June 7, 2026: “Mary’s Argument,” Open House, “Pool Table at a Poetry Reading”

It has been a hot minute since I last blogged.  Forgive me.  I’ve been distracted by my son’s high school graduation, among other things.

Students graduate from high school every year.  In my time on this planet, I have seen hundreds, if not thousands, of young people in caps and gowns, fairly glowing like newly formed stars.  I, myself, have graduated four times (high school once, college thrice).  Graduation is as normal (and predictable) as dandelions or sunrises.  It’s easy to become immune to the excitement and beauty of graduations.

Marie Howe writes about the uncommon ordinary . . .

Mary’s Argument

“Let what you said be done to me” (Luke 1:38)

by: Marie Howe

To lead the uncommon life is not so bad.

There is an edge we come to count on

when all the normal signs don’t speak,

a startled vigilance that keeps us waking

to watch the moon, the peculiar stars;

the usual, underfoot, no more a solid comfort

than a rock that might move as a turtle moves,

so slowly only the nervous feel the sudden bump

of the familiar giving way to unrequested astonishment.

As for a small time, the sheer cliff of everything

we never knew can rise in front of us

like the warm dark, where starlight

has its constant conception, where the idea of turtle

blinked and was: a wry joke, an intricate affection.

Yes, as Howe writes, we all become a little too used to the normal signs of life.  I can’t remember the last time I actually stopped to admire a lawn filled with golden dandelions or gotten drunk on the perfume of lilacs.  These things are so ordinary that we don’t really stop to think about them for what they really are:  miracles.  

This weekend, we had our son’s open house for graduation.  Again, I know it’s just one open house in a sea of open houses happening in the next few weeks.  We all get the announcements from our friends’ kids as June approaches, and we all show up with money-stuffed cards and eat the ham and rolls.  When spring arrives, open house season isn’t far off.

When you think about it, though, it really is amazing:  all these young people flooding the world with hope and excitement.  They’re like rare orchids that only blossom once every 17 or 18 years.  And we get to be there to witness it.

I could never have pulled off our son’s open house without the help of my wife’s family.  They’re the ones who volunteered to bring food, help decorate, and honor our son’s achievements.  My wife’s little sister (I’ve known her for so long, she’s my little sister, too) arranged the rental of the church hall and spent several hours Friday night and all day Saturday helping us.  My wife’s older sister made a quilt for our son out of a bunch of his old shirts and pajamas.  And my wife’s cousin made food for the potluck.  It was a huge team effort.

Me?  Well, I spent Thursday and Friday putting together decorations, mowing the lawn, cleaning our house, and grocery shopping.  Of course, I sort of over-planned everything, as I am wont to do.  We have lots of food left over.  My son was thrilled with the whole event, even though our friend Kerry beat him at cards.  (He was sure he was going to win)

I guess what I’m trying to say with this post is that I’m supremely grateful for all of the people who helped make this weekend (and my son’s graduation festivities) so meaningful.  They’re all miracles, and I’m blessed to have them in my life.

Saint Marty finished a poem this afternoon at the laundromat (because, even in the midst of miracles, there are still dirty clothes to wash) . . .

Pool Table at a Poetry Reading

by: Martin Achatz

covered in books, each poet

hawking wares like an old town

square where farmers gathered

on Saturday mornings to sell

milk, eggs, tomatoes red as infection,

maybe potatoes and bell peppers, too.

The poets chalk their cues, eye

the green felt.  Sonnet corner pocket

one says, makes the shot easy

as a sneeze.  Villanelle middle pocket

the same poet says, but misses,

scratches another poet’s haiku.  One 

by one, the table empties until

all that’s left is an elegy for River

Phoenix, who overdosed on Halloween,

died on a sidewalk outside the Viper Room.

The elegy convulses, goes into respiratory

distress before the ambulance arrives.

The poets try to revive it, press their lips

to its stanzas, blow breath into each

line, massage the nouns like stillborn chicks

in a nest of shell fragments, desperate 

as Victor Frankenstein for signs 

of life.  The rest of the poems start singing

“Stand By Me” a cappella in the pockets

as the elegy is lifted from the table,

slid into a folder of rough drafts

that all died way too young, before

they had a chance to ripen. 

