October 27, 2026: "Watching Television," Hummingbird, "Nostalgia"

One of the classes I teach at the university is called Good Books.  Basically, it’s introduction to literature and literary interpretation, and every person who teaches Good Books in the English Department  approaches it differently.  For several years now, I’ve used the course as a vehicle to talk about mental illness.  So, I include books like An Unquiet Mind by Kay Jamison and The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, among others.  

Yesterday morning, in our discussion of Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library, we talked about regrets—decisions we’ve made in our lives that we look back on with a sense of loss or nostalgia.  It could be something huge—giving up on the dream of becoming a ballerina—or something small—having Corn Flakes for breakfast instead of Lucky Charms.  (By the way, given that choice, always go with Lucky Charms.)

Marie Howe writes about an argument she regrets . . .  

Watching Television

by: Marie Howe

I didn't want to look at the huge white egg the mother spider dragged

along behind her, attached to her abdomen, held off the ground,

bigger than her own head--

and inside it:  hundreds of baby spiders feeding off the nest,

and, in what seemed like the next minute,

spinning their own webs quickly and crazily,

bumping into each other's and breaking them, then mending

and moving over, and soon they got it right:

each in his and her own circle and running around it.

And then they slept,

each in the center of a glistening thing:  a red dot in ether.

Last night the moon was as big as a house at the end of the street,

a white frame house, and rising,

and I thought of a room it was shining in, right then,

a room I might live in and can't imagine yet.

And this morning, I thought of a place on the ocean where no one is,

no boat, no fish jumping,

just sunlight gleaming on the water, humps of water that hardly break.

I have argued bitterly with the man I love, and for two days

we haven't spoken.

We argued about one thing, but really it was another.

I keep finding myself by the front windows looking out at the street

and the walk that leads to the front door of this building,

white, unbroken by footprints.

Anything I've ever tried to keep by force I've lost.

Howe’s last line is killer.  It pretty much ties together the first part of the poem (about the spiders) with the second part of the poem (about the argument with her love).  It’s all about trying to hold on to something that simply won’t or can’t be held on to.  The hatchling spiders are learning to spin their webs to trap food, and the speaker in the poem is lamenting the absence of her estranged partner.  

No matter how hard we try, we can’t force time to pause or stop, no matter how wonderful the moment.  Like anything in this universe, happiness is ephemeral.  We may spend days weaving intricate webs to trap our joy, but joy has wings and a strong will.  It will pull and kick and flap until it rips itself free of our silky bonds.

The best we can do is to enjoy what we have in the moment.  Tell the person sharing your bed and life that you love them.  Spend an extra few seconds on the dance floor, eyes closed, swaying and bouncing to the music.  Read that gorgeous poem by Mary Oliver one more time.  Have another ice cream sandwich.  Bliss out.

Howe’s right.  You can’t keep something by force.  A hummingbird is beautiful because it’s wild in its frantic love of summer nectar.  Wings humming, it appears and dances from blossom to blossom, slurping up sweetness, and then flits away and disappears.  Capturing that hummingbird won’t capture its ecstasy.  

We’re approaching the holiday season, with all its emphasis on family and togetherness.  If you’re anything like me, you will spend some time in the next three months thinking about the Thanksgivings and Christmases from your past.  And if you’re anything like me, you will have many empty chairs at the turkey table and around the twinkling tree this year.  That’s just reality.  People drift in and out of your life.  Move away.  Die.

I’m a person who can get mired down in regrets and nostalgia—that pining for individuals and experiences that are simply gone forever.  I will never have another Christmas with my parents and all my siblings.  In fact, I haven’t had one of those for about 30 years. Those Thanksgiving mornings where my wife, children, and I watched the Macy’s parade together on television are long gone.  Both my kids are adults now, and my daughter lives downstate with her significant other.  Life, for better or worse, has moved on.

