May 23: Busy Day, Holy Night, All is Calm

No Merton this evening, disciples.  Just a report from the front lines of sainthood.

I was up until 3 a.m. this morning, recording and editing an episode of my podcast Lit for Christmas.  Stumbled to bed, slept for about four hours.  Then I had to get up to play for a worship service at a local Lutheran church.  Then I went grocery shopping.  Then I prepared for a poetry workshop that I led this evening.  Then I attended a Zoom Book Club meeting, discussing Hilary St. John Mandel's The Glass Hotel.  Then I led a poetry workshop in celebration of Walt Whitman's 202nd birthday.  And now . . . I'm ready to collapse.

However, I wanted to share something that I wrote this evening during the Whitman workshop . . . 

There is This

by:  Martin Achatz

There is this:  me in the middle of sleepless

night, couch my space while moon, constellations

creep by outside like hungry skunks.  Even sound

has gone to bed, and what I'm left with is nothing.  

But you.  Faithful friend, who didn't want 

crate or pillow, treat or knot.  You sit with your muzzle 

on my thigh, gray back studded with continents of black.  

I rest my hand on you, press fingers into the tiny

atlas of your shoulders, and you take a deep

breath, huff out a sigh as long as summer.

I feel its El Nino warmth on my skin, sit

there.  With you.  And somehow, I understand

why Saint Francis preached to sparrow flocks

and hungry wolves. Because they understand

what human beings, with our minds hunkered

under thick bunkers of bone, cannot. Or

will not. They accept this world for just what it is:

an aggie rattling around with loose pennies and nickels

in God's deep, wide pocket.