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.  

October 12: "A Dog on His Master," Dinner, Anniversary

Chill day.

My son is staying the night at a friend's house.  Dropped him off this morning.  Then I practiced music at a few churches.  Went for a couple long walks with my wife and our puppy.  Played for the 4 p.m. Mass at my home church.  Went out to dinner with my wife to celebrate our 29th anniversary.

Juno, our fur baby, enjoys chill days when she can lounge on the couch with me or my wife, bark at squirrels or cars, and generally be spoiled.

Billy Collins talks dogs and walks and aging . . .

A Dog on His Master

by: Billy Collins

As young as I look,
I am growing older faster than he,
seven to one
is the ratio they tend to say.

Whatever the number,
I will pass him one day
and take the lead
the way I do on our walks in the woods.

And if this ever manages
to cross his mind,
it would be the sweetest
shadow I have ever cast on snow or grass.

On Monday, my wife and I will be married 29 years.  That's a long time, more so in dog years.  I'm not gonna lie--there have been some very rocky years in those nearly three decades.  Yet, our marriage has weathered those storms.

I'm not going to get all sentimental here.  (I sort of did that in last night's post.)  But I do want to say that it seems like just yesterday when we stood in front of our family and friends, slipped those rings on our fingers, and kissed.

Time is so strange.  When you're a kid, summer vacation lasts three lifetimes.  As a teenager, you can't wait to turn 21 to buy alcohol and get shitfaced legally.  Once you hit that milestone, things seem to speed up.  Thirty years go by, and you find yourself sitting on the couch, petting your dog, and looking at your wife--your beautiful, funny wife--who has been with you through the best of times and the worst of times.  (Do NOT turn that statement into something sexual--I know you were thinking it.)

Nobody knows how long they have on this planet.  It could be seven years or seventy years.  I'm hoping to see my daughter become a doctor.  My son to become a poet.  (Okay, he says he's into cybersecurity, but a guy can hope.)

And Saint Marty's hoping one day to watch the sun set in Hawaii again with his beautiful bride.

October 11: "The Fish," Elizabeth Bishop, Beatrice

One of my favorite poems of all time is Elizabeth Bishop's "The Fish."  I remember the first time I read it when I was in middle school, I think.  It blew me away.  I had no idea that you could write poems about catching a fish on a lake.

Bishop paints the scene so vividly that you can almost smell the marshy water and see the fish gilling the air in her boat.  And I love the moment, near the end of the poem, where the speaker and the fish stare into each other's eyes before she lets him go.

Billy Collins sort of conjures up Elizabeth Bishop in today's poem . . . 

The Fish

by: Billy Collins

As soon as the elderly waiter
placed before me the fish I had ordered,
it began to stare up at me
with its one flat, iridescent eye.

I feel sorry for you, it seemed to say,
eating alone in this awful restaurant
bathed in such unkindly light
and surrounded by these dreadful murals of Sicily.

And I feel sorry for you, too—
yanked from the sea and now lying dead
next to some boiled potatoes in Pittsburgh—
I said back to the fish as I raised my fork.

And thus my dinner in an unfamiliar city
with its rivers and lighted bridges
was graced not only with chilled wine
and lemon slices but with compassion and sorrow

even after the waiter removed my plate
with the head of the fish still staring
and the barrel vault of its delicate bones
terribly exposed, save for a shroud of parsley.

I haven't done much fishing in my life, and I can't remember the last time I held a fishing pole in my hands.  It was never one of my favorite things--standing at the edge of a lake or river, waiting for something scaled to bite my hook.  I'm not saying I hated the experience.  It just wasn't for me.

But then again, a lot of people wouldn't think typing a blog post or scribbling in a journal is fun.  I do.  Stringing words together on a page relaxes me and allows me to feel a little in control of my life.  (This may be a false sense of security, but it works for me.  It relaxes me.)

It's Friday night.  I had dinner with both my kids this evening.  We ate pizza and played some video games.  When I got home, I took my puppy for a long walk.  I just stepped outside to check out the aurora situation.  Didn't see much except stars and the moon.  The air smelled like autumn--leaf mold and coming frost.

I could write a poem about tonight, like Bishop wrote about catching the fish or Collins about eating fish in Pittsburgh.  Mine would be about a three-meat pizza and Trivial Pursuit, my kids loving on each other through insult, and my wife, my beautiful wife of almost 29 years, on the couch beside me, drowning happily in family.  Then the stars appear, like they do for Dante at the end of the Inferno and Purgatorio and Paradiso, always shining with holy hope.

Saint Marty give thanks for the Beatrice of his life.