July 25: "The Order of the Day," Rituals, "Backyard"

Billy Collins' morning routine . . 

The Order of the Day

by: Billy Collins

A morning after a week of rain

and the sun shot down through the branches 

into the tall, bare windows.

The brindled cat rolled over on his back,

and I could hear you in the kitchen

grinding coffee beans into a powder.

Everything seemed especially vivid

because I knew we were all going to die,

first the cat, then you, then me,

then somewhat later the liquefied sun

was the order I was envisioning.

But then again, you never really know.

The cat had a fiercely healthy look,

his coat so bristling and electric

I wondered what you had been feeding him

and what you had been feeding me

as I turned a corner

and beheld you out there on the sunny deck

lost in exercise, running in place,

knees lifted high, skin glistening--

and that toothy, immortal-looking smile of yours.

We all have our morning routines like Collins.  Some people get out of bed and immediately light up (tobacco or cannabis).  Other people stumble to the coffee maker.  I usually take a shower, get dressed, and take my puppy out for a spin around the backyard.

Rituals are important in life.  They give our days and nights order and meaning.  I know that my daily/nightly rituals allow me to have a semblance of control over what is happening around and to me.  (This sense of control may be fictional, but it makes me feel less anxious about the possibility of having a stroke or being the victim of a violent crime or lapsing into major depression.)  Perhaps this affinity for ritual comes from my Catholic upbringing.  If there's one thing that Catholics do well, it's ritual--all the bells and smoke and chants.

I like to know, when I get out of bed, exactly what my day holds in store for me.  No nasty, unexpected surprises.  I have been the victim of exactly one surprise birthday party in my life, when I reached a certain milestone age.  It was lovely, filled with joy and gathering together so many people I love.  However, in my life, most of the surprises I've experienced have been less than pleasant.  So, my days are full of rituals to avoid undue misery.

Even when I sit down to write a blog post or draft of a poem or lyric essay, I depend on certain things--a nice fountain pen, a Moleskine journal, maybe a book by my current poetic obsession.  (If you haven't figured it out by now--it's Billy Collins this year.)  If my pen runs out of ink or I forget my journal, I have a very difficult time getting anything down on the page.  

So, if you see Saint Marty sitting in a restaurant or laundromat, surrounded by books, scribbling away, don't bother him.  He's in the middle of a ritual, giving meaning to his life.

A poem Saint Marty wrote a couple days ago . . .

Backyard

by: Martin Achatz

I write about my backyard

a lot, its lilac bushes and bees,

how dandelions overtake the grass

with shouts of yellow and gold.

I write about my dog a lot,

the brindled map of her back,

how she stands like a coiled

cobra when she spies a squirrel

tightrope walking a power line

above her, moving like a stone

skipped across a still lake.  And I write

about my son a lot, how he is one

of those construction sites

I drive by every day, noting 

the lack of visible progress until,

one morning, a new building

appears, its glass flashing 

with light.  Why do I write about

these three elements of my life

so much?  I don't know.  But,

when I'm done writing these 

words, I know I will make myself

a cup of coffee, stare out a window,

give thanks for the breath I just

took, and the next.  And next.

Photo courtesy of Abby Berry

July 23: "Backyard," Roughing It, Mysterious and Terrifying

Mary Oliver lets things go wild . . .

Backyard

by:  Mary Oliver

I had no time to haul out

the dead stuff so it hung, limp

or dry, wherever the wind swung it

over or down or across.  All summer

it stayed that way, untrimmed, and

thickened.  The paths grew

damp and uncomfortable and mossy until

nobody could get through but a mouse or a

shadow.  Blackberries, ferns, leaves, litter

totally without direction management

supervision.  The birds loved it.

People who live in the city won't get this poem, unless they've spent time traveling and camping.  And I'm not talking a couple days "roughing it" in rented cabins or tenting in Yosemite.  I'm talking about at least three or four weeks where trees and birds are your closest neighbors.  Where you wash up in a cold lake, and text messages are notes left in a spiral notebook.  That's what Oliver is writing about here.

I grew up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, just about 20 miles from the shores of Lake Superior.  It's not unusual for deer to walk down my street at sunrise or sunset.  Rabbits graze the tall grass of my backyard, and, in winter, the snow behind my house is mapped with animal tracks.  Last spring and summer, there was a patch of fern on the side of my property that was flattened every morning.  Something large and wild slept there every night.  It could have been a bear, although I can't imagine any respectable black bear bedding down in the middle of a somewhat populated neighborhood, even in the middle of the U. P.  Maybe it was Bigfoot setting up camp near a Bigfoot-friendly house.  If you've been in the U. P. for even a little while, you will quickly understand why the idea of Bigfoot doesn't seem so outlandish.

I spent this afternoon and evening at my wife's family's camp.  It's a rustic cabin on an inland lake down a dirt road.  No electricity or internet.  Just water and grass and wood smoke and a sauna.  An occasional sandhill crane.  We sweated, splashed around in the lake.  I took a nap to a soundtrack of wind and waves and an occasional motorboat.  When I woke, the aspect of light had changed.  It was close to 6 p.m., and the sun had started its downward journey.

As I sit writing these lines in my journal, I know that soon we have to pack up and head back to our lives of electricity and streaming services and online grading.  Just now, as I wrote the word "grading," a huge spider crawled across the page.  

This right here, this deep breath moment, is what Oliver is writing about in this poem.  It's about letting the wild be wild, leaving the world without direction, management, or supervision.  A space only mice and shadows can penetrate, and birds sit and sun and sing.  Where my human presence is Bigfoot, mysterious and terrifying, to everything untamed and untamable.

Saint Marty may howl at the moon a little tonight.