November 19: "Promenade," Bigfoot Poem, Normal

I don't mind being strange.  Don't mind if people stare at me because I'm being too loud or too friendly or too anything.  I've never really been the posterchild for "normal."  Instead, I write poems about cryptids and immortal jellyfish.  

Billy Collins takes his bird for a walk . . . 

Promenade

by: Billy Collins

As much as these erratic clouds keep sweeping

this way and that over the roof 

of this blue house bordered by hedges and fruit trees,

and as much as the world continues to run

in all directions with its head in its hands,

there is one particular robin who appears

every morning on a section of lawn

by the front door with such regularity

he could be a lighthouse keeper or a clock maker.

He could be Immanuel Kant were he not so small

and feathered, whom the citizens set their watches by

a he walked through town with his hair curled.

It takes a lot to startle this bird--

only a hand clap will make him rise

to one of the low branches of the nearby apple tree.

So I am wondering if he would allow me

to slip a small collar around his neck

and take him for a walk, first around the house

then later, when more trust has been gained,

into town where we would pass the locals 

with their children and orthodox dogs in tow,

and I would hold the robin lightly by a string

as we waited to cross the street, then he would hop

off the curb and off we would go

not caring about what people were saying

even when we stopped at a store front

to admire our strange reflections in the window.

I really don't know what "normal" is.  Some people think voting for a convicted felon to be President of the United States is normal.  Or appointing a person who was investigated for sex trafficking to be Attorney General.  Normal is in the eyes of the beholder.

I am sitting in my living room at the moment.  The Christmas tree is glowing in the corner.  Everyone else has gone to bed.  It's raining, and the trees are gauzed with fog.  It's been a day fraught with meetings and grading and teaching.  I haven't really had any downtime until now.  

All that is normal for me.

So is writing a Bigfoot poem.  Putting up Christmas decorations the day after Halloween.  Getting up at 5 a.m. to catch the livestreamed announcement of the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.  Watching the same movie every night for three months straight.  Eating warm tapioca pudding.

This weekend, I ran into an acquaintance I hadn't seen in several years. I made an off-handed comment to her about the last couple weeks being particularly difficult for a lot of people.  My acquaintance looked genuinely confused.  When I mentioned the election, she smiled and said, "I think you and I are on opposite sides on that, but that doesn't mean we can't be friends."

I agree with my acquaintance.  I can still be friends with people who hold different political and social ideals.  My father was a lifelong Republican and member of the John Birch Society.  We couldn't have been more different, and yet we still loved each other.  (That doesn't mean we got along 100% of the time.  Ours was problematic relationship.)

Here are some other things that SHOULD be normal in the United States:  kindness, compassion, acceptance, charity, tolerance, respect, courtesy, equality, love.  Unfortunately, over half the people in this "Christian" country think otherwise.  Hate has become as normal as grass or snow.  One way or the other, you're eventually going to step in it.  

Buckle up, disciples.  It's gonna be a bumpy four years.

Saint Marty may make drinking a glass of wine every night his new normal.

May 29: Shoes and Another Blanket, My Niece, Tom Cruise, "Bigfoot Valediction"

The boy worries about the old man . . . 

The boy had brought them in a two-decker metal container from the Terrace. The two sets of knives and forks and spoons were in his pocket with a paper napkin wrapped around each set.

"Who gave this to you?"

"Martin. The owner."

"I must thank him."

"I thanked him already," the boy said. "You don't need to thank him."

"I'll give him the belly meat of a big fish," the old man said. "Has he done this for us more than once?"

"I think so."

"I must give him something more than the belly meat then. He is very thoughtful for us."

"He sent two beers."

"I like the beer in cans best."

"I know. But this is in bottles, Hatuey beer, and I take back the bottles."

"That's very kind of you," the old man said. "Should we eat?"

"I've been asking you to," the boy told him gently. "I have not wished to open the container until you were ready."

"I'm ready now," the old man said. "I only needed time to wash."

Where did you wash? the boy thought. The village water supply was two streets down the road. I must have water here for him, the boy thought, and soap and a good towel. Why am I so thoughtless? I must get him another shirt and a jacket for the winter and some sort of shoes and another blanket.

These past few days, the passages from The Old Man and the Sea have all focused on the boy's kindness and devotion toward Santiago.  It's something you don't hear a lot about these days--the goodness of young people.

Today, I did a few things.  Took my son clothes shopping.  He's graduating from the eighth grade on Wednesday, and he didn't have any nice outfits.  So, we took him to Kohl's and let him choose some shirts and a pair of pants.  He loved every minute of it.  When we left the store, he said, "You know, I really like fashion."

Then I attended the high school graduation party for my niece.  It was a wonderful celebration of her accomplishments.  Lots of food and family and friends.  She is a beautiful, smart young woman and has a really bright future.  Like the boy in The Old Man and the Sea, she's full of kindness and compassion.  Plus, she's funny as heck and loves my Bigfoot poems.  That's why I wrote a new Bigfoot poem, made a broadside, and gave it to her this afternoon as a graduation present.  

After the party, I went to see Top Gun:  Maverick with my wife, son, and wife's cousin and family.  I forced my son to watch the original film with me on Friday, so he was all set.  It was a good,  In fact, I would say it's a little better than the original.  Of course, it had a gratuitous shirtless-football-game-on-the-beach scene with lots of flexing and grunting.  (The female members of my group took exception with my use of the word "gratuitous.")  All in all, a nice way to end a pretty nice day.