May 27, 2026: “Sorrow,” Son’s Graduation, “Wisdom for My Son as He Graduates High School”

I have been a little unmoored today (actually all week long) because of my son’s impending graduation.  I knew it was coming and thought I was prepared, but, sitting in the auditorium this evening for the ceremony, I realized there simply was no way to prepare for the hurricane of emotions I was experiencing (am still experiencing).  Joy.  Pride.  Relief.  Grief.

Marie Howe writes about sadness . . . 

Sorrow

by: Marie Howe

So now it has our complete attention, and we are made whole.

We take it into our hands like a rope, grateful and tethered,

freed from waiting for it to happen,  It is here, precisely

as we imagined.

If the man has died, if the child’s illness has taken a sudden

turn, if the house has burned in the middle of the night

and in winter, there is at least a kind of stopping that will

pass for peace.

Now when we speak it is with great seriousness, and when

we touch it is with our own fingers, and when we listen

it is with our big eyes that have looked at a thing

and have not blinked.

There is no longer any reason to distrust us.  When it leaves

it will leave like summer, and we will remember it as a break

in something that had seemed as unrelenting as coming rain

and we will be sorry to see it go.

There really is no way to prepare for sorrow, even if the loss is expected, as Howe points out.  The sorrow might be coupled (guiltily) with relief and may “pass for peace,” but it is still “unrelenting as coming rain.”  Sorrow just hangs on, like a bad cold.  Weeks go by, and you’re still coughing and drinking NyQuil.

As most of my faithful disciples know, my son’s educational journey has not been easy.  Five years ago, I wasn’t even sure he would make it to high school graduation.  It seemed like every other day we were being called to the principal’s office.  On his last day of eighth grade he had to be escorted out of the building by a teacher because another student had threatened to jump him after the final bell.  Two weeks prior to that, I took a couple days off work because I was afraid he was going to hurt himself.  

Tonight, my son stood in front of an auditorium full of almost 300 people and delivered a speech to his classmates and teachers, thanking them for putting up with his “dumb ass.”  He opened himself up.  I’ve never seen him be that vulnerable in public.  And there I was, choking back sobs.

He did it.

I’m going to type that one more time.

He did it.

And I’m a complete mess, sitting on my couch at home, typing this post.  Writing is the way I gain a little control over difficult emotions and situations.  When my daughter graduated and drove off to her all-night party, I sat in the dark in my living room after everyone else had gone to bed, and I cried and wrote and cried some more.  Tonight, my son is with a couple of his best friends, and, after I publish this blog post, I’m going to sit in the dark in my living room and cry and cry.

Saint Marty wrote this poem for his son today . . . 

Wisdom for My Son as He Graduates High School

by: Martin Achatz

Yes, Darth Vader really is Luke’s dad, and,

yes, Han Solo shot Greedo first in Mos Eisley.

Diet Pepsi really is better than Diet Coke

because it’s sweeter, burns less when you swallow,

and that will be important when you get older,

realize you prefer Christmas to Halloween,

milk chocolate to bitter dark, when a nap

on a warm July afternoon is your definition

of perfection more than Michelangelo’s David

or the Mona Lisa’s curved lips.  In this world,

bellies bloat with famine, schoolgirls die

in bombed classrooms, polar bears drown

because we’re running out of ice the way

Walmarts run out of air conditioners during Texas

heatwaves.  There are things worth fighting for:

racial justice, the Oxford comma, gender

equity, leftover KFC cold from the fridge,

marriage equality because love is love is love is

really all you need, and I don’t care I used

the word love three times in this poem because

when this night is over—speeches spoken, songs sung,

marches marched, diplomas handed out—that’s all

you’re going to remember, the rest of us sitting

in our seats, waiting to hear your name called

as if for the first time, our hearts (yes,

I’m using the word hearts, too) blazing 

like wildfires on the cusp of a tinder-dry summer.

May 18, 2026: “Without Devotion,” Last Week of High School, “Midnight Thunderstorm”

This Monday begins the last week of high school for my son.  Friday is his official final day of secondary education.  

Now, my son acts all tough; he doesn’t really reveal his emotions all that much.  But I can tell he’s sensing a huge shift coming in his life.  I remember that shift from “I’m in high school” to “Holy shit!  I’m an adult!”  It was not an easy transition for me.  Even today, I still don’t know what I want to be when (if?) I grow up.

