July 12: "I Ask You," Calumet, Veterans

Billy Collins finds some peace . . .

I Ask You

by: Billy Collins

What scene would I rather be enveloped in

than this one,

an ordinary night at the kitchen table,

at ease in a box of floral wallpaper,

white cabinets full of glass,

the telephone silent,

a pen tilted back in my hand?

It gives me time to think

about the leaves gathering in corners,

lichen greening the high gray rocks,

and the world sailing on beyond the dunes--

huge, oceangoing, history bubbling it its wake.

Outside of this room

there is nothing that I need,

not a job that would allow me to row to work,

or a coffee-colored Aston Martin DB4

with cracked green leather seats.

No, it is all right here,

the clear ovals of a glass of water,

a small crate of oranges, a book on Stalin,

an odd snarling fish in a frame on the wall,

and these three candles,

each a different height, singing in perfect harmony.

So forgive me

if I lower my head and listen

to the short bass candle as he takes a solo

while my heart

thrums under my shirt--

frog at the edge of a pond--

and my thoughts fly off to a province

composed of one enormous sky

and about a million empty branches.

This poem is about nothing much.  A crate of oranges.  A pen.  Burning candles.  Yet, it's also a poem of profound depth.  One enormous sky filled with a million empty branches.  

I think we've all probably experienced moments like the one Collins is describing.  Static and tranquil, they fill you with a sense of how small you are in a vast and beautiful universe.  The smallness isn't a bad thing.  It simply puts everything into perspective.

Greetings from Calumet, Michigan.  I rolled into town around 7 p.m., checked into my hotel, and immediately went to a rehearsal for the show in which I'm performing tomorrow night--The Red Jacket Jamboree.  When I got back to the hotel, my wife and I took a walk around the downtown area.  

I've been a part of the regular cast of this show for over seven years now.  What started out as a fun diversion in December 2017--an invitation to read some poems on a radio variety show--has become an important part of my life.  The Red Jacket performers and musicians have become family to me.

One of the things Calumet does every summer is hang banners on the light posts of the main thoroughfares.  The banners display pictures of and details about the city's military veterans, from World War I to Afghanistan.  I find the displays incredibly moving.  These individuals from a tiny hamlet in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan changed the world.  Some came home.  Some did not.

On our walk this evening, my wife and I stopped under each banner, read them, studied the young faces (most of them look like babies).  I'm sure none of these people considered themselves special or heroic.  They were simply Johnny and Jane from the Keweenaw Peninsula.  Yet, they put themselves in harm's way to fight for a cause in which they believed.  

Something small (a frog at the edge of a pond) becoming something large (an enormous sky filled with a million branches).

Saint Marty is so thankful for the sacrifices of all of the veterans from all the Calumets across the planet.  

July 11: "The Long Day," Call Me Crazy, Jobs

Billy Collins catalogues his day . . .

The Long Day

by: Billy Collins

In the morning I ate a banana

like a young ape

and worked on a poem called "Nocturne."

In the afternoon I opened the mail

with a short kitchen knife,

and when the dusk began to fall

I took off my clothes,

put on "Sweetheart of the Rodeo"

and soaked in a claw-footed bathtub.

I closed my eyes and thought

about the alphabet,

the letters filing out of the halls of kindergarten

to become literature.

If the British call z zed,

I wondered, why not call b bed and d dead?

And why does z, which looks like

the fastest letter, come at the very end?

unless they are all moving east

when we are facing north in our chairs.

It was then that I heard

a clap of thunder and the dog's bark,

and the claw-footed bathtub

took one step forward,

or was it backward

I had to ask

as I turned

to reach for a faraway towel.

Call me crazy, but Collins' day doesn't seem all that stressful.  Working on a poem.  Opening the mail.  Taking a bath.  Contemplating the alphabet.  Does all that constitute a long day?  Perhaps, for him.  For me, the days he describes seems like a walk in the proverbial park.

