February 28, 2026: “What the Earth Seemed to Say, 2020,” Endings/Beginnings, “Mother’s Dementia”

Greetings on this last day of February.

I know that this month is the shortest of the year, but these 28 days have felt like 28 years (or centuries—take your pick).  Winter storms.  Iced-up roofs and windows.  Sick puppy.  And, yesterday, I had a tooth pulled.  The hits just kept on coming.

You may think I’m crazy, but I kind of miss the forced isolation of the pandemic.  That time was slower, less hectic.  The world even did better—air pollution dissipated; carbon footprints became carbon shadows; countries came together to fight for global health; and (with the exception of MAGA morons) people were just nicer, willing to help each other out.

Marie Howe reflects on the pandemic . . . 

What the Earth Seemed to Say, 2020

by: Marie Howe

Do you still believe in borders?

Birds soar over your maps and walls, and always have.

You might have watched how the smoke from your own fires

travelled on wind you couldn’t see

                                                   wafting over the valley

and up and over the hills and over the next valley and the next hill.

Did you not hear the animals how and sing?

Or hear the silence of the animals no longer howling?

Now you know what it is to be afraid.

You think this is a dream?  It is not

a dream.  You think this is a theoretical question?

What do you love more than what you imagine is your singular life?

The water grows clearer.  The swans settle and float there.

Are you willing to take your place in the forest again?

To become loam and bark, to be a leaf falling from a great height,

to be the worm who eats the leaf,

and the bird who eats the worm?  Look at the sky—are you

willing to be the sky again?

You think this lesson is too hard for you.

You want the time-out to end.  You want

to go to the movies as before, to sit and eat with your friends.

It can end now, but not in the way you imagine.  You know

the mind that has been talking to you for so long, the mind that

can explain everything?  Don’t listen.

You were once a citizen of the country called:  I Don’t Know,

Remember the boat that brought you there?  It was your body.  Climb in.

I love the idea of living in a land called I Don’t Know.  It conjures up the Keats and his concept of negative capability—the idea of suspending judgement about something in order to understand it.  Basically, it’s about accepting uncertainty without obsessively searching for an answer.  The pandemic was a time of great uncertainty.  Nobody had the answers. People who really can’t live with uncertainty turned to conspiracy theories instead—about COVID’s origins and mask protocols and vaccines.

WARNING;  This post is about to become political.

And now we are entering another time of great uncertainty, thanks to President #47’s war of choice against Iran.  One day after President Bill Clinton and Secretary Hillary Clinton were deposed about Jeffery Epstein by the House Oversight Committee (and the Clintons’ calls for #47 to be deposed, too), suddenly the United States and Israel are bombing Iran.  Coincidence?

I’ve been struggling not to get supremely pissed.  I guess I just want the simpler day-to-day that the pandemic offered.  Everyone was too wrapped up in not getting sick.  Sure, there was political division (unavoidable, considering the United States was being led by President Narcissist), but what I remember most is being really close (physically and emotionally) with the people I love most.

It wasn’t all sunshine and hand sanitizer, though.  During the pandemic, I lost my mother and one of my sisters.  Like so many others in the world, I was grieving.  My mom spent the entire pandemic in a nursing home.  She was already suffering from Alzheimer’s and macular degeneration prior to 2020, so there was a year where none of my family was able to be with her.  I still experience quite a bit of guilt about how little I saw her in her last years.

Human beings, as a whole, don’t deal well with endings/beginnings.  We don’t want to say “goodbye,” and we don’t want our comfortable lives to be disturbed, either.  Pandemics and wars do both of those things—they disrupt and cause loss.  

However, times of difficulty can also bring people closer together.  I think, in the days and weeks to come, this new war is going to unite citizens of the U. S. and the world, but not in the way that #47 is anticipating.  There WILL be marches and parades and headlines.  I’m positive about that.  But I’m not so sure that President #47 and his stooges are going to enjoy those events.  In fact, I’m positive they won’t.

People are going to come together.  Count on it.  They did during the Boston Tea Party.  And Women’s Suffrage.  And the Civil Rights Movement.  And the Vietnam War.  And Watergate.  And Black Lives Matter.  And REAL change happened.

That gives me hope.

Saint Marty wrote a poem for tonight about his mother . . . 

