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.

May 15, 2026: “Gretel, from a sudden clearing,” Rose, “On Your 61st Birthday”

Greetings, faithful disciples.  

Yes, I’ve been out of commission for the last couple weeks when it comes to blogging.  I had a little mishap with my iPad.  Basically, I was grading some final exams, and my iPad fell off the corner of a table.  The screen shattered.  So, for the past 14 or so days, I’ve been waiting for my replacement iPad, screen protector, and bluetooth keyboard.

Well, as evidenced by this post, I am back in business, and just in time for my sister Rose’s birthday.  She passed in 2022, and, since that time, I don’t think a day has gone by that I haven’t thought of her.  I miss her terribly.  She would have been 61 years old today.

Marie Howe writes about a sister missing her brother . . . 

Gretel, from a sudden clearing

by: Marie Howe

No way back then, you remember, we decided,

but forward, deep into a wood

so darkly green, so deafening with birdsong

I stopped my ears.

And that high chime at night,

was it really the stars, or some music

running inside our heads like a dream?

I think we must have been very tired.

I think it must have been a bad broken-off

piece at the start that left us so hungry

we turned back to a path that was gone,

and lost each other, looking.

I called your name over and over again,

and still you did not come.

At night, I was afraid of the black dogs

and often I dreamed you.next to me,

but even then, you were always turning

down the thick corridor of trees.

In daylight, every tree became you.

And pretending, I kissed my way through

the forest, until I stopped pretending

and stumbled, finally, here.

Here too, there are step-parents, and bread

rising, and so many other people

you may not find me at first.  They speak

your name, when I speak it.

But I remember you before you became

a story.  Sometimes, I feel a thorn in my foot

when there is no thorn.  They tell me,

not unkindly, that I should imagine nothing here.

But I believe you are still alive.

I want to tell you about the size of the witch

and how beautiful she is.  I want to tell you

the kitchen knives only look friendly,

they have a life of their own,

and that you shouldn’t be sorry,

not for the bread we ate and thought

we wasted, not for the turning back alone,

and that I remember how our shadows walked

always before us, and how that was a clue,

and how there are other clues

that seem like a dream but are not,

and that every day, I am less

and less afraid.

Howe’s poem is kind of heartbreaking.  I can almost taste the grief in Gretel’s words, that longing to find her lost brother—every tree in the forest reminding her of Hansel.

My sister Rose was unforgettable, too.  She wrote letters to friends and family, even though the doctor told my mom when my sister was born that she would never be able to walk or speak.  She did latch hook rugs, even though she barely followed the designs, instead creating her own, Picasso-esque images.  She watched movies on repeat—Mama Mia! and Sleeping Beauty and Steel Magnolias, even though she frequently wore out the VHS tapes and DVDs.  And Rose had Down syndrome.  I put that fact last because, if I put it first, people tend to define her by it.  She was much more than her extra chromosome.

The last few years of Rose’s life were a struggle.  She suffered from terrible asthma and frequently ended up in the hospital with bouts of pneumonia.  During her final hospital stay, she struggled and fought for breath for days.  Then, one morning, one of her lungs collapsed.  Her body was tired, and she was ready to be with all the people she missed—Mom, Dady, sister Sally, and brother Kevin.  The nurses removed her oxygen, and, in the silence that followed, her breathing got quieter and quieter until it ceased altogether.

That winter morning, the sky was pink and orange with the rising sun, as if it knew Rose would soon be coming and wanted to throw her a huge “Welcome Home” party.  It was one of the most beautiful and difficult moments of my life.  She passed so peacefully that, at first, I didn’t even realize she was gone.

Like Gretel in Howe’s poem, I see Rose everywhere—in the shapes of trees and clouds, taste of Diet Coke on my tongue, melodies of ABBA songs on my playlist.  She’s gone, but she’s never been gone.

Saint Marty wrote this poem for Rose tonight . . . 

On Your 61st Birthday

by: Martin Achatz

I think of you before gulls

picked your brain clean of words,

when you could still spoon Dairy Queen

ice cream cake to your mouth, or strip

your KFC breast so clean the bones

looked like they belonged in a Georgia 

O’Keeffe desert scape.  In a photo, 

my daughter kneels beside you, my son 

hovers behind your chair, and you smile

as if you’ve just discovered how

to smile and can’t wait to share

your discovery with the rest of the world.

