October 6: "First Snow," Questions and Answers, Selfcare

Mary Oliver has questions . . . 

First Snow

by:  Mary Oliver

The snow

began here

this morning and all day

continued, its white

rhetoric everywhere

calling us back to why, how,

whence such beauty and what

the meaning; such 

an oracular fever! flowing

past windows, an energy it seemed

would never ebb, never settle

less than lovely! and only now,

deep into night,

it has finally ended.

The silence

is immense,

and the heavens still hold

a million candles; nowhere

the familiar things:

stars, the moon,

the darkness we expect

and nightly turn from.  Trees

glitter like castles

of ribbons, the broad fields

smolder with light, a passing

creekbed lies

heaped with shining hills;

and though the questions

that have assailed us all day

remain--not a single

answer has been found--

walking out now

into the silence and the light

under the trees,

and through the fields,

feels like one.

I almost skipped this poem from Mary Oliver--not because it isn't full of beauty and truth, but because I live in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and, if the word "snow" is invoked too many times in October, you may wake to a world transformed by white.

That's what Mary Oliver is talking about here--the power of snow to make the familiar somehow mysterious and new.  Trees glitter, and fields smolder with light.  Nothing looks the same.  Any person who has experienced a first snow understands this erasure--the mustards and umbers of autumn wiped out by the silent whites of winter.  The world becomes a blank page waiting for a poem.

Today, I continued my campaign of selfcare.  I took yet another day off from work and tried to relax.  In the morning, after dropping my son off at school and wife at work, I drove to the shores of Lake Superior and watched the sunrise.  It was cold, and it got colder and colder as the day progressed, with a wind driving bouts of drizzle and mist.

I did take my puppy for a couple walks, but I stuck to wooded paths, so the trees sheltered us from the brunt of the wind and needles of rain.  In the afternoon, I returned to Lake Superior after picking my son up from school, and I watched a squabble of seagulls drifting above the foam and waves.  By that time, the sun was firmly sheathed in gray clouds, so it felt like a coming-of-snow kind of afternoon.

For Oliver, the first snow turns everything into a question--what's under that white heap?  where did the tree stump go?  whence such beauty?  Of course, none of these questions have apparent answers, and, really, it's silly to search for them.  The answer is the question itself.  Beauty isn't something to be understood or dissected.  Beauty just is.

Eventually, snow will arrive in my neck of the Upper Peninsula (hopefully later than sooner).  And it will be thrilling when it happens.  It always is.  I haven't ever lost that childish excitement when the air suddenly becomes a riot of white for the first time, whether in October, November, or December.  (I'd prefer January, but that's magical thinking.)

So, I'm in my flannel pajamas tonight.  After I'm done typing this post, I plan to . . . Well, to be honest, I don't have a plan.  I may read a book.  Watch a movie.  Listen to my 15-year-old son swear in his room like a Marine drill sergeant as he plays computer games.  Or I may just lie on the couch and listen to what scraps of silence I can find.  

Saint Marty isn't looking for answers.  All he wants are multiple-choice questions.

October 5: "Clapp's Pond," Birthday, Nobel Prize

Mary Oliver talks about how connection . . .

Clapp's Pond

by:  Mary Oliver

Three miles through the woods

Clapp's Pond sprawls stone gray

among oaks and pines,

the late winter fields

where a pheasant blazes up

lifting his yellow legs

under bronze feathers, opening

bronze wings;

and one doe, dimpling the ground as she touches

its dampness sharply, flares

out of the brush and gallops away.

                         ∞

By evening, rain.

It pours over the roof.  The last

acorns spray over the porch; I toss

one, then two more

logs on the fire.

                         ∞

How sometimes everything

closes up, a painted fan, landscapes and moments

flowing together until the sense of distance--

say, between Clapp's Pond and me--

vanishes, edges slide together

like the feathers of a wing, everything

touches everything.

                         ∞

Later, lying half-asleep under

the blankets, I watch

while the doe, glittering with rain, steps

under the wet slabs of the pines, stretches

her long neck down to drink

                         ∞

from the pond

three miles away.

