October 5: A Saint Marty's Day Poem

It has been a good day, full of phone calls from people, singing me happy birthday wishes, and e-mails from distant friends.  These hours have been a riot of love, and I have enjoyed every minute .  Even when I stepped into my classroom to teach this afternoon, the first sound that greeted me was a chorus of good will.  Saint Marty's Day really has been everything I hoped it would be, and it isn't even over.

I still get to go to a birthday party for my niece.  Then choir practice and band practice.  I get to be around people I cherish all night.  I couldn't ask for anything better.  Except, maybe, the Nobel Prize tomorrow morning to demonstrate the Swedish Academy's love for me, as well.  Aside from that, my birthday has been perfect.

I do have a brand new Saint Marty's Day poem.  Just finished it a few minutes ago.  It may be crap.

Or it may be the latest offering from Saint Marty, winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature.

On My 44th Birthday

I don't want to stand in a classroom,
Explain how Zeus gave birth to Athena
Asexually, the way a sea star fragments,
Grows into another sea star without
A passion of arms, collision of Asteroidea.
I don't want to eat French vanilla ice cream
Or raspberry torte, wipe out a herd
Of candles like buffalo before William Cody,
One big breath of extinction.
I don't want prime rib, spare rib,
Adam's rib, bent, molded into
Eve or Pandora, to tempt me with hot
Sauce on thigh or breast, the knowledge
Of what lurks beneath fig leaf or box lid.
No surprises.  Don't jump out of a closet, try
To startle me into happiness.  Think of me
As a skunk, the smell of my shock,
Garlic strong enough to make you weep.
Yes, I'm mephitis mephitis, nosing through
Four decades of garbage, my landfill.
I find one ripe tomato, a slice of pimento loaf
From my bag lunches in middle school.
The Pascal program I wrote in college
For a girl whose tongue I wanted to taste.
A rind of last summer's watermelon covered
With yesterday's coffee grounds.
My grandfather's wedding band I put
In my grandmother's casket
So she could give it to him at the headwaters
Of the Euphrates in green Eden.
Orange slices my daughter sucked
To pith and peel in preschool.
And the cake my mother baked
For my first year, wrecked
By my small fingers as I searched
Through frosting and chocolate
For some evidence, a bow, a tag,
Of birthdays yet to come.

Saint Marty's best birthday presents