When you devote so much of your life to something, you feel the loss of that something acutely, whether it’s a school or person or career.  I enjoyed my high school days.  Enjoyed my classmates and classes.  Sure, there were challenges, but those challenges were incidental compared to some of the shit I’ve gone through since getting my diploma.  Devotion is easier when you’re younger.  There’s not so much clutter in your noggin.  The path seems clearer.

Marie Howe reflects on devotion . . . 

Without Devotion

by: Marie Howe

Cut loose, without devotion, a man becomes a comic.

His antics are passed

around the family table and mimicked so well, years

later the family still laughs.

Without devotion, any life becomes a stranger’s story

told and told again to help another sleep

or live.  And it is possible

in the murmuring din of that collective loyalty

for the body to forget what it once loved.

A mouth on the mouth becomes a story mouth.

It’s what they think they knew—what the body knew

alone, better than it ever knew anything.

Without devotion, his every gesture—

how he slouched in the family pantry, his fingers

curled into a fist, the small things he said

while waiting for water to boil—

becomes potentially hilarious.  Lucky for him

the body, sometimes, refuses translation,

that often it will speak, secretly,

in its own voice, and insist, haplessly,

on its acquired tastes.  Without devotion, it might

stand among them and listen, laughing,

but look, how the body clenches,

as the much discussed smoke intermittently clears.

It has remembered the man standing, wearing

his winter coat.

Watch how it tears from the table, yapping, ferocious

in its stupid inarticulate joy.

Howe is right.  Without devotion, most things become trivial or ridiculous.  I’m a church organist/accompanist.  If I don’t devote myself to several hours of practice each week, I know the results will be hilarious.  Or horrendous.  Either way, it will have people telling stories for quite a while.

I don’t think my son will have as difficult a transition to college next fall as I had when I was 17.  My son’s been taking college classes since his junior year of high school.  This past semester, he took an asynchronous online cyber security course.  That means that the entire class was virtual, with no in-class meetings.  My son pretty much had to teach himself everything, with email guidance from his instructor.  He had most of the semester’s work completed within the first month.  After that, he just had a research paper to write.  And he never came to me for help or advice.

Here’s how I know my son is going to do alright transitioning to college in September:  he got an A in the asynchronous class, and the instructor reached out to my son’s advisor to say my son was one of the best students he’s had in years.  My son devoted himself to doing well in the class, and that devotion payed off.

As most of my faithful disciples know, my son really struggled in elementary and middle school. Lots of bullying.  Lots of fights and visits to the principal’s office.  Five years ago, I wasn’t even sure my son was going to graduate—he hated school that much.  He just doesn’t learn the way most kids do.  And he struggled with suicidal depression and ADHD, as well.  By the time he hit eighth grade, he’d already been labeled a “bad kid.”  My wife and I had to make a change for our son, or he would have suffered for four years (if he didn’t drop out completely).  

So, we enrolled him in a local alternative high school.  He got a 4.0 GPA the first semester of his freshman year.  He went from almost failing every course in middle school to being an honor roll student his whole high school career.  That sad, isolated, and angry adolescent has became a happy, social, and accomplished young adult.  

Devotion pays off.  My wife and I were devoted to helping our son succeed.  My son was devoted to doing well in school (once he was in an educational environment where he felt safe and supported).  Without devotion, I don’t think I’d be sending out graduation announcements this week.  My son is one of the resilient people I know, even during his traumatic middle school years.  He could have simply given up on education, but he didn’t.  He stuck it out and found a place where he was accepted and respected.

CUE:  “Pomp and Circumstance”

And now, in a little over a week, he’s going to be walking into an auditorium in cap and gown, and he’s going to walk out with a diploma in his hand.

Saint Marty wrote a poem about resilience for tonight . . . 

Midnight Thunderstorm

by: Martin Achatz

1.

Nobody thought the radiated soil

of Hiroshima would green again,

predicted years of charcoal and hunger.

Yet, mere months after the bomb, oleander

blushed in the ruins, pink as first breath,

reclaiming ashes from armageddon, showing

us all how the world could begin again.

2.

Last night, I listened to a storm

roll through the dark like a panzer,

all wind and rumble, accompanied

by artillery fire rain on the roof.

