Monday, July 1, 2019

July 1: Long Day, New Poem, "Vigil Strange I Kept in Ann Arbor One Morning"

I apologize for the lack of a reflection on Hitchhiker's this evening.  It has been a long day--work (starting at 6:30 a.m.) and then writing (from 4:30 p.m. to 6 p.m.) and then a poetry event.  I finally got home for good around 9 p.m.

While I don't have a whole lot to give you guys tonight, I will share a draft of a new poem that I'm working on.  I think that it's almost done.  I have to let it sit for a few weeks before I give it another look, but I didn't want to let today go by without posting something.  Since it is my sister Sally's birthday month, I thought this would be a way to honor her.

Saint Marty wishes all his disciples a happy first day of July.


Vigil Strange I Kept in Ann Arbor One Morning

by:  Martin Achatz

I sat by the bed railings, listened to you breathe.
Not the watery gasps of two weeks later, but breaths doing
the work they were meant to do, carrying oxygen to organs,
limbs, pink fingernails, fissured lips, to your damaged
and damaging brain where your voice nestled between
tumors, walled up against the apocalypse of your body.

I sat.  Held your hand.  Made small talk about the humid air
of Ann Arbor, school and work, because I couldn’t bring myself
to make big talk about goodbyes or letting go.  No, I talked to you
the way I talked when we used to eat lunch together, the smells
of vinaigrette and flax seed and bananas around us.  Everyday talk,
because I wasn’t ready for last day talk.

I told you about film classes I would teach in the fall, listed
the movies we would watch.  Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights,
Singin’ in the Rain, Citizen Kane.  I sang a song to you,
the one Gene Kelly sings to Debbie Reynolds.  You’re my lucky
star.  I saw you from afar.  I got the words wrong.

I vigiled there for an hour, while your body went about the business
of closing up shop.  Never once did I say “I love you” or “I’m sorry for”
or “Don’t go.”  Instead, I talked about Charles Foster Kane and his sled.
Rosebud crackling, peeling, ashing in the furnace at the end.
And, in those last minutes before the official acts of hospice and dying
took over, I asked you one question--“Do you want some ice?”—and you grunted
at me.  I placed a cube on your chapped tongue and watched it melt
down your chin.

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