I’m trying to avoid getting all tangled up in my sticky web of regrets.  It’s tough.  As I get older, my list of regrets grows and grows.  But I have a lot to celebrate in my present life:  my beautiful wife of 32 years; my brilliant and funny daughter and son; and my loyal friends who remind me (sometimes on a daily basis) that the world is a better place with me in it.

That’s pretty sweet nectar for this ol’ hummingbird.

Saint Marty wrote this poem a few days ago . . . 

Nostalgia

by: Martin Achatz

is that feeling you get when
the first maple leaf blazes into
sunrise overnight, and you know
grass, panes, ponds will soon
frost then rime then freeze over.
And you aren’t ready to let go
of the drill of insects on a day so green
you’re breathing chlorophyll,
aren’t ready for the erasure of the coming
months—God painting his canvas
with thick, white, cold gesso,
the way Picasso painted over a bent
penitent, a nursing mother, something
bovine in a field, a woman’s
face—all ghosts now—before
he settled on that old, blue man
strumming his guitar. And it’s the blue
sound that old man’s guitar makes
in the blue air, like a mourning
dove’s cry: coo-ah, coo, coo, coo.

What do you do with all this
longing? You could look at old
pictures in yearbooks, marvel
at how young everyone is, anxious
for the future to arrive on the noon
bus from Chicago or Milwaukee. Or
you could put on a vinyl, turn
down the lights, sway to Prince’s
“Purple Rain” the way you did
with your crush at junior prom
when you finally worked up the guts
to ask her to dance. Or you could
follow some forgotten railroad tracks,
like Will Wheaton and River Phoenix
in Stand By Me, searching for that friend
who disappeared years ago. Listen.
That train whistle in the distance
is calling his name in the night.

October 23, 2026: “Late Morning,” So Much Love, “You’ll never be broke”

Greetings, Faithful Disciples!

Last weekend,  I visited my daughter and her significant other downstate in Mount Pleasant. My wife, son, and I headed across the Mackinac Bridge on Friday and came back Sunday afternoon. It was a trip about five weeks in the planning, and I cherished every moment of it.

Marie Howe reflects on cherished times with her loved ones . . .

Late Morning

by: Marie Howe

I was still in my white nightgown and James had drawn me down

to sit on his lap, and I was looking over his shoulder through the hall

into the living room, and he was looking over my shoulder, into the trees

through the open window, I imagine,

and we sat like that for a few minutes, without saying much of anything,

my cheek pressed lightly

against his cheek, and my brother John was dead.

Suddenly close and distinct, it seemed finished, as if time were a room

I could gaze clear across—four years since I’d lifted his hand from

the sheets on his bed and cooled it in my hand.

A light breeze through the open window, James’s warm cheek,

a brightness in the windy trees as I remember, crumbs and dishes still

on the table, and a small glass bottle of milk and an open jar of

raspberry jam.

Such a tender, quiet moment that Howe describes—full of great love and sorrow, simultaneously.  You really can’t have one without the other.  The morning of her brother’s death, Howe sits on James’s lap, pressing her face to his stubbled cheek.  It’s a moment anchored by small, domestic details—the bottle of milk and open container of raspberry jam and the light breeze—as the poet tries to endure the daily normalcy of life after the loss of a life.  

I understand the grief and relief Howe is describing.  I loved my sister, Sally, deeply.  For close to 20 years, I worked with/for her at an outpatient surgery center.  We spent eight, nine, ten hours a day together for almost two decades.  When Sally died, my profound love for her morphed into profound sorrow.  Like Howe, I found myself missing the small intimacies we shared—the Dove chocolates stashed in her desk drawer or her ever-present cans of Diet Coke.  Tiny, ridiculous things.

Last weekend, I reveled in tiny and ridiculous things with the people I love most in this world—my wife, son, daughter, and daughter’s significant other.  We went out to eat, played games, watched a movie.  Against my better judgement, we did and escape room, an experience designed to create anxiety and panic.  However, I was surrounded by really smart people, so we managed to solve the puzzles in almost record time.