Flashes of lightning strobed the bedroom

walls and ceiling, and I understood

why ancient people divined famines

and droughts and wars and plagues

from the heavens.  This morning, 

I smelled mud, saw worms fat and drowned

on the sidewalk.  Everything was bejeweled

with water:  pines, grasses, mailboxes.

The world was a bright, new diamond.

May 16, 2026: “Keeping Still,” Writing Conference, “What a Wonderful World”

It has been a very busy day.

I was invited to lead a youth poetry workshop and participate in a panel discussion today.  It was the annual meeting of UPPAA (Upper Peninsula Publishers & Authors Association) at the library where I work.  Maybe four years ago, I delivered the keynote address for UPPAA, so I am familiar with the organization and its people.  

Doing these kinds of events always makes me a little anxious.  Some of the questions running through my head:  Will these kids like me?  What do I know about recording audiobooks?  Did I leave the iron on?  (Okay, that last question was an allusion to the movie Airplane, but you get the idea.)  My inner Catholic schoolboy was fully present for most of the day.  Lots of noise in my head.

Marie Howe writes about finding a quiet place . . . 

Keeping Still

by: Marie Howe

If late at night, when watching the moon, you still

sometimes get vertigo, it’s understandable

that you wish suddenly and hard for fences, for someone

to marry you.  Desiring a working knowledge,

needing to know some context by heart, you might

accept anything:  the room without windows,

the far and frozen North, or the prairie, the prairie 

even, if it means that.

The long wide space and cold dirt that will not

be seduced into hills, and the dust, that even after

you have kicked and swept and fallen on it pounding,

will not produce a tree.  It will allow you

to rise with certainty and move with the relief

of necessary things to the wash on the line,

to the small maple you brought here that must be tied

for the winter or die.

Even the prairie night, blind with snow,

when no one comes, and you no longer look

to the mirror but force your fingers to the stitching

and produce a child to help with the lambing

and the carrying of water.  Although it might be years

before you turn and stop, startled

by the sweet and sudden smell of sheets snapping

in the sun, and the drunken lilac, prairie purple,

blooming by the doorway, because you planted it.

Keeping still is difficult because there’s so much noise in the world these days.  There are wars and inflation and soaring gas prices and an idiot tearing down/destroying national monuments.  (Said idiot is responsible for everything else in that previous sentence, as well.)

I don’t keep still very often.  Even when I fall asleep at night, I have to have some kind of noise.  Lately, it’s been old movies like Steel Magnolias and Crocodile Dundee.  My ADD mind doesn’t rest easily.  It requires distraction and, sometimes, medication.  (Not afraid to admit that I have a customer loyalty account at my local cannabis dispensary.)

Today, keeping still was impossible for me.  Too many things happening.  However, after my youth poetry workshop, I was able to sit in my office and write for a while, and it was glorious.  I rarely get more than 30 or 40 minutes of writing time in a 24-hour period.  Plus, I went to the laundromat after supper tonight, and I was able to write there, too.  So I found a few still moments during the parade of this day.  

I wish I was more like my puppy.  She can fall asleep practically anywhere, and very little disturbs her when she’s dozing.  (Every once in a while, in the middle of the night, I’ll hear her quietly bark in her crate, undoubtedly chasing a bunny or chipmunk in her dreams.  But that’s it.)  Dogs aren’t gifted with consciences or concepts of sin.  They just eat and sleep and (if they’re not neutered or spayed) fuck.  That’s it.  Maybe everyone should aspire to a dog’s life.  The world would be a much happier place, I think.

Saint Marty wrote the following poem at the laundromat tonight . . . 

What a Wonderful World

by: Martin Achatz

No offense, Louis, but it’s pretty hard

to notice rainbows in the sky or friends

shaking hands, saying “How do you do?”

or even imagining those three words 

(I and love and you) uttered in polite

company these days, when poets

are murdered in their cars and bombs

fall on school buildings filled with girls

too young to even know how to hate

anything but peas or an 8 p.m. curfew.

I want the world to be wonderful.

I really do.  But even bees are having

trouble finding the wonder of pollen,

and polar bears drown because the wonder

of ice can only be found in poems like this

by people like me who remember their parents

swaying in the kitchen, holding each other

close as you, Louis, growled your way

through that wonder-filled song, their hard

bodies shining like new pennies, the kind

no longer being minted these days.  Oh, yeah.