Mother’s Dementia

by: Martin Achatz

She slowly became a Picasso painting.

February 24, 2026: “Advent,” Taking Myself Too Seriously, “Life of the Party: A Limerick”

I take myself too seriously sometimes, in case you haven’t noticed.  My last few posts bear this out.  I get inside my head and stay there, just rattling around.  So, I’m not going to get all dark and pissy this evening, despite the fact that the Cheeto in Chief is currently delivering his State of the Disunion address to Congress as I’m typing these words.  I am making the choice to . . . keep it light.

Marie Howe time travels . . . 

Advent

by: Marie Howe

Not that we knew or could imagine

what some mild blue evenings made us homesick for.

Call it forethought but not thought of,

not conceived exactly.

When it happened, we said we saw it coming

approaching a horizon we hadn’t

known was there.  It occurred to us

at once—which altered time thereafter.

By then we could not remember the before

before it had the after in it.

Before I sat down to write this post, I was outside in the dark in my pajamas, knocking ice and snow off my roof.  After I did that, I came inside, my boots and pants packed with chunks of winter, and changed into sweats.  Before and after.

Not exactly earth shattering, I know.  I’m tired and cranky, and my feet are icicles.  I’m ready for this day to be over.

But, before Saint  Marty signs off, he has a new poem to share.  And after that, he’s going to brush his teeth, find a cold pillow, and pray that sleep is his friend tonight.

Life of the Party:  A Limerick

by: Martin Achatz

There once was a poet named Marty

who was always the life of the party

reciting sonnets and odes

lightening everyone’s loads

‘til even Frost laughed and let out a farty.

February 22, 2026: “Persephone and Demeter,” Sick Puppy, “Winter Nocturne”

Do not have a heart attack.  Yes, I am posting again.  Two days in a row.  

It has been quite a day.  The original plan was for my wife and I to spend the morning singing at Faith Lutheran Church (where I used to be an accompanist).  Before the service started, our son texted me:  “You guys need to take her today to the vet, she is still shitting blood.”

My son is referring to our little Australian shepherd.  On Friday, she started having bloody stools.  When we called the vet two days ago, we were instructed to switch her to a bland diet and monitor her until Monday.  She had diarrhea and threw up twice this morning when my wife took her out.  

So, we called the emergency vet number, and, by 11 a.m., we were on our way to the clinic, with the worst-case scenarios running through our heads.  Intestinal blockage.  Swallowed needle.  Advanced leukemia.  I was literally preparing myself for euthanizing her.

Marie Howe writes about death . . . 

Persephone and Demeter

by: Marie Howe

My mother needn’t have pretended to be appalled,

she knows all about the under dark.

The seed must break open to rise.

My mother is a god; she wanted to spare me.

But my nature is nature.

Like everything alive   I was meant to be split open,

to blossom, to be sucked, to be eaten,

to lean, to bend, to wither,

to die and die and die until I died.

Marie Howe understands that death and life go hand-in-hand.  Autumn always follows spring and summer.  The world leans, bends, and withers.  Pretty soon, snow starts flying, and winter arrives, burying us all until everything starts over again.

Our puppy is fine.  The vet weighed her, palpated her belly, listened to her lungs.  Then he gave her a shot and some pills to help with the nausea and runny poop.  He thinks she’s dealing with some gastrointestinal bug.  So, it’s bland food for another couple days.  If she’s not better by Tuesday, we have to bring her back in for further testing.  No emergency surgery.  No grim diagnosis.

The rest of the day was all about grocery shopping, preparing for a poetry workshop, and watching the closing ceremonies of the Winter Olympics in Italy.  Not a bad way to while away the hours as the snow kept piling and piling and piling up.  We’ve gotten close to two feet since Wednesday.  (In case you’re wondering, I’m officially tired of winter.)

I did lead that Zoom poetry workshop this evening, and it was wonderful.  Not surprisingly, a few of my prompts had to do with death and loss and grief.  Marie Howe would probably have enjoyed it a lot.

Now, I’m getting ready for bed.  There’s no ice skating or skiing or luging to watch.  I have a busy week ahead of me with teaching and programming.  Plus, I have a puppy to worry about now, and the sky’s supposed to dump another six inches of that white shit on us overnight.  But no death in the near future as far as I know.

