October 16: "Old Man Eating Alone in a Chinese Restaurant," To Do, Felon in Chief

Every morning, when I get to my library office, I make a list of things I want to accomplish.  And every night, when I get home, I'm disappointed at how little I've actually done.  It's an exercise in supreme disappointment.  

However, today, all seven of my "to do" items have been "to done."  Writing this blog post is the last task, and then I can relax.  Maybe eat a piece of leftover chicken or some cheesecake.

Billy Collins enjoys some sweet and sour pork . . . 

Old Man Eating Alone in a Chinese Restaurant

by: Billy Collins

I am glad I resisted the temptation,
if it was a temptation when I was young,
to write a poem about an old man
eating alone at a corner table in a Chinese restaurant.

I would have gotten it all wrong
thinking: the poor bastard, not a friend in the world
and with only a book for a companion.
He'll probably pay the bill out of a change purse.

So glad I waited all these decades
to record how hot and sour the hot and sour
soup is here at Chang's this afternoon
and how cold the Chinese beer in a frosted glass.

And my book—José Saramago's Blindness
as it turns out—is so absorbing that I look up
from its escalating horrors only
when I am stunned by one of his gleaming sentences.

And I should mention the light
that falls through the big windows this time of day
italicizing everything it touches—
the plates and teapots, the immaculate tablecloths,

as well as the soft brown hair of the waitress
in the white blouse and short black skirt,
the one who is smiling now as she bears a cup of rice
and shredded beef with garlic to my favorite table in the corner.

Collins has become the old man eating alone in a Chinese restaurant that he imagined when he was young.  Of course, the reality is very different from the fantasy.  For young Collins, the old man was desperately friendless, with only the companionship of a book.  Old Collins knows different.  He knows the pleasure of eating hot and sour soup alone with just a good book for company.  

Expectations are rarely accurate.  For example, all the MAGA Republicans believe their lives are going to be so much better if the Felon in Chief is elected President of the United States again.  In reality, the only person's life that will improve is the Felon in Chief's.  Because he's a narcissist, among other things.

Tomorrow, I will not finish my to-do list.  I say this with absolute certainty.  At the end of the day, I will feel like a total failure.  Keep in mind, I'm the one that sets unrealistic goals for myself.  Perhaps I need to shoot a little lower with my tasks.  Rather than "Write a poem about eating alone in a Chinese restaurant," I could just "Brush my teeth" or "Tie my shoelaces."

Tonight, however, I celebrated my completed list with a walk.  The almost full moon hanging above me, dogs barking in the distance.  I even walked by the Trump house (a neighbor who's been flying Trump flags since 2016) and didn't feel the urge to shit on his lawn.

Yes, Saint Marty is feeling THAT good about himself and the world.  

October 15: "This Little Piggy Went to Market," Snow, Mysteries

I woke this morning to snow coming down in my neck of the woods.  That's right.  S. N. O. W.  

It didn't last long or stick to the ground.  Yet, driving to work, my headlight beams were confused with a sleety not-quite-rain.  Of course, I know it's coming.  I've lived in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan almost my entire life.  I can remember only one Halloween that didn't require boots and a winter jacket.

Yet, I was still unprepared for this little taste of winter.  If I were younger, I would have been excited.  Since I'm not younger, I used some very colorful language this morning, and it wasn't a nursery rhyme. 

Billy Collins takes on Mother Goose . . . 

This Little Piggy Went to Market

by: Billy Collins

is the usual thing to say when you begin
pulling on the toes of a small child,
and I have never had a problem with that.
I could easily picture the piggy with his basket
and his trotters kicking up the dust on an imaginary road.

What always stopped me in my tracks was
the middle toe--this little piggy ate roast beef.
I mean I enjoy a roast beef sandwich
with lettuce and tomato and a dollop of horseradish,
but I cannot see a pig ordering that in a delicatessen.

I am probably being too literal-minded here--
I am even wondering why it's called "horseradish."
I should just go along with the beautiful nonsense
of the nursery, float downstream on its waters.
After all, Little Jack Horner speaks to me deeply.

I don't want to be the one to ruin the children's party
by asking unnecessary questions about Puss in Boots
or, again, the implications of a pig eating beef.
By the way, I am completely down with going
"Wee wee wee" all the way home,
having done that many times and knowing exactly how it feels.

Some things just don't make sense.  Billy Collins has issues with "This Little Piggy."  He doesn't understand the third little piggy eating roast beef.  I've always thought the poem is about pigs being fattened up for slaughter.  Maybe it is.  I don't know.  

But not understanding something doesn't preclude you from enjoying it.  I don't understand how a combustion engine works, but I still drive a car.  I don't totally get the ending of 2001:  A Space Odyssey, but I still teach the movie.  I don't understand Trump supporters, but . . . Okay, there's nothing to enjoy about Trump supporters.

I went for a walk with my wife when I got home this evening.  It was cold--the kind of cold where you can taste winter in the air.  An almost full moon was in the sky, and the trees on my street were every shade of orange and yellow.  I can't say we went "Wee wee wee" all the way home, but we did watch the sun set and stars begin to wink on one-by-one.

I didn't study physics in college.  Or astronomy.  But I still love auroras and meteor showers and comets and eclipses.  Walking hand-in-hand with my wife down the street, with the moon rising above us, is a wonderful mystery of love and gravity and attraction.  Two bodies drawn into each other's orbits.