I wish there was a museum of your

smiles I could visit today.  I’d sit

on a bench in the wing dedicated 

to all the smiles you gave me, each

lip and tooth thick and alive

as brushstrokes on a van Gogh canvas,

you know the one with all the screaming

stars and black finger of a tree pointing

heavenward, as if directing me to the cloud

where hosts of seraphs are singing 

hosannas to your bright birthday comet.

May 9, 2026: "What Belongs to Us," Tootsie Pop, "Driving Home from Downstate"

It is the second weekend of May.  All of my grades for the winter semester at the university have been submitted.  The poetry festival is done for another year.  I'm not ashamed to say I've been sort of taking it easy since Wednesday, not giving myself any major projects to work on or complete.  Just been chillin'.

Of course, that doesn't mean there aren't big things happening in May.  My son will be graduating from high school on May 27.  That's right.  So, I have graduation preparations (pictures, announcements) and party planning (decorations, food, invitations).  The end of this month is going to be much more hectic than the beginning.  The last hurrah of adolescence before my son is staring adulthood in the eyes.

I remember how sad I got when my daughter graduated high school six years ago.  It felt like she was slipping through my fingers like rainwater.  For 17 years, my wife and I were the center of her universe until she got that diploma in her hand and realized that the planet was round and outer space infinite.  From that moment, every day was her becoming more and more independent.  Getting jobs.  Moving out and away.  

When you think about it, we don't really own anything in this life.  Nothing belongs to us.  We're just caretaking.  Our houses, cars, lawns, communities, country, and kids.  When you're gone, someone else will live in your home, drive your car, mow and weed your lawn.  Your kids (if you have them) will build their own lives without you.  Your community and country will continue to exist (unless some maniac with nuclear codes has a bad night or needs to distract the public from a child sex abuse scandal).   

Maybe, if you're a really good person (or a really evil one), you'll live on in memories.  You'll still be making people smile or shake their heads ten or 20 years from now.

Marie Howe writes about ownership versus stewardship . . . 

What Belongs to Us

by: Marie Howe

Not the memorized phone numbers.

The carefully rehearsed short cuts home.

Not the summer, shimmering like pavement, when Lucia

pushed Billy off the rabbit house and broke his arm,

or our tiny footprints in the back files.

Not the list of kings from Charlemagne to Henry

not the boxes under our beds

or Tommy's wedding day when it was so hot and Mark played the flute

and we waved at him waving from the small round window in the loft,

the great gangs of people stepping one by one into the cold water.

I have, of course, a photograph:

you and I getting up from a couch.

Full height, I stand almost two inches taller than you

but the photograph doesn't show that,

just the two of us in motion

not looking at each other, smiling.

Not even the way we said things, leaning against the kitchen counter.

Not the cabin where I burned my arm and you said, oh, you're the type

that if it hurt, you wouldn't say.

Not even the blisters.  Look.

Howe says that even the blisters and scars on our bodies from past injuries and hurts don't belong to us.  They're temporary reminders.  That's all.  When our last breaths leave our lungs, nobody will remember we burned our arms cooking on the potbelly at camp.  That experience will be buried or burned with us once we walk through that long, lonesome valley.

My hope is for smiles and happiness.  When my son or daughter think of me 40 or 50 years from now (assuming I will not be around), I want them to remember me as a person who was kind and generous and compassionate.  And, if I've done my job as a father correctly, my kids will be kind and generous and compassionate, as well.  Because kindness and generosity and compassion aren't qualities to hoard--they're meant to be shared and given away.

I typed most of this post at a laundromat.  It was a busy day--almost all the washers and dryers spinning and cycling.  I was sitting at a community table, earbuds in, typing away on my laptop.  There was an older gentleman sitting in a nearby chair with something in his lap that he was running his fingers over.  The woman, whom I assume was his wife, was sitting at the table with me, scrolling on her phone.

