February 6, 2026: ‘Another Theory of Time,” Long Week, “Winter Zen”

When I was a kid, summers seemed to last forever.  On the last day of school, when that final bell rang at the end of the day, it felt like a whole life spread out before me.  Sun, swims, movies, books, friends.  Later, in high school, parties, road trips, concerts.  Those three months were a wonderful eternity.

These days, a work week seems like an eternity, and the weekend is a melting snowflake, practically gone before it hits the ground.  As we gain in years, we seem to lose in time.  As Einstein thought, time is relative—the more time we have under our belts, the less time we have left.

Marie Howe meditates on time . . . 

Another Theory of Time

by: Marie Howe

So, I tell my daughter

—we are eating dinner, reading through the book of stories—

I’m worried about Jason.  If I seem distracted, that’s what’s on my mind.

And she says, Take it out of your mind,

then dips and eats a dumpling, and says, But don’t take out Jason.

And this morning at the deli I say, I’m grumpy because

it’s the first day of school, and I’m thinking of so many things,

and she says, Take them out, and I say, How do I do that?

and she says, Think about Now.

I bite into my egg and cheese on a sesame bagel, and it is good.  It is

Although it does bother me—

how she always wants to sit at the tiny deli counter

so near the garbage bins—eating meatballs for breakfast.

Then she says, I can’t remember the future or the past.

The local high school girls order iced coffee and whole wheat bagels

with nothing on them.  My girl eats her meatballs,

and I stare past the cutouts of ham and turkey taped to the window

and think about the moment I want so much to leave

—how small it is sometimes, this Now==

how constricting, me with my bad teeth and aging elbows,

as person after person tosses their trash inches behind my back

before walking out the open door.

The daughter in the poem is wise.  Truly, we can’t do anything about the past, and the future hasn’t even happened yet.  So, that leaves the present, in all of its messy glory.  Human beings spend way too much time lamenting past mistakes, old lovers, the “might have beens”  Or we worry about upcoming final exams, deadlines at work, or doctor’s appointments.  

I wish I could say I was as Zen as the daughter in Howe’s poem.  I’m not.  In fact, I’m already thinking about the coming summer months—my son’s high school graduation and subsequent party, future vacation, unedited poetry manuscript.  And, in the last few weeks, I’ve also been haunted with thoughts of my sister Rose, who passed on January 20 four years ago.  Future and past.  I almost never focus on what’s in front of me.

I’m not proud of that admission.  I think I’d be a lot happier if I could simply enjoy what I’m doing right now:  sitting on my couch on a Friday night, watching the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics in Italy, and petting my puppy.  It’s sort of a perfect moments, surrounded by all the things and people I love, doing the things I love to do.

I think that’s what writing poetry is all about.  A poet captures moments, preserving the emotion and essence of them.  When I sit down with my journal to work on a poem, one of the first things I do is just look around, see what’s in front of me.  Often, the sound of the car driving by outside will cruise right onto the blank page.  Or the snowstorm shaking the windows.  Or the smell of brownies baking in the oven.  All of those Now things.  

And, when I sit down to tap out a blog post on my iPad, those Now things creep in, as well.  Because, really, that’s all I’ve got.  Even at the end of a long week (and this week was L-O-N-G), I only have this: the plate of poutine in front of me, and the smell of my puppy farting on her pillow beside me.  That’s my moment.  (By the way, all the pictures on your phone’s camera roll, those are captured Now moments.  Visual poems, so to speak.)

I am going to try to be a little more Zen this weekend.  Instead of worrying about the movie I’m showing at the library on Monday evening, or my lesson plans for next week’s classes, I’m going to try to take it moment by moment,  song by TV show by poem by nap by walk by movie by meal.  And I’ll probably be a lot happier for the effort.

Saint Marty wrote a poem for this evening about a poet friend enjoying a winter moment , , ,

Winter Zen

by: Martin Achatz

They’re skating on Lake Superior

these days, the water smooth,

hard as unanswered prayer.

Last night, my best friend

rushed to the ice after work,

spun and raced from the shore

to the edge of the world, as if

somewhere beyond the razors 

on her feet were the fresh-shaved

cheeks of May and June, ready

to be smudged with lipstick

at junior prom.