All weekend long, I was so happy and relaxed.  Following my kids into a pizza place to order dinner, I felt my heart opening up like the Grinch’s at the end of How the Grinch Stole Christmas—as if I couldn’t contain the amount of love I was experiencing.  It was a physical sensation, starting in the center of my chest and radiating outward, as if my veins and arteries were injected with sunlight. 

Nothing big happened last weekend.  Just a series of tiny, ridiculous domestic joys.  Brightness in the windy trees, as Howe says in her poem.  I’ve held onto that feeling all week long, not willing to give up my happiness hangover.  If I could bottle and sell this feeling, in liquid or tablet form, I’d be richer than the person who rigged the 2024 U.S. presidential election.  

Saint Marty wrote a poem about this love medicine . . . 

You’ll never be broke

by: Martin Achatz

my dad used to say when I asked

for my allowance.  He thought he was

funny as hell, everyone did, but

everyone didn’t grow up in a house

where expressions of love were doled

out like bowls of cabbage broth

during the Great Depression.  This afternoon,

standing in a rest area by Lake Michigan,

I watched my son reach down to rub

our dog’s head generously while my wife

let her lap and lap as much water

as she wanted from her bowl, and I felt

myself crushed by love for them,

as if my dad had just opened his wallet

and finally made good on everything he owed me.

October 15, 2026: “One of the Last Days,” Anniversary, “Spilled Milk”

It’s really easy to take people you love for granted, especially if those people live under the same roof as you.  It’s like having a favorite teeshirt or comfortable chair.  You just assume they’re always going to be there for you until they aren’t.

Marie Howe writes about a person she loved . . . 

One of the Last Days

by: Marie Howe

As through a door in the air that I stepped through sideways

before reaching for a plate high in the cupboard

I find myself in the middle of my life:  May night, raining,

Michael just gone to Provincetown, James making music next door,

lilacs in full bloom, sweet in the dark rain of Cambridge.

One on of the last day I told him, You know how much you love Joe?

That’s how much I love you.  And he said, No.  And I said, Yes.

And he said, No.  And I said, You know it’s true.

And he closed his eyes for a minute.

When he opened them he said, Maybe you better start looking

for somebody else.

Such a sad little poem about love in the face of imminent loss.  Howe knows her brother is dying.  So does he.  She’s trying to convey the depth of her feelings for him, and he’s being practical.  He doesn’t want to leave a brother-sized blackhole in her life when he dies, so he instructs her to start looking for his replacement now before she’s overwhelmed with grief.  

Don’t worry.  This post is not going to be another meditation of loss.  I’m trying to take the advice of my faithful disciple who has left some wise comments on my last couple musings.  While you can’t necessarily choose to be happy (especially if you’re suffering from clinical depression), you CAN choose to focus on happy things every day of your life.  Cultivate joy, so to speak.  You plant the seeds, water them, and wait for them to flower.

Here is my happiness for this week:  my wife and I celebrated our 31 years of marriage on Wednesday.  In reality, we’ve been together, as a couple, for 36 years.  That’s astounding to me.  Driving home this evening, my wife said, “The time has gone by so fast.”  She’s right.  It seems like yesterday when we went on our first official date—a screening of Disney’s The Jungle Book.  We sat in the back row and explored the bare necessities, if you get my meaning.

She has been my rock for close to 40 years now.  Sure, we’ve had some rocky times.  Most marriages do.  But  we’re still here, still together, still in love.  I think that’s an amazing accomplishment in a world that has become sort of disposable.  Over my last five or so months of depression, my wife has listened to me, held my hand, told me over and over “I love you.”  She repeated that phrase so many times because she knows, firsthand, the power of sadness.  

I love my wife, and I am so, so lucky to have her in my life.  

Saint Marty has a happy poem for this happy post . . . 

Spilled Milk

by: Martin Achatz

I cry over lots of things—

the ending of It’s a Wonderful Life,

a midnight charley horse, 

any poem by Mary Oliver,

a saved text message from a dead friend,

a flat tire or dead car battery,

my dog snoring at night in her crate,

a spiderweb bedazzled with morning,

my 18-year-old son kissing me goodnight.  