Most of my days are pretty long.  This morning, I was in my office by 7:30 a.m., tapping away at my keyboard.  I don't think I looked away from my computer until about 10:30 a.m., when I'd scheduled a meeting with someone.  The rest of morning and afternoon were taken up by busy work.  Necessary, but pretty brainless.  In the evening, I led a meeting of the Marquette Poets Circle.  Left the library around 8:30 p.m.  If you're keeping track, that's about a 13-hour day.

When I got home, I had to pack my suitcase for a weekend trip to Calumet where I'm performing.  I pretty much feel brain dead at the moment, and my life isn't going to slow down until Sunday evening, after I get back from Calumet and a quick trip to Mackinaw City.  A lot of time behind the wheel in the next 72 or so hours.

I don't always enjoy this busyness, especially when it barely allows me time to take a breath.  If I could afford it, I would love to have Collins' long day.  However, I don't think anybody would pay me $20,000 to give a poetry reading or lead a writing workshop.  (Don't laugh!  I can name at least five or six poets who command a fee that big, if not bigger.)  So, I live a fragmented life, moving from one job to another to another to another, sometimes in the space of just a few hours.

Am I tired?  Yes, I am.  Do I enjoy my various jobs?  For the most part, yes, I do.  Would I like to have fewer jobs?  Yes, I would.

But this is all I know.  I can't remember any point in my life (besides high school) when I wasn't holding down at least two occupations.  Currently, I have one full-time job and six part-time jobs.  Yes, six.  Don't feel bad for me, though.  Lots of people do the same thing in order to pay the bills.  I'm not the exception.

I'm just weary tonight, that's all.  It has been a long week, and it's going to be an even longer weekend.

Saint Marty is a little tired in his bones.

July 10: "Eastern Standard Time," Concert, Poetry and Art and Music

Billy Collins meditates on time . . . 

Eastern Standard Time

by: Billy Collins

Poetry speaks to all people, it is said,

but here I would like to address

only those in my own time zone,

this proper slice of longitude

that runs from pole to snowy pole

down the globe through Montreal to Bogota.

Oh, fellow inhabitants of this singular band,

sitting up in your many beds this morning--

the sun falling through the windows

and casting a shadow on the sundial--

consider those in other zones who cannot hear these words.

They are not slipping into a bathrobe as were are,

or following the smell of coffee in a timely fashion.

Rather, they are at work already,

leaning on copy machines,

hammering nails into a house frame.

They are not swallowing a vitamin like us,

rather they are smoking a cigarette under a half moon,

even jumping around on a dance floor,

or just now sliding under the covers,

pulling down the little chains on their bed lamps.

But we are not like these others,

for at this very moment on the face of the earth,

we are standing under a hot shower,

or we are eating our breakfast, 

considered by people of all zones

to be the most important meal of the day.

Later, when the time is right,

we might sit down with the boss,

wash the car, or linger at a candle-lit table,

but now is the hour for pouring the juice

and flipping the eggs with one eye on the toaster.

So let us slice a banana and uncap the jam, 

lift our brimming spoons of milk,

and leave it to the others to lower a flag

or spin absurdly in a barber's chair--

those antipodal oddballs, always early or late.

Let us praise Sir Stanford Fleming,

the Canadian genius who first scored

with these lines the length of the spinning earth.

Let us move together through the rest of this day

passing in unison from light to shadow,

coasting over the crest of noon,

into the valley of evening

and then, holding hands, slip into the deeper valley of night.

Time is precious.  That could be the title of this post.  

Here is a quick list of how I spent my time today:

1. Got an oil change for my car.
2. Wrote with a poet friend in her garden.
3. Worked on programs and publicity at the library.
4. Visited with a poet friend from Ohio.
5. Recorded a podcast episode.
6. Revised some poems.
7. Hosted a concert.

Three items from the above list filled up my soul tank (which has been running on empty for the last couple weeks).

Writing with my poet friend always restores me.  Writing with her in her flower garden, even more so.  As I sat on her swing, scribbling in my journal, white petals from her mock orange tree kept snowing down on me.  I could hear ducks quacking, dogs barking, and cars passing.  A blessing.