February 1, 2026: “Reincarnation,” Someone Else, “In Response to a Stanza from ‘A Prayer for Old Age’ by William Butler Yeats”

When I was in middle and high school, I wanted to be the reincarnation of Flannery O’Connor.  As an undergrad, I switched to Robert Frost and Walt Whitman.  In grad school, I branched out a little—I wanted to be Mozart 2.0 or van Gogh 2.0.  

I hail from a family of plumbers, and I always wanted to know from whom my artistic abilities came.  I love writing, drawing, acting, singing, playing music.  My father was a great plumber; that was his art.  My mother loved singing and reading and, occasionally, doodling, but she was a pretty common sense lady.  No flights of fancy for her.  My siblings were/are pretty brilliant, as well.  My sister Sally had a photographic memory; she was one of the smartest people I will ever know.  My sister, Rose, who had Down Syndrome, was a genius of love; she could make anyone feel like the most important person in the world.  My brothers (all three of them) have/had innate skills with plumbing and electricity.  I could go on, but you get the idea.

Marie Howe contemplates past lives . . . 

Reincarnation

by: Marie Howe

Sometimes when I look at our dog Jack I think

he might be my radical American History professor come back

to make amends—he gazes at me so sorrowfully.

What is it Jack, I say, why do you look like that?  But Jack

doesn’t answer; he lies down and rests his head on his paws.

Black hair covered nearly all of that man’s body, thick 

under his blue oxford shirt when I put my hand there.

Perhaps that accounted for the bow tie,

the pipe, the tweed cap.

This time I can teach him to sit and to stay.

Stay, I say to Jack who looks at the treat in my hand

and then at me, and at the treat and then at me, and he stays.

Come, I say to Jack, but Jack does not always come.

Sometimes he waits and looks at me a long time,

as when my professor would lean back in his chair

draw on his pipe and gaze at me.

But when I hold a treat Jack comes, and I remember how

the professor would lick dripping honey from the jar

lick peanut butter from the knife.

A little stubborn, our dog Jack,

shy we thought,

until the morning my daughter jumped on my bed

and Jack sprang at her growling,

and the next morning when he rushed towards her growling

and bit her skirt and tore it, and bit her and broke her skin,

and when I went to collar him, bit me, snarling and bit and bit.

That’s when I was pretty sure he was my history professor.

The vet said this happens more often than you’d imagine.

He must always be tethered, she said, until he can be trusted.

He must learn that you and your daughter come first.

And no more couch and no more sleeping in the bed with you Mama,

not ever.

I finally left him so late at night it was nearly dawn—

picking up my boots by the door,

stepping down the two flights, then running towards the car.

What can I say?  Jack may be my American History professor come back.

After all these years to make amends,

or Jack may be actually himself—a dog.

It’s a funny poem, but it sort of touches upon the same question that I started this post with:  from where do talents, gifts, and personalities come?  Howe attributes Jack’s aggression to her former American History professor.  Jack has the same stubbornness, same hunger for food and attention.

I don’t think I carry the spiritual or artistic DNA of Flannery O’Connor or Walt Whitman.  I will never reach the elevated status of Robert Frost or William Butler Years.   Most readers of this blog will agree that those writers were head and shoulders above.  They had gifts that the world will never see again.

I think all artists stand on the shoulders of the greats, from poets to painters to composers to actors.  I know I do.  If I get stuck when I’m writing a poem, I immediately turn to writers who inspire me.  When I go anywhere, I always carry books by favorite poets.  Currently, in my shoulder bag, I have collections by Jonathan Johnson and Ross Gay (plus Marie Howe, of course).  Before I started writing this little reflection, I sat and read some poems from Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude.  Doing that cleared my head, emptied it of noise, and I was able to start writing.

Each time I scribble in my journal or tap away on my laptop, I always feel like I’m a conduit.  I can even tell when it happens—the world suddenly fades away, and I’m can feel someone/something else take over.  Images and words and language flow easily, and, when I’m done, I’ve got a new poem or essay or blog post.  I guess you could call it inspiration, but who knows the true origins of inspiration?  It might God or luck.  Or it might be Flannery O’Connor’s ghost.