At one point, the older gentleman put the item in his lap into a bag by the side of his chair, and I realized it was a book in braille.  His wife got up and emptied a load of laundry from a washer into a dryer.  When she was done, she walked over to her husband, lifted his hand, and signed a message against his palm.  That was when I realized that he was both deaf and blind.  I saw him reach into his shirt pocket and remove a grape Tootsie Pop from it.  He handed it to the woman.

 Not wanting to be rude, I retrained my attention to my laptop and continued to type.  The wife finished their laundry, brought it out to their car, and then came back in and signed into her husband's hand that it was time to go.  He stood, unfolded his cane, and followed his wife out the door.

When my laundry was done drying 36 minutes later, I carried my clothes baskets out to my Subaru, and then I went back to the community table to pack up my computer and books.  

Sitting behind my laptop was the grape Tootsie Pop.

I smiled, picked it up, and put it in my pocket.  I carried that small act of generosity and kindness home with me.

This couple reminded me that there is goodness in the world.  At a time in the United States when hatred and anger and injustice and cruelty are headlines every day, this man and woman gifted me joy and sweetness.  I can't hoard their gift.  It's not meant to be hoarded.  It's meant to be passed on in some way.  Because joy and sweetness don't belong to me, or anybody else, for that matter.

Goodness only remains good when shared.  It's the fertilizer for love and peace.  Ask Jesus.  Or Buddha.  Or Muhammad.  

Saint Marty's message for today is pretty simple:  be a Tootsie Pop giver, not an asshole. 

And a new poem . . . 

Driving Home from Downstate

by: Martin Achatz

It's a long, listless journey, little

to see except sedans, SUVs speeding

toward some town near Topinabee, 

maybe to visit a mother or maiden aunt

who now needs help to knead

dough with digits stiffened and curled

with age, with sweeping and window

cleaning, perhaps collecting dog crap

after a hard winter of endless white.

After the day is done, the drive home

waiting like a headache, perhaps the driver

will hug Mom or Aunt Hester, hold

on a little too long because life

is short and you never know

when winter will return.

May 2, 2026: "The Split," Son's Award, "Teenager Hacks into Heaven"

So, National Poetry Month is over.  I survived all the readings and workshops, a quick trip downstate to Ann Arbor and Detroit, plus the entire week of the Great Lakes Poetry Festival at the library.  Now, sitting in the laundromat on a Saturday morning, watching my clothes agitate and spin, I am both sad and relieved.  I’m sure, in a couple months, I’ll be looking back on the past four weeks with nostalgia.  Yes, I’m glad it’s over, but I’ll miss being in the thick of poetry and poetic events every day.  Sort of like the day after Christmas as a kid—you’re haunted by all the anticipation and excitement of Santa Claus.

Marie Howe writes about ghosts . . . 

The Split

by: Marie Howe

I.

She'd start the fires under the bed.
I'd put them out.

She'd take the broom stick and rape all the little girls.
I'd pull them aside, stroke their cheeks, and comfort them.
—How they would cry.

Brit would fight the German soldiers.
She'd crouch by the banister waiting for them
when I was too scared.

And sometimes, she would push me farther into the back woods 

than I wanted to go
But I was glad she did.

She was mean and she liked it.

She'd take off her clothes and dance in front of the mirror 

and she'd say things and she'd swear.

She'd laugh at the crucifix, turn him upside down and watch him hang.
And she'd unhinge that piece of metal cloth between his legs
and run when she heard somebody coming
leaving me.

Mean as she was, I miss her.

Only twice have I heard her laugh since then.
Once, lying on my back in a yellow field,
I heard something that sounded like me in the back of my head
but it was Brit,

and just now, making love with you, it's hard to tell you
but I heard her laugh.

II.

It began as a fear.
There was something, not me, in the room.

And translated into a dumbfounding
forgetfulness

that stopped me on the street
puzzling

over what year it was, what month.

I began to watch my feet carefully.
Nevertheless, I suffered
accidents.

The bread knife sliced my thumb
repeatedly

the water glass shattered on the kitchen floor
and in its breaking there was a low laugh.

Looking up, I saw no one

but felt the old cat stretch inside me
feigning indifference.

Marie, I'd hear in a crowd, Marie
the air so thick with ghosts it was hard
breathing.

One afternoon, the trucks were humming like vacuum cleaners
in the rain.

