Septmeber 24: Sunday Afternoon, Classic Saint Marty, "In Praise of Daughters"

Welcome to Sunday afternoon. 

I've been working for a few hours on teaching stuff.  Now I'm doing blogging stuff.  Afterwards, I'm going to do poetry stuff.  I'm working on a couple new poems.  Tonight, I'll do some reading stuff.

Three years ago, I was worrying about boy stuff and dad stuff . . .

September 23, 2014:  Boys, Terry Godbey, "The Purity of Boys"

Yes, I've been thinking about little boys a lot these last couple of days.  Boy stuff.  I've never been a typical guy, especially in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where I grew up.  I don't like to fish.  The idea of shooting any living thing with a rifle makes me a little sick to my stomach.  I don't like the taste of most wild game meat.  Not my thing.  I'd rather read a good novel, watch a documentary on PBS, or read a poem.

Terry Godbey has a great poem about boys in her collection Flame.  The boys in the poem are trying to impress the girls.  The girls are trying to attract the boys.  There's much showing off by both genders.  But, in the end, they remain on their respective sides, wanting each other, but not knowing how to say so.

Saint Marty prefers that arrangement at the moment, especially for his teenage daughter.

The Purity of Boys

by:  Terry Godbey

Water glints and sparks as they spill
from the pool and smash the sunlight to bits,
every movement designed to impress,
each glance a measure of our meager curves.
They dive and ride their bodies,
bark like seals as we chatter
and make lacy splashes in the shallow end.
Each long day drips honeysuckle.
We burn with impatience,
count out coins for ice cream cones
that drizzle our striped towels.
Sulky, drowsy in the heat, we oil
our caramel skin, watch the boys
watch us and lay side by side,
arranging our long-stemmed legs
in the blue vase of afternoon.

And, since Terry Godbey's poem is about boys, I have a poem for you about girls . . .

In Praise of Daughters

by:  Martin Achatz

Zeus gave birth to Athena himself, from a pain in his deathless temples, ten thousand Greeks pounding the walls of Troy.  She charged from his skull, full grown and armored, wailed a war cry louder than the cries of all the mothers who've lost sons in battle.  A sound that shook the dust of Olympus.  Zeus heard her, saw the bronze on her breasts, watched her flight, up and up, and knew his creation was good, the way Elohim knew light and dark, heaven and earth, sea and mud, man and woman were good on day six.

I saw my daughter charge into the world on a morning of wind and ice.  Heard her first sound, a call to battle.  For oxygen and milk.  Her frog body, slick and red, mapped the contours of my heart, its empty ventricles and auricles.  Flooded them.  The way the sea flooded the Titanic that April night.  I foundered, split, capsized, went under.  Swallowed whole by an ocean of daughter.  Now, almost eleven years later, I watch her this autumn day.  She stands in a cyclone of gold and red.  The leaves spin, rise around her, catch her hands and feet and hair, carry her up and up.  To the clouds.  To the moons.  Up and up.  To the constellations.  Up and up.  Cassiopeia.  Andromeda.  Up and up.  Cygnus.  Scutum.  And up.  Virgo.  And up.  To the arms of Zeus.  Of Elohim.  Up.  Where she sings, dances like an owl-eyed goddess.