Oh, and Saint Marty thinks the moon was pretty cool, too.

October 14: "Divorce," Married, I'm Sorry

Twenty-nine years ago today, my wife and I were married.

The day before was beautiful, warm and full of autumn colors.  I drove from Kalamazoo to the Upper Peninsula, convoying with one of my best friends from graduate school.  We stopped a few times along the way to take pictures.

The day of the wedding was a completely different story.  Cold, with occasional rain and (if I remember correctly) some sleet.  We posed for pictures near Lake Superior after the ceremony and nearly froze.  But we were surrounded by friends and family the whole day, and the future seemed endlessly bright.

Billy Collins sets the table . . . 

Divorce

by: Billy Collins

Once, two spoons in bed,

now tined forks

across a granite table

and the knives they have hired.

Admittedly, this isn't the best Billy Collins poem to write about on my wedding anniversary.  It's full of sharp edges and points.  More battleground than anything else.  But it's honest in its depiction of two people--once joined happily in spoonful love--separated by distance and a subtle violence.

Now, my marriage has had its share of rocky patches.  Two people sharing their lives for almost three decades are bound to face strains and disagreements.  We are both flawed human beings, and those flaws can create huge fissures and rifts in any relationship.  Yet, that very humanness is what has held my wife and I together all these years.

Because, you see, we both know that mistakes have been made and will be made.  We've both fucked up at times.  Yet, we love each other enough not to turn into tined forks across a granite table.  We've forgiven and will continue to forgive.  In any long-term relationship, there are two phrases that are very important:  "I love you" and "I'm sorry."  Both convey the same sense of hope.  There's that famous catchphrase from the movie Love Story:  "Love means never having to say you're sorry."  I will offer this revision:  "Love means always having to say you're sorry."  

Apologies aren't admissions of guilt.  They are pleas for love and understanding.  

I bought my wife cheesecake for dinner tonight.  We went for a walk with our puppy, and we've spent a quiet evening, reading and working.  She will soon head off to bed, and I will finish writing this blog post.  We still are paired spoons.

That's Saint Marty's dinner table.

October 13: "The Great American Poem," Driving Downpour, Marquette Art Awards

It rained pretty much all day.  A hard, driving downpour.  It was the kind of rain that makes you not want to get out of bed or brush your teeth or do anything productive.  Except maybe read a good book.  Something with a dog or star-crossed lovers.

I did not not do any of that.  (Read that sentence over a few times.  It makes sense.)  I played two church services.  Took my dog for a muddy walk then gave her a bath.  Went grocery shopping.  Attended the 2024 Marquette Art Awards.  Got a little drunk.

If I were a Stephen King character, I'd probably be on about page 50 and a zombie would crash through my living room window to eat my brains about now.  But I'm not a protagonist in a horror novel.  I'm a poet who had really busy Sunday.

Billy Collins isn't a character in a novel or a novelist, either . . . 

The Great American Poem

by: Billy Collins

If this were a novel,

it would begin with a character,
a man alone on a southbound train
or a young girl on a swing by a farmhouse.

And as the pages turned, you would be told
that it was morning or the dead of night,
and I, the narrator, would describe
for you the miscellaneous clouds over the farmhouse

and what the man was wearing on the train
right down to his red tartan scarf,
and the hat he tossed onto the rack above his head,
as well as the cows sliding past his window.

Eventually—one can only read so fast—
you would learn either that the train was bearing
the man back to the place of his birth
or that he was headed into the vast unknown,

and you might just tolerate all of this
as you waited patiently for shots to ring out
in a ravine where the man was hiding
or for a tall, raven-haired woman to appear in a doorway.

But this is a poem, not a novel,
and the only characters here are you and I,
alone in an imaginary room
which will disappear after a few more lines,

leaving us no time to point guns at one another
or toss all our clothes into a roaring fireplace.
I ask you: who needs the man on the train
and who cares what his black valise contains?

We have something better than all this turbulence
lurching toward some ruinous conclusion.
I mean the sound that we will hear
as soon as I stop writing and put down this pen.

I once heard someone compare it
to the sound of crickets in a field of wheat
or, more faintly, just the wind
over that field stirring things that we will never see.

I really enjoy being around creatives.  Dancers.  Educators.  Painters.  Jewelry makers.  Poets.  That's my scene.  As a poet, I can vouch for the fact that artists don't really get acknowledged or celebrated very much.  That's why I love attending the Marquette Art Awards.  It's a time to reward great people and organizations for just being really damn cool.

This year, a poet friend received the award for Writer of the Year.  I couldn't have been more thrilled for her.  Generally, poets don't receive a whole lot of recognition, unless your last name happens to be Collins or Angelou.  The last time the Nobel Prize in Literature was given to a poet was in 2020, when Louise Glück won.  Before that, you'd have to go back to 2011 (Tomas Tranströmer), and then to 1996 (Wislawa Szymborska).  Like I said, poets are the redheaded stepchildren on the literary world.

So this evening's ceremony was a really great ending to the weekend.  Saint Marty got to hang out with some of his best friends, drink, and eat cheese and crackers.  It was like being at a Diddy party without the sex, drugs, rape, or pedophilia.