October 10: "Bathtub Families," Nobel Prize in Literature, "Lost in Space"

I spent the first couple hours of my day listening to a livestream of the announcement of this year's winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.  It was supposed to happen at 6:45 a.m. EST.  It didn't hadn't until after 7 a.m.  I never realized that Swedes weren't punctual.

In case you're curious, I didn't win.  It was the South Korean experimental novelist Han Kang.  A few minutes after the announcement, I received a message from one of my best friends.  "Robbed again!" he texted.  "You were the first person I thought of this morning when I saw that.  Always the bridesmaid never the bride, dammit!!!"

Perhaps next year, now that my Bigfoot book has been released, I will win.  In the meantime, I will just continue to love language, like Billy Collins . . . 

Bathtub Families

by: Billy Collins

is not just a phrase I made up
though it would have given me pleasure
to have written those words in a notebook
then looked up at the sky wondering what they meant.
No, I saw Bathtub Families in a pharmacy
on the label of a clear plastic package
containing one cow and four calves,
a little family of animals meant to float in your tub.

I hesitated to buy it because I knew
I would then want the entire series of Bathtub Families,
which would leave no room in the tub
for the turtles, the pigs, the seals, the giraffes, and me.

It's enough just to have the words,
which alone make me even more grateful
that I was born in America
and English is my mother tongue.

I was lucky, too, that I waited
for the pharmacist to fill my prescription,
otherwise I might not have wandered
down the aisle with the Bathtub Families.

I think what I am really saying is that language
is better than reality, so it doesn't have
to be bath time for you to enjoy
all the Bathtub Families as they float in the air around your head.

It was a long day of teaching and work, with very little in the way of downtime.  I did host the monthly meeting of the Marquette Poets Circle this evening.  Lots of people showed up, including some new faces.  We workshopped some drafts of poems and then celebrated an Open Mic.  I read from my new book (the first time I've been able to do that).

When I got home, I was pretty beat.  But then I got a text from another friend:  "Can you see the lights from your backyard?  We can see them here."

So, near 10 p.m., I found myself in my backyard, taking picture after picture of the auroras jetting across the heavens, unfolding like butterflies just out of their cocoons.  And it was magical.

Sure Han Kang won the Nobel Prize today, but Saint Marty got to show his son the Northern Lights for the first time.

A poem from yesterday . . .

Lost in Space

by: Martin Achatz

I'm not allowed to enter

my son's room anymore,

must stand at the bottom

of his steps, call up to him

the way I used to call him

from the front door when he was

younger and outside playing

in the backyard with sticks

and rocks and garden hose.

Tonight, under a bite of moon,

I gaze at two bright stars

in the heavens.  They may be

planets.  Perhaps Venus and Mars.

I don't know, refuse to dig out

my phone to check.  No, 

I'm simply happy to see 

them together up there,

so close, as if they could

throw their cosmic arms

around each other, embrace

like old classmates or war buddies.

Or maybe, just maybe, they are

father and son, separated by

hundreds of thousands of miles,

a divide that would take months

to cross.  Yet, there they are, 

next to each other up there,

so bright and alike they could

be each other on this dark 

night when my son is locked

in his room, light years away.