Birds were talking.
One bird said to Billy Pilgrim: "Poo-tee-weet?"
The last three paragraphs of Slaughterhouse Five on this last day of the year. Tonight, we bid farewell to Kurt Vonnegut, Billy Pilgrim, Montana Wildhack, and Tralfamadore. Old friends by this time. It's fitting that the novel ends with a nonsensical question. After all, the entire book is about things that don't make a whole lot of sense.
This year hasn't made a whole lot of sense, what with the ascendancy of Donald Trump and the descendancy of everything else. I wish I could say that the world is a better place this December 31st than it was last December 31st. Unfortunately, I can't make that assertion. America, which WAS great, is not so great anymore.
However, as I said in yesterday's post, my life has been full of wonderful things--new friends and poems, recognitions that I'm not sure I really deserved, and good health for my wife and children. Of course, I have had some personal challenges, too. My father, who turned 90 this year, had to be moved into a nursing home. My brother's heart attack in May, and all the complications that followed. Brake jobs. Frozen water pipes.
No year is ever all positive, unless you're delusional (ahem--Donald Trump). However, I have been, for the most part, greatly blessed this year, and I want to thank all of my friends and family who have filled the last 365 days with so much joy.
Saint Marty wishes all of you a safe--and warm!--New Year's Eve, and grace and light in the coming year.
Before 4:30 Mass
by: Martin Achatz
I look down from the choir loft
At the silence gathered below.
Mrs. MacDonald wears her wool coat
In the same pew she sat in
With her parents, seventy years ago.
She looks behind her, as if she expects
Her father to march up the aisle,
Sit next to her, his boots
Still red with dust from the mines.
Father George flits from person-to-person,
Like a hummingbird in an apple tree,
Pausing long enough to taste
The blossom of each sinner's grief
Before moving on. My daughter, white
Acolyte, lights candles on the altar,
Checks chalice and paten, makes sure
Gospel and cloth are in place
For the coming show. So much quiet
Desperation fills the sanctuary,
Everyone craving a piece of holiness
To bring home, bake with eggs and oatmeal,
Spaghetti and meatloaf for the week.
I reach down, press the red button.
The pipe organ takes a long breath,
Groans to life, resurrected again.
It waits for my fingers, holds
Music in its gold pipes that reach
Up and up to the vaulted ceiling,
To the bell in the steeple. It waits
For that low D of the first hymn,
Voices rising like seagulls
Above the waves of Galilee.
At the silence gathered below.
Mrs. MacDonald wears her wool coat
In the same pew she sat in
With her parents, seventy years ago.
She looks behind her, as if she expects
Her father to march up the aisle,
Sit next to her, his boots
Still red with dust from the mines.
Father George flits from person-to-person,
Like a hummingbird in an apple tree,
Pausing long enough to taste
The blossom of each sinner's grief
Before moving on. My daughter, white
Acolyte, lights candles on the altar,
Checks chalice and paten, makes sure
Gospel and cloth are in place
For the coming show. So much quiet
Desperation fills the sanctuary,
Everyone craving a piece of holiness
To bring home, bake with eggs and oatmeal,
Spaghetti and meatloaf for the week.
I reach down, press the red button.
The pipe organ takes a long breath,
Groans to life, resurrected again.
It waits for my fingers, holds
Music in its gold pipes that reach
Up and up to the vaulted ceiling,
To the bell in the steeple. It waits
For that low D of the first hymn,
Voices rising like seagulls
Above the waves of Galilee.
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