I have learned it’s not wise to question the divine spark when it appears.  You just simply accept it and say “thanks.”

Saint Marty wrote a poem for today, inspired by the ghost of William Butler Yeats . . . 

In Response to a Stanza from ‘A Prayer for Old Age’ by William Butler Yeats

by: Martin Achatz

Grant me, God, snow on my tongue

Impossible to ignore;

They who winter the air with words

Cool the July of war.

January 25, 2026: “The Saw, The Drill,” Another Shooting, “Laundry Day”

WARNING;  I am going to be writing about yesterday’s shooting in Minneapolis.  

Another day, another shooting.

Some things are impossible to ignore, and I’m not sure that ignorance is bliss in this situation.  To ignore is to be complicit, and I simply can’t pretend that everything is sunshine and chocolates in the United States at the moment.

A little over two weeks ago, Renee Good was murdered on the streets of Minneapolis by a masked ICE agent whose only response after shooting here in the face was to call her a “fucking bitch.” Yesterday (Saturday, January 24, 2026) a group of ICE agents murdered another innocent protestor in Minneapolis.  His name was Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse who worked for a Veterans Administration hospital in the city.  Trying to protect a woman, Pretti was pepper-sprayed, forced to the sidewalk, brutally beaten, and then shot multiple times.  (I’ve watched the video of the killing.  The ICE agents fire at least ten shots into Pretti’s prostrate body in the space of about five or seven seconds.)  After they shot him, one ICE agent can be seen clapping while the others turn Pretti’s body to count bullet holes.

I know I said I was going to try to remain positive in my posts, but I just can’t tonight.  I . . . just . . . can’t.

Marie Howe writes about how humans break things . . . 

The Saw, The Drill

by: Marie Howe

There’s always a chain saw somewhere,

the high whine of a drill, somebody building something or

tearing it down—fastening metal to metal.

When did wood give way to iron?

Then to plastic?

Almost everywhere the sound of the human will:

the bluster of engine, the grind of a blade, the wheel:

hammering, construction, repair.

Someone nailed to a cross, someone leashed, lashed.

Someone hung from a scaffold:  listen:  the squeak of the rope

the hammering.

Kill him with his own gun, a woman shouted,

Kill him with his own gun.

What have we made?  What are we making?

And who or what made us that we should make

such things as we do and did?  We grow smaller.  We break things.

Then turn to each other and beg for what no human can give.

This is a difficult poem for me to read tonight.  It’s all about humankind’s inherent need to break things.  We create, we destroy.  The line that sticks with me:  Kill him with his own gun.  I’m tired of ruthless mercenaries patrolling our streets, tear-gassing and detaining legal protestors, and un-aliving mothers and poets and nurses.  Yesterday, after seeing the video of Pretti’s assassination, I said to my wife, “I don’t recognize the country I live in anymore.”  

As I’m typing these words, I’m trying to formulate a message that isn’t all anger and retribution.  I’m failing miserably because I want these federal thugs to be arrested, convicted, and punished.  The Winter Olympics will be starting in Italy very soon, and, if I were an athlete, I’d be ashamed to represent the United States.  (Keep in mind that the fear and righteous anger we all feel right now is the same fear and righteous anger that African and Indigenous Americans have been experiencing for hundreds of years.)

I haven’t lost hope completely, though.  As Ann Frank said, 

In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.

Ann Frank was right.  The cruelty did end, but not before she was killed in a Nazi concentration camp.  Renee Good and Alex Pretti are martyrs for democracy, freedom, kindness, and compassion.  One day, plaques and statues should be erected in their honor.  They should never be forgotten.  

That is Saint Marty’s hope.  

A poem for tonight . . . 