And you, dear reader, maybe

you’re thinking about how good

your mom’s apple pie was fresh

out of the oven, and that’s bringing

salt to your eyes.  Right now, I’m ready

to cry because I don’t know how

to end this poem about crying

except to offer it a Hershey kiss,

say Everything’s going to be okay

and I will always love you, no matter what 

because that’s what Dolly told me to do.

October 10, 2026: “The Gate,” Being Cheerful, “Super El Niño Winter”

I have been counseled by one of my faithful disciples to cheer up, that all of my posts recently have been too sad.

When I started this blog over ten years ago, I had no idea what I was doing.  I wrote about saints and martyrs, birthdays and funerals.  In the past, I even included a comic strip that I drew.  I studied books and poets I love, and, most importantly, wrote about the messiness of life.  ‘Cuz life is fucking messy.

The Nobel Prizes were announced this past week.  I love watching and following these announcements because they are about honoring individuals and organizations and groups who have made significant, positive contributions to the world. It’s a celebration of humankind at its very best.  Yes, the world can be a flaming pile of trash, but it can also be wonderful.  Sometimes, this happens simultaneously.  

Marie Howe writes about her entry into the wider world . . . 

The Gate

by: Marie Howe

I had no idea that the gate I would step through

to finally enter the world

would be the space my brother’s body made.  He was

a little taller than me:  a young man

but grown, himself by then,

done at twenty-eight, having folded every sheet,

rinsed every glass he would ever rinse under the cold

and running water.

This is what you have been waiting for, he used to say to me.

And I’d say, What?

And he’d say, This—holding up my cheese and mustard sandwich.

And I’d say, What?

And he’d say, This, sort of looking around.

Sometimes, it does take another person to make you see the world clearly.  In this poem, Howe’s brother is the catalyst.  He reminds her to take time to appreciate the world and life, from the smallest of pleasures (a cheese and mustard sandwich) to the largest (actually being with someone you love—her brother).  

The faithful disciple who instructed me to cheer up is my catalyst tonight.  I do realize that my posts from the last few months have been difficult to read.  Messy. That’s because my life over the last few months has been difficult to live.  Messy.  When you’re lost in a dark wood, it’s difficult to find the stars.  For Dante, that process of finding joy took three really long books.  And I doubt anyone told the great poet to cheer up after he completed Inferno. 

But my disciple is right.  I need to provide a little relief from all the darkness I’ve been writing about.  Hear this, though:  telling a person who is struggling with clinical depression to cheer up doesn’t work.  I don’t choose to feel this sadness.  No person would.  I’m on a journey, just like Dante, and I have to get through all the circles of depression before I can start climbing toward the light.

Along the way, though, I can still celebrate the cheese and mustard sandwiches (to borrow an image from Howe) along the way.  Tonight, my sandwich was that my 18-year-old son sat and watched a movie with me after we had dinner.  It was a horror movie based on a Stephen King novella.  My son really got into it, although he kept trying to figure out what was going to happen next.  (He guessed some plot elements correctly.)  After it was over, he got up, turned to me, said, “That was good,” then disappeared into his room upstairs.  

It was almost like winning the Nobel Prize in Literature.  A true blessing.

Saint Marty wrote a poem tonight based on this prompt:  Write a poem that makes light of something serious . . . 

Super El Niño Winter

by:  Martin Achatz

It’s historic, they say, this warming brought on

by ocean temps and jet streams, but I don’t care

as I sit in a lawn chair in my backyard

this New Year’s Eve, slathered with enough SPF 50

to turn me into a ghost.  Pina colada in one hand, 

cell phone in the other, I try to remember where

I stashed my snow shovel in the garage last

April after I was sure no more blizzards were

being imported from Canada.  Even the geese are

still here, mistaking Lake Superior for the Gulf Coast.

Here’s one strutting by me now, breast white

as a snowbank, waiting for that urge

to stretch his wings, join that arrow of honkers

flying south for the summer.