February 14: "Pupil," Ash Wednesday, "an ode to patience"

Billy Collins meditates on flowers, eyes, and students . . . 

Pupil

by:  Billy Collins

A hole in the eye,

the black well in the middle

of a flower, an iris,

or she who gives you the eye

sidelong on her way

out of the classroom, after the others.

This poem is all about seeing.  In an eye, the pupil is an opening that passes light through the lens.  For an iris, it's where the purple petals gather at the center--a "black well" where light gets eaten.  And, in school, it's the student who glances furtively around as she leaves the room after her classmates, perhaps in a state of enlightenment, confusion, or somewhere in between.   One poem.  Three different pupils.  Light.  Darkness.

Today is Valentine's Day.  It's also Ash Wednesday.  The last time these two celebrations occurred on the same day was in 2018, six days after my father died.  And there it is again:  light and darkness together.  Somehow, this pairing seems appropriate.  I mean, all great love eventually results in great grief.  Think about it.  If you truly love someone, you've set yourself up for heartbreak.  Inevitably, there will be a cleaving because of desertion, divorce, or death.  No way 'round it.  

Me?  I have so much love in my life--people who care about me deeply.  I'm a lucky guy.  I'm not sure I deserve all of the love I receive.  There're many things about me that aren't all that lovable.  Yet, I try to be a good person.  Treat everyone I meet with compassion and respect, even individuals who seem to be in my life simply to test my patience.  And perhaps I'm the pebble in someone's shoe, as well.

I once spent an entire Lenten season praying for people who had hurt me in some way.  I'm not talking about a thirty-second "Hail Mary."  No, it was more like an hour of meditation, forgiveness, and atonement.  Some days, this practice would literally make me physically ill.  Other days, I would feel like a kite dancing in the clouds.  Ash Wednesday and Saint Valentine's Day.  Dark and light.

Saint Marty wishes all of his disciples patience and love.

an ode to patience

after Ross Gay

by:  Martin Achatz

I include "an" in the title

because this poem is not

the ode to patience, not

a culmination of a lifelong

study, more like a stab at it, 

the way as a kid in Biology

I stabbed oak leaves or moth

wings onto cream-colored

paper, labeled them with their

common names and their Latin

family names for my Museum

of Natural Patience filled 

with sixth-grade notes to sixth-

grade crushes, the smell of my

mother's bread baking in the oven,

the wash of breaths from my sister's

lungs as she was dying, the watery

cannon fire of my son's heart

in my wife's belly, telling me

wait, wait, wait, wait because

the best is yet to come.