Laundry Day

for Alex Pretti

by: Martin Achatz

I sit with the normal Saturday-morning crew, watch underwear, socks tumble and agitate as if I’m binging some Netflix series.  Martin and Malcolm have loads going, too, built up after a week of marching and teargas in the Twin Cities.  They huddle in a corner, drink hot coffee, compare notes, bruises, scars from the good old days, wonder when the good old days will end.  Alex comes in, fills a washer with towels and sheets, finds a seat, asks no one in particular, Is this a dream?  Martin and Malcolm laugh, offer him a stick of Juicy Fruit.  All three watch the machines cycle and spin, cycle and spin, trying to remove stains that just won’t come out, even after hundreds of years of scrubbing.

January 23, 2026: “Practicing,” Being Gone, “Exes”

It was a good day to stay inside.  In fact, it was a good day just to stay in bed.

The windchills were between -35 ad -40 degrees Fahrenheit.  I’m pretty sure all the schools and colleges and universities in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan were shut down.  I took the day off work.  (I planned this a while ago, independent of the weather forecasts.)

So, I sat on my couch most of today, watching dumb Hallmark Christmas movies, practicing being gone.

Marie Howe on being a ghost . . . 

Practicing

by: Marie Howe

Today I’m going to practice being dead for a few hours.

No one can expect anything from me.

No emails.  No groceries.

Our little dog Jack watches me walk

from room to room, but,

for a few hours, he is the only one who can,

and he returns contentedly to his bone.

I say bone—it’s what the pet store calls

a bully stick, which is in fact a bull’s penis—

dried out and hard.

That a small dog should chew on a bull’s penis!

Well, we eat swordfish, don’t we?

And the shy octopus whose brains

are in her arms?

The sunlight enters the small kitchen

spilling across the white enamel table

and the chipped blue wooden chair

whether anyone is there to see it, or not.

Meister Elkhart says, There never was a man who forsook himself so much

that he would not still fund more in himself to forsake.

Nevertheless, it’s good to have a dog with you when you are practicing

not being there:  you don’t feel so all alone.

Especially nowadays, it’s pretty easy to feel all alone.  I’ve written about this isolation in my previous two posts.  With so much division and cruelty happening in the streets of the United States, it’s really easy to contemplate just not being here, as Howe says.

Today, I absented myself from almost everything that I normally do.  I didn’t speak with anybody.  Didn’t work at the library,  Didn’t teach.  I even managed to look at my cell phone only once or twice all day long.I guess you could say I was practicing being dead.

It’s not a bad thing contemplating your absence from this mortal coil.  It’s a way to remind yourself of your place in the grand scheme of things.  I often wonder if what I do for a living/as a person makes any difference,  Poetry doesn’t put food in the mouths of starving kids.  Teaching doesn’t assist a homeless person with finding a place to live.  Blogging doesn’t stop a war.  Yet, I’m always reminded what Clarence the angel says to George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life:  “Strange, isn’t it?  Each man’s life touches so many other lives,  When he isn’t around he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?”

I like to think I’d leave an awful hole if I wasn’t here.  Whenever I do something, my goal is always the same:  leave the world a better place.  I want to be remembered as someone who loved and cared deeply for everyone and everything.  I’m sure I don’t always succeed.  However, I try each and every day.  That’s all any of us can do.

It’s getting late.  I’m tired.  Once I publish this post, I will more than likely go to sleep.  That’s one thing Howe doesn’t say:  being gone is exhausting.  I’m not sure if that means being dead is exhausting, too.  Hopefully, I won’t find out for a while.

Saint Marty wrote a poem for tonight about people being gone . . . 

Exes

by: Martin Achatz

How do you become an ex-anything?

Am I an ex-student because I no longer

take classes?  Am I an ex-son because

both my parents are in Holy Cross

Cemetery?  If I don’t write a poem

for a year, am I then an ex-poet?

How about the best man at my wedding?

He lives in New Zealand, flies helicopters,

finds sheep in his yard every morning.

I haven’t spoken with him in two 

years.  Does that make him an ex-

friend?  Ex-best man?  Years from now,

will my daughter find an old wedding

picture, point at him standing next

to me, say, “Who’s this guy?”  Will

I struggle to remember his name?

Bobby something or other?  Maybe Brian?

I imagine he named one of those sheep 

after me, calls to it as he sips his coffee

at sunrise:  Good boy, Donald!