Now, as I sit typing this post, waiting for the socks and underwear to stop spinning, things have calmed down. The heavens still look like an old nickel, and everything is sheathed in water. But I’m dry for the moment.
Marie Howe writes about a rainstorm . . .
The Copper Beech
by: Marie Howe
Immense, entirely itself,
it wore that yard like a dress,
with limbs low enough for me to enter it
and climb the crooked ladder to where
I could lean against the trunk and practice being alone.
One day, I heard the sound before I saw it, rain fell
darkening the sidewalk.
Sitting close to the center, not very high in the branches,
I heard it hitting the high leaves, and I was happy,
watching it happen without it happening to me.
I don’t mind rain. In fact, my favorite kind of day is gray and full of mist. All day, as I worked in my office at the library, I watched from my window as the trees banged their green heads in the wind as if jamming to the instrumental break in “Bohemian Rhapsody.” In the distance, Lake Superior stretched its arms toward the shrouded horizon. In short, it was a perfect day for a poet.
Two days ago, I took part in a Boozy Book Fair. A bunch of authors and vendors set up tables and tents outside a brewery and sat there and talked about writing and poetry and books all day long. I shared a space with one of my best poet friends. The food trucks sold smoked pork and beef and brisket, and one of my favorite musicians/people in the whole world performed a two-hour concert. (Truly, listening to him sing and play is like basking in sunlight.). Finally, right before I packed up to head home, I attended a workshop led by another one of my favorite people/poets in the whole world.
The whole day was like medicine for my tired soul. Living in the United States is an exercise in exhaustion right now. Every morning, I wake up afraid to check the news. New wars. A spiraling economy. Human rights violations. Every night, I close my eyes, hoping that I’ll wake up in an alternate reality where kindness and acceptance are the guiding forces. It’s a recursive cycle of collective trauma.
I may not have sold many books (just enough to over the registration fee and gas), but I literally felt like Tim Robbins at the end of The Shawshank Redemption, right after he crawls through a couple of miles of raw sewage and emerges into a pounding thunderstorm. He spreads his arms wide, points hi face to the sky, and lets himself be baptized, grinning like a six-year-old on Christmas morning. That’s the way I felt.
We all need rainstorm moments like that right now. Every day is a new trauma, and almost everyone walks around a little shellshocked, unable to comprehend how the United States switched from decency to depravity so quickly. It’s like we went from Mary Poppins with her magic carpetbag being in charge to Annie Wilkes with her sledgehammer.
We all need a copper beech to shelter us from the shitstorm that is the United States of America currently. Saturday, in that tent, surrounded by good books and good friends and good food and good music, I found my copper beech. For a few hours, I just didn’t care about the rain, and it was a balm for my tired body and mind.
One of the services I offered at the Boozy Book Fair was what I call Flash Poetry. For $5, I allowed anyone to give me a word or topic, and then I wrote a poem on that word or topic in ten minutes. I’ve done this at several other events in the past, and I always marvel at what comes out of my pen. For me, it’s instinctual. I don’t know if it’s the short conversations I have with the customers or some kind of divine finger reaching down and tapping me on the shoulder, but I always come up with something that’s surprising (for me). Plus, customers almost invariably are moved (sometimes to the point of tears) by what I produce. Maybe I should call it Shelter from the Storm Poetry.
Below are a couple flash poems Saint Marty wrote that day. They’re not polished. Think of them as wildflowers you pick as you hike a difficult mountain path.
Difficult Changes
by: Martin Achatz
We endure them all the time—
say goodbye to old friends who
decide to move away, let go
of books we love, kiss mothers
as they breathe their last breaths.
Yet, we survive, move one, become
something better, like caterpillars.
Feel those wings on your shoulders
now, spread them in all their stained
glass glory. Test the wind, feel
the sun as you launch yourself
into that bright, blue, cloudless
newness—you will soar!
Growing Up in Escanaba
by: Martin Achatz
We were grounded by a lake, morning,
noon, night. Summer, we jumped
on our bikes, surfed into the blue
day, wind on our sweaty backs.
We thought we would live forever then,
our bodies tuned to the key of adventure,
our mothers and fathers the sirens
that called us home for dinners,
maybe a rerun of Star Trek or
I Love Lucy after our bottle rocket
popsicles, These were our days, clutched
in our sticky fists, like swing chains,
as we pumped and pumped ourselves
until our toes kicked the moon.
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