It was impossibly lonely,
No one but me there:

I called out Brit, the city is burning,
Brit, the soldiers are coming

and she laughed so sudden and loud I turned
and saw her for one second

all insolent grace, pretending
she wasn't loving me.

I’ve had many experiences similar to the Howe is describing.  You’re out and about, not really thinking about the past or future, just being present in the moment.  Suddenly, because of the smell of an orange  or a voice heard in the distance, you’re pulled back into the past (maybe even to childhood).  Last Saturday, walking into church to play the pipe organ for Mass, I saw an old man shambling into the sanctuary, and I swear it was my father.  Same gait.  Same stooped shoulders and back.  It made me stop dead for a few moments, until the present took over again.

The final event of the Great Lakes Poetry Festival is always the awards ceremony for the GLPF Teen Poetry Contest.  Teens are invited to submit one poem to be blindly judged by a panel of poets.  The winners receive gift cards to Snowbound Books, one of the local independent booksellers.  

My son, who will be graduating from high school at the end of the month, entered the contest this year, at my urging.  (He’s entered the contest one other time, and he was awarded second place, if memory serves.). He didn’t want to enter, rolled his eyes every time I reminded him of the deadline.  He’s a really good poet; I might even apply the term gifted to him, but only when he’s not within earshot.  

This year’s judges all agreed that the teen poems this year were the strongest batch we’ve ever received in the history of the contest.  I sat in the Zoom meeting, listening them debate the merits of each entry.  Usually, it takes a little bit of time to come to a consensus on first, second, and third.  Not this year.  Every judge picked the same poem as their number one choice.  

Long story short (too late, I know), my son won first place this year with his poem “Falling Leaves.”  He was so geeked about it that he dropped his indifferent, cool teenager persona for a little while and allowed himself to be excited and proud.  It was really good to see.

My son struggled so much in elementary and middle school.  Bullies and ADHD and suicidal depression, among other things.  His younger self still haunts me on a daily basis.  I made so many mistakes in those years.  I should have pulled him from the school he was attending.  Should have insisted on an IEP and additional help.  There were some people at the school who really did their best to assist him, but, by the time he reached eighth grade, he was labeled a “bad kid.”  My last interactions with the school district’s superintendent in the weeks prior to the end of that final middle school year proved to me that my son was doomed if he stayed in that educational system.

Thus, my son started attending an alternative high school as a freshman.  He was an unknown quantity.  Clean slate, as the saying goes. And he has thrived.  He went from receiving C’s and D’s on his report card to being one of the people at the top of his class.  The teachers at the high school quickly discovered he had many talents, especially for math and English and writing.

I’m not saying there haven’t been some setbacks, but I am completely convinced that the decision to switch schools saved my son’s life, literally.  The ghost of that struggling little boy was in the room last Saturday when he won the Teen Poetry Contest, and that tiny spirit jumped up and down, hollered and clapped.  It was an amazing moment of triumph that, five years ago, I never would have predicted.

Poetry saves lives.

Saint Marty wrote the following poem as a challenge . . .

Teenager Hacks into Heaven

by: Martin Achatz

Maybe he’s like Matthew Broderick
playing Global Thermonuclear War
with Joshua, something as innocent
as tic-tac-toe triggering Armageddon.

Or maybe he’s prompted to change
his password by a link sent
from his dead grandmother’s
email, and he clicks on it because
he misses her chocolate chip banana
bread still warm form the oven.

Or maybe, just maybe, he craves
everlasting life, like Elizabeth Báthory
simmering in a hot tub of virgin blood,
Keats spying on a nesting nightingale,
Donald Trump carving his face on Rushmore.

He doesn’t want to be a lost soul
knocking at strangers’ houses, hoping
to find the back door to paradise
where Amazon packages are delivered,
garbage bags hunch, and feral cats prowl
for leftover Communion table scraps.

Now that he’s a poem, perhaps
someone in a hundred years
will read him, encounter him
like a forgotten classmate
at a 50th reunion, you know, that kid
who always sat by himself at lunch,
waiting for the cafeteria ladies to give
away the leftover pizza and tater tots.
If you get close enough, you might
be able to read his name tag.