweaters for myself.)  Finally, dinner (grilled turkey and cheese sandwiches with chicken noodle soup) and a Zoom poetry workshop (the best part of my day).

My whole weekend was like that—one thing after another thing after another thing.  I haven’t really had a whole lot of downtime.  When I got home from Tuba Christmas and shopping, I sat down on the couch to relax for a few minutes.  I turned on the TV, and suddenly my head started pounding and my vision blurred.  My first thought:  I’m having a stroke.  My second thought:  at least I won’t have to grade my students’ final papers.

I lay back on the couch and closed my eyes.  I could feel the room spinning behind my lids.  In the past, I have suffered from bouts of vertigo.  Only once have I experienced a migraine.  After about a half hour, I opened my eyes and got up to help my wife do the dinner dishes and pans.  I could still feel a dull throb in the back of my head, but the world wasn’t merry-go-rounding anymore.  My vision was clear.  

I think I was on the verge of a migraine.  So, I had an almost migraine, I guess.  When I described my symptoms to my wife, she said, “It was a migraine.  You’ve been so stressed.”

My wife was my mirror tonight.  After she made that comment, I thought about the last couple weeks—Thanksgiving, a blizzard, Christmas trees, grading, programs.  Plus all the normal holiday hubbub.  And 30 tubas and euphoniums.  She was right.  Stress + Tuba Christmas = Almost Migraine.

I’m doing better now.  The poetry workshop was the highlight of the weekend.  A couple hours writing with some really good friends was just the medicine I needed.  I’m not quite ready for a new week, but I’m not cemented to a couch with a pillow over my face to block out the light.

Saint Marty wrote a poem for tonight, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Write a poem in the form of a to-do list, preferably a to-do list of a famous literary figure.  What would Henry David Thoreau have on his to-do list?  How about Gustav Flaubert?  Perhaps Emily Dickinson’s to-do list would include practicing her scales, writing a letter, baking a ginger cake, ironing her white dress, identifying wildflowers, witnessing a funeral, and quarreling with her sisters or brother.  You will likely need to spend some time to get the order of your list just right, saving the best for last.  Your poem may be humorous or grave/poignant.

Writing Life of Charles Dickens

by: Martin Achatz

Writing 

is like

a long midnight walk

through London streets

when even pickpockets

have gone to bed

in some dark alley

Elizabeth Tower caped

in fog and frost

lost

save for the chimes

quarter past, half past,

quarter to it, the hour

itself—Ga-dooong!

pens lined above

a sheet of Foolscap

well filled with ink

black as a grave

a cup

of strong tea

steeped black

served with a lemon

wedge and biscuit

hawthorn

currant

oolong

a child’s cry 

for water 

after a nightmare,

to douse 

fear blazing 

in his chest

a sunrise

so dazzling

it hurts

to even 

step outside