Everything touches everything else.

That is Oliver's message in tonight's poem.  Clapp's Pond touches the pheasant touches the doe touches the rain touches the acorns touches logs on the fire touches Clapp's Pond again.  Throw the speaker of the poem into that mix, and you truly have everything touching everything else all at once.

Today, I celebrated the start of my 56th trip around the Sun.  Before I even woke up, people were sending me birthday wishes, from as far away as Germany and New Zealand.  And each and every greeting reminded me how lucky I truly am.

Most of us go through our days feeling completely disconnected, as if each of us is a circus of one--ringmaster, lion tamer, clown, trapeze artist, elephant, camel, and Franky the Amazing Dogboy all rolled into one.  When my head hits the pillow at night, I find myself already already thinking about the next day's circus.  

Yet, disconnection is truly just a feeling--it doesn't reflect reality.  At least for me.  I have people all over the globe who care about my welfare.  The disciples of this blog are spread out from Taiwan to Syria to Dunedin.  This little thing called the Internet (you may have heard of it) has managed to shrink the distances (metaphorical and physical) between peoples.  I'm sitting in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and just received a message a little while ago from an acquaintance currently in Rome.  Small world, small tribe.

Now, I'm not deluded enough to think that just because I have a lot of friends on Facebook means that I'm popular or well-liked.  I've said it before:  social media is not a good barometer of reality.  However, when people take a few seconds out of their days to send me birthday greetings, I get the feeling that I've made some small impact on the world and some lives in that world.

That makes me feel pretty darn connected.

No, I didn't win the Nobel Prize in Literature this year (that went to a Norwegian writer this morning--Jon Fosse).  No, I didn't receive a phone call from President Biden wishing me a happy birthday.  And, no, Governor Whitmer didn't sign a proclamation designating today Saint Marty Day in Michigan.  

However, I had seafood risotto and a raspberry chocolate bomb for dinner tonight.  My wife, daughter, and son sang "Happy Birthday" to me.  Then, we played a board game.  When she left to go home, my daughter laid her head on my shoulder and whispered in my ear, "Happy birthday, Daddy!"

For Saint Marty, that was better than a call from the Swedish Academy.

October 4: "Moles," Pushing the Dirt, Quiet Desperation

Mary Oliver admires . . . 

Moles

by:  Mary Oliver

Under the leaves, under

the first loose

levels of earth

they're there--quick

as beetles, blind

as bats, shy 

as hares but seen

less than these--

traveling

among the pale girders

of appleroot,

rockshelf, nests

of insects and black

pastures of bulbs

peppery and packed full

of the sweetest food:

spring flowers.

Field after field

you can see the traceries

of their long

lonely walks, then

the rains blur

even this frail

hint of them--

so excitable,

so plush,

so willing to continue

generation after generation

accomplishing nothing 

but their brief physical lives

as they live and die,

pushing and shoving

with their stubborn muzzles against

the whole earth,

finding it

delicious.

There it is--the life of the mole.  Pushing and shoving dirt all their lives, their heavens studded with appleroot and rockshelf, eclipses of bulbs and the promise of spring flowers.  In general, nobody sings the praises of these small, blind creatures of the earth.  Nobody, that is, except Mary Oliver.

I think most of us live our lives like this--doing our things, pushing the dirt, getting the necessary work done without needing an "attaboy" or "nice job" or "holy shit!"  As Thoreau said, most humans "lead lives of quiet desperation."  I don't expect a praise psalm every time I teach a class or lead a poetry workshop.  My impulse, when I receive a compliment, is to deflect and deprecate.  After all, most successes are team efforts,  For example, the winners of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman, were a team whose work led to the development mRNA COVID vaccines.  A team.  And they saved millions of people.  

I'm so blessed in my life to have supportive and loving family and friends, even with all my poet weirdness.  The choices I've made in my life haven't all been the greatest.  I've fucked up just as much as I've succeeded.  If I were a mole, I probably would have broken my muzzle trying to dig a hole through solid granite.  Yet, my tribe has stuck by me, supporting me through my lowest of lows as well as my highest of highs.  