Visiting with my poet friend from Ohio was an unexpected treat.  I didn't realize she was in town, and we had a wonderful conversation, catching up on each others' lives.  We both have a weakness for the British TV shows Portrait Artist of the Year and Landscape Artist of the Year, and we spent quite a bit of time discussing our love of art and painting.  A surprise blessing.

Music also restores my faith in the world, and the concert I hosted at the library tonight was by three of the most gifted, wonderful musicians/artists I know.  Brian, one of the band members, sang a song he wrote for his grandmother who recently passed.  Most of you know that I had a sister who died of lymphoma of the brain almost nine years ago now (hard to believe it's been that long--slippery time); in exactly one week, my sister would have turned 63 years old.  So, Brian's song really hit home this evening.  Another blessing.

Poetry and art and music.  Couldn't ask for better medicine.

Saint Marty is a very lucky person.

July 9: "Theme," Day Off, Dark Meditation

Billy Collins writes of age and decline . . . 

Theme

by: Billy Collins

It's a sunny weekday in early May

and after a ham sandwich

and a cold bottle of beer on the brick terrace,

I am consumed by the wish

to add something

to one of the ancient themes--

youth dancing with his eyes closed, 

for example, 

in the shadows of corruption and death,

or the rise and fall of illustrious men

strapped to the turning

wheel of mischance and disaster.

There is a slight breeze,

just enough to bend

the yellow tulips on their stems,

but that hardly helps me

echo the longing for immortality

despite the roaring juggernaut of time,

or the painful motif

of Nature's cyclical return

versus man's blind rush to the grave.

I could loosen my shirt

and lie down in the soft grass,

sweet now after its first cutting,

but that would not produce

a record of the pursuit

of the moth of eternal beauty

or the despondency that attends

the eventful dribble

of the once gurgling fountain of creativity.

So, as far as the great topics go,

that seems to leave only

the fall from exuberant maturity

into sudden, headlong decline--

a subject that fills me with silence

and leaves me with no choice

but to spend the rest of the day

sniffing the jasmine vine

and surrendering to the ivory governance

of the piano by picking out

with my index finger

the melody of "Easy to Love," 

a song in which Cole Porter expresses,

with put-on nonchalance,

the hopelessness of a love

brimming with desire

and a hunger for affection,

but met only and always with frosty disregard.

I think all poets dream of adding to the pantheon of great themes, whether it's love or death or lust or eternal beauty or headlong decline.  The difficulty is finding something new and surprising to say about any of those topics.  Otherwise, the poet risks sounding like a Robert Frost or William Shakespeare cover band.

I took today off work.  Shocking, I know.  You see, I really enjoy my job at the library, so, a lot of the time, work doesn't seem like work.  However, I've accrued quite a bit of PTO and need to use it or, literally, lose it.  So, I used some of it today.

A good portion of the morning and afternoon I spent revising poems.  I also sat at McDonald's reading and, eventually, went for a walk along the shores of Lake Superior with my wife.  It was a perfect Upper Peninsula July day, not too hot and with a robin's-egg blue sky.  The beaches were packed, and tourists were out in force.  I don't particularly care for large crowds, so I avoided the densest areas of activity.

And I did a lot of thinking about love and aging and time.  The biggies, as Collins writes.  I'm not sure any of my meditations were earth-shattering or revelatory.  They were, however, honest.  I know that I have experienced lots of love and loss in my life.  I know that my daughter, youth and hope personified, is on the cusp of leaving my close proximity to pursue her dream of becoming a doctor.  My son won't be far behind her--just a couple more years.  And I know that I've become one of the "elders" at family gatherings, even though I still feel like a teenager who knows nothing about the ways of the world.

That is what having time off does to me--it makes me contemplate the inevitability of change and my own mortality.  I know, I know.  Most people spend their days off doing fun things, like swimming or taking in a movie or having lunch with a friend.  That's not the way my mind works.  I tend to gravitate to dark meditation when I have time to kill.  What can I say?  I'm a poet.

And what has this day taught me?  I need to have a better plan for my vacation days.  Or a strong antidepressant.  Probably both.

Saint Marty is now going to watch a movie--Dead Man Walking or Terms of Endearment.  You know, something uplifting.