August 26: Joy Center, Friends and Family, "Bigfoot Gives Thanks"

A poem I shared last night at the Joy Center.

Thank you to all my friends and family, near and far, body and spirit.

Marty is a better saint because of all of you.

Bigfoot Gives Thanks

by:  Martin Achatz

after Gerard Manley Hopkins

He doesn’t chase down a turkey, wring

its pink neck like a wet dish rag,

gut it with his thumb, cook it

in sun and fly and maggot for days,

serve it with sides of chewed yam,

moose marrow, fermented pumpkin

guts, green with time, smelling

strong as a bear den at winter’s end.

He doesn’t smooth his hair with mud,

brush his teeth with fresh milkweed,

cram himself into a church pew

beside blue-haired widows who look

at his gorilla arms and long

to feel their dead husbands’ dark

embraces in bed at night again.

Doesn’t stand when the organ

starts breathing music, raise the siren

of his voice to “Now Thank We

All Our God” until the stained glass

rattles and fractures, letting seams

of pure white stitch all gathered

with the shook foil of the world.

No.  His way is simpler, a morning

glory leaning toward day, unfolding,

shaking off the teary dew of darkness.

Stand outside at dawn or dusk.  The bent

world is charged with his hairy

gratitude, in the long-legged shadows

of first and last light as they stretch

and stretch and stretch down the street,

across railroad trestle, through hayfields,

cornfields, into pines and poplar--

further and further and further--mountain,

swamp and lake, canyon and cave,

ocean, glacier, savanna, desert,

until, at last, they have touched it

all.  All the grandeur of deep down things.