Moles move mountains of dirt during their humble lives, and they find the work delicious. 

Saint Marty has shoveled a lot of shit in his lifetime, and he has been graced with more than his fair share of auroras, rainbows, and mind-blowing sunrises.

October 3: "The Kitten," Croagh Patrick, Bigfoot

Mary Oliver performs a sacred act . . . 

The Kitten

by:  Mary Oliver

More amazed than anything

I took the perfectly black

stillborn kitten

with the one large eye

in the center of its small forehead

from the house cat's bed

and buried it in a field

behind the house.

I suppose I could have given it

to a museum,

I could have called the local

newspaper.

But instead I took it out into the field

and opened the earth

and put it back

saying, it was real,

saying, life is infinitely inventive,

saying, what other amazements

lie in the dark seed of the earth, yes,

I think I did right to go out alone

and give it back peacefully, and cover the place

with the reckless blossoms of weeds.

I find the tender grace of this poem incredibly moving--Mary Oliver taking the stillborn kitten into the field and giving it back to the earth, acknowledging the kitten's fragile reality, its infinite wonder.  The universe is full of amazements like this, and our job is to do the right thing:  treat these amazements with respect and honor.

I am sitting in my home office, typing this blog post.  On the righthand corner of my desk sits an amazement.  My friend, Helen, on a trip to Ireland, climbed Croagh Patrick.  Croagh Patrick is the holiest mountain in Ireland.  According to legend, Saint Patrick fasted for 40 days on its summit, and since that time, it remains a popular pilgrimage site for devout travelers.

Helen went to Ireland with one of her closest friends.  As I've said in previous posts, Helen was a force of nature.  She had the kind of stamina and strength that defied explanation, walking for miles and miles each day in her sandals.  So, the fact that she decided to climb the 2,507-foot mountain on her vacation is really not a surprise.  What she brought back for me from that mountaintop was a surprise.

At Christmastime that year, Helen presented me with a gift bag.  Now Helen's presents were works of art in and of themselves.  This bag was uniquely beautiful, and inside was a gorgeous card filled with an elegant, handwritten message from Helen.  Besides the card, the bag contained a collection of Seamus Heaney poems that she purchased at the Seamus Heaney Homeplace in County Derry.  (Heaney's former residence has been converted into a museum for the late poet.)   And underneath the card and book, wrapped in delicate tissue paper, was a rock.

But it wasn't just any rock.  It was a rock from the top of Croagh Patrick, and on the rock was a rusty brown mineral image of Bigfoot.  When Helen found the rock, she immediately thought of me.  She carried it down from the mountain, put it in her suitcase, and brought it home.

Since Helen gave me that rock, it has been one of my most treasured possessions.  Because she found it on Croagh Patrick and because of the miracle of Bigfoot imprinted on it.  However, right around the time that Helen died last year, the rock simply disappeared.  I searched and searched for it, but never found it.  Like Bigfoot, it seemed to have slid into another dimension.

Eventually, I came to the conclusion that someone who didn't know the rock's significance had taken it outside and given it peacefully back to the earth.  I accepted that explanation, because rocks simply don't stand up and walk away, even rocks from Bigfoot.

Two days ago, I was cleaning my house, getting ready for the monthly visit from my book club.  As I moved some books (which, I would like to point out, I have done MANY times before), there sat my sacred rock like a forgotten prayer.

As I held that stone on Sunday afternoon, I almost felt like Helen had given it to me a second time.  In the past few weeks (perhaps due to the change in seasons and shorter days), I've been struggling a little bit with sadness.  So, there was something very powerful in having that piece of Ireland and Saint Patrick and Bigfoot and Helen in my fingers.  I could almost hear Helen's voice in my head:  "You are frickin' awesome!"

So, yes, Virginia, amazements still do exist in the world.  

Saint Marty is staring at one right now on the corner of his desk.