Saint Marty wrote a poem for this evening about snow . . . 

Winter Nocturne

by: Martin Achatz

No moon.  Sky just a bruise,

gray and blue, like a palm

held to a flashlight so

you can almost see vein and bone.

Snow falling up with wind, my

neighbor’s Great Dane Martha

chewing the air with barks, bays,

I stand in this ice cube, think

about the 7 and 7s my dad

drank after supper until bed

every night, the cubes in 

his cup rattling like loose 

teeth in a boxer’s mouth.

February 21, 2026: “Persephone, in the Meadow,” Misery and Snow, “Hold”

So, it is Saturday.  Laundry day.  After a week of shoveling and pushing snow heavy as wet cement, I’m so excited to be sitting at a table in the laundromat, watching towels and underwear have an orgy in the washer.  (Read that with sarcasm, please.)

It’s been a really busy seven days.  I had a production of the play Misery at the library on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday (yes, THAT Misery by Stephen King).  That pretty much gobbled up most of my energy and time from last Friday to now.  On top of that, there’s been snow and snow.  So much snow that I don’t think I’m going to have a driveway if another blizzard hits my little portion of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  I’m a Yooper (I’ve lived the majority of my life north of the Mackinac Bridge), but I’m getting a little tired of this shit.

I’ve also been struggling with a bout of sadness these last few days.  It’s partially weather-related; I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen blue sky and direct sunlight.  But there’s something else going on, too—a feeling of loneliness and loss that seems to be humming beneath the surface of my life like bees in a dormant hive.

Marie Howe writes about Persephone’s face , , , 

Persephone, in the Meadow

by: Marie Howe

When I looked at the meadow flowers,

many of them looked back

offering their faces:  sometimes crawling with ants or a bee.

And that was that.

But after I’d spent several hours with my mother

I often felt her face on my face—as if my face were her face.

After leaving my mother I’d go to the mirror and look and look.

And it was my face I saw.

But from the inside it felt like hers,

and it was hours before I felt her likeness fade.

I get what Howe is describing in this poem.  After I visit my daughter downstate (or she drives home to visit us), I’m haunted by her presence for a while afterward.  I look in the mirror, and I see her face reflected in mine.  She has my chin and smile and eyes.  It makes the separation more acute for three or four days.

I also see my mother’s face mirrored in my face.  My sister Sally’s face, as well.  We have Hainley features.  (“Hainley” was my mother’s maiden name.). Family has been central to my entire life.  Before Sally died of lymphoma of the brain, Sundays were reserved for big dinners at my parents’ house.  My sisters would cook.  I would bring dessert.  For a few hours, we ate and visited and laughed and loved.  It was a way to stay connected despite our busy schedules.

I’m glad my daughter is old enough to remember those good times.  My son was pretty young when Sally died, so his memories are fuzzier, although when he says her name or mentions her, it’s with the kind of reverence reserved for prayer.  And my kids still get big get-togethers with my wife’s side of the family—birthdays and holidays and homecomings.  It’s always joyful chaos, loud and laugh-filled.

It’s not uncommon for family members to live far and wide.  One of my brothers lives in Pennsylvania.  Before that, he lived in California.  I have a niece who’s a resident of Germany.  One of my sisters and her kids live in Washington state.  My closest blood relatives (two sisters and a brother) live a good hour’s drive away.  Like I said, far and wide.

My wife and I have been together for 35 years now.  Her family is my family just as much as my remaining siblings are.  At our Christmas gathering in December, I thanked my brother-in-law for always treating me like a real brother.  His reply:  “You’re family.  Always will be.”

I’ve been holding onto that moment.  It reminds me that I’m not Oliver Twist, if that makes sense.

Saint Marty has a new poem about holding onto love . . . 

Hold

by: Martin Achatz

I hold this pen in my hand, try

to conjure images of love to hold

this poem together, hold it like

a cupped palm holds water to thirsty

lips or the bowl of a spoon holds

sugar to sweeten coffee.  I hold

my mother and sister:  Mom holding

my sister’s hand, my sister’s breath held,

let go, held, let go, held, let go, held, 

Mom holding tighter and tighter 

because she knows to release her hold 

would be like releasing a balloon held 

in a child’s sticky fist, watching it float 

up, up into the gold and blue circus 

tent of heaven.