December 19: Driving Home, Totaled Car, "As the Deer"

The other day, as I was driving home from work, two deer galloped across the street in front of me.  All of the traffic came to a standstill.  I have had a few vehicular encounters with whitetails.  Once of them resulted in a totaled car.  So, I knew to wait and watch.  Everyone else did, too.

It's a common story in the the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  Any Yooper can relate to it. 

I had this poem published in the anthology The Way North a few years ago.

As the Deer

by:  Martin Achatz

As the deer lopes through dark woods

So my soul chases the Lord, over

Birch, fallen and mossy, victim

Of June storms, wind, rain

Shaking its white trunk and limbs

Like God’s voice on the mountain

With Charlton Heston, deep as flood

Water.  Before dawn, the deer leaps

In fog, sure hoofs lifting, reaching

For the true path from tree to tree

To pool to boulder to gully,

Panting, thirsty for running water,

Life-changing water that saves,

Washes leather tongue with the taste

Of God, the wild and sweet raspberry of it.

The black river rises from forest,

Divides pine and maple in two,

As the heavens from earth, night from day,

Seas from land, beast from human

At the beginning of creation.

The deer bounds into the black river,

Into twin beams, the eyes of Yahweh.

Praise God for car insurance.

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August 14: Second to Last Day, Daughter Singing, New Cartoon

I hate to type it, but today is the second to last day of my vacation.  Tomorrow, I plan on doing...absolutely nothing.  N-O-T-H-I-N-G.  I may go out to eat.  I may not.  I may finish the novel I started yesterday.  I may not.  I may write a poem.  I may not.

In church this morning, my wife and daughter sang a duet together, the song "As the Deer."  When she was our daughter's age, my wife sang a duet in church with her mother.  It's one of the strongest memories she has of her mother and church.  Her mother died of ovarian cancer when my wife was 18 years old.  So, while my wife and daughter sang their song, I sat in the front pew, crying like a pregnant woman.  My daughter was really nervous before the service started, but she sang beautifully.

For the rest of the day, I haven't done a whole lot.  I helped my daughter practice for her piano lesson.  I played a few rounds of game called Pig Mania with my sisters and brother.  I sort of tormented my sister with Down's syndrome, gloating and jinxing her.  She got really pissed at me.  But in a good way.  It was all in fun.  For me, anyway.

My little session of game-playing this afternoon inspired the newest installment of Confessions of Saint Marty.  I don't know if any of you like these cartoons, but they make me laugh.

Saint Marty may go read for a while now.  Or he may not.

Confessions of Saint Marty