Saint Marty gives thanks for clothes shopping with his son, my super-talented niece, and Tom Cruise flying at mach 9.

Bigfoot Valediction

for Brianna, May 27, 2022

by:  Martin Achatz

He is all goodbye, a dark palm
waving from the window of woods
on his way to some other place
where morels blossom like hairs
on his shoulders and porcupines gnaw
birch bark to paste. He is the letting
go of summer into harvest,
harvest into hibernation, the thunder
of his snores splitting cold nights
like a sharp tooth on the tongue
where the names of dead
grandmothers and lost friends
sit. He is the fixed foot
of the compass, solid as mother
or father, and the wandering
foot of child, ever circling
wider and wider to find,
define its own circumference.
As you follow him tonight,
sweet girl, into the swamps
of frog song and mosquito sting,
remember to pause every then
and now, pick up a fallen
branch, and knock hard
on a cypress trunk. To let us
know you are alright. To remind
yourself of that nest of woolly
love you were born to leave.

March 1: Our Lady of Gethsemani, Snow Fell, Bigfoot Poem, "Bigfoot Multiple Choice Haibun"

Merton learns a little about Trappists and doesn't like what he hears . . .

“Last summer,” said Dan, “I made a retreat at a Trappist monastery in Kentucky. It is called Our Lady of Gethsemani. Did you ever hear of it?” 

And he began to tell me about the place—how he had been staying with some friends, and they had driven him over to the monastery. It was the first time they had ever been there. Although they lived in Kentucky, they hardly knew the Trappists existed. His hostess had been very piqued at the signs about women keeping out of the enclosure under pain of excommunication, and she had watched with awe as the heavy door closed upon him, engulfing him in that terrible, silent building. 

(From where I sit and write at this moment, I look out the window, across the quiet guest-house garden, with the four banana trees and the big red and yellow flowers around Our Lady’s statue. I can see the door where Dan entered and where I entered. Beyond the Porter’s Lodge is a low green hill where there was wheat this summer. And out there, yonder, I can hear the racket of the diesel tractor: I don’t know what they are ploughing.) 

Dan had stayed in the Trappist monastery a week. He told me of the life of the monks. He told me of their silence. He said they never conversed, and the impression I got was that they never spoke at all, to anybody. 

“Don’t they even go to confession?” I asked. 

“Of course. And they can talk to the abbot. The retreat master talked to the guests. He was Father James. He said that it was a good thing the monks didn’t have to talk—with all the mixture of men they have there, they get along better without it: lawyers and farmers and soldiers and schoolboys, they all live together, and go everywhere together and do everything together. They stand in choir together, and go out to work together and sit together in the same place when they read and study. It’s a good thing they don’t talk.” 

“Oh, so they sing in choir?” 

“Sure,” said Dan, “they sing the Canonical hours and High Mass. They are in choir several hours a day.”

I was relieved to think that the monks got to choir and exercised their vocal cords. I was afraid that so much silence would wither them up altogether. 

“And they work in the fields,” said Dan. “They have to make their own living by farming and raising stock. They grow most of what they eat, and bake their own bread, and make their own shoes...” 

“I suppose they fast a lot,” I said. 

“Oh, yes, they fast more than half the year, and they never eat meat or fish, unless they get sick. They don’t even have eggs. They just live on vegetables and cheese and things like that. They gave me a cheese when I was there, and I took it back to my friends’ house. When we got there, they handed it to the colored butler. They said to him, ‘Do you know what that is? That’s monks’ cheese.’ He couldn’t figure it out, and he looked at it for a while, and then he got an idea. So he looked up with a big smile and said: ‘Oh, I know what YOU all mean: monks! Them’s like goats.’” 

But I was thinking about all that fasting. The life took my breath away, but it did not attract me. It sounded cold and terrible. The monastery now existed in my mind as a big grey prison with barred windows, filled with dour and emaciated characters with their hoods pulled down over their faces.

“They are very healthy,” said Dan, “and they are big strong men. Some of them are giants.” 

(Since I came to the monastery I have tried to pick out Dan’s “giants.” I can account for one or two easily enough. But I think he must have seen the rest of them in the dark—or perhaps they are to be explained by the fact that Dan himself is not very tall.) 

I sat in silence. In my heart, there was a kind of mixture of exhilaration and dejection, exhilaration at the thought of such generosity, and depression because it seemed such a drastic and cruel and excessive rejection of the rights of nature. 

At this point, Merton has no idea that what his friend Dan is describing to him will be his home, his life.  That these silent men, giants or otherwise, will be his closest companions for the majority of his years.  It's sort of like hearing somebody describing the Empire State Building.  Until you are actually standing on the Top Deck observatory, looking down at the M. C. Escher Manhattan landscape below, you simply cannot wrap your mind around the experience.  That is Merton in this passage.

Snow fell yesterday, last night, on my little part of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  Heavy and wet with Lake Superior moisture.  March came in like a lion, as the saying goes.  Every once in a while, this place I call home needs to remind everybody who's in charge.  And it isn't any hairless creature walking around on two legs.  

For several years now, I've been working on a manuscript of Bigfoot poems, as many of you know.  It's a book that shrinks and grows, hibernates and roars to life.  When I started the project, I never thought that the big guy would be my companion this long.  Six or so months ago, I set the collection aside for a while.  I needed some space from it.  I thought it was near completion, but I wasn't sure.  And I wrote other things.  Poems about starfish and catfish.  Elephants and butterflies.  My bald head.  Sand castles.  

And then, about a week ago, Bigfoot entered my life again.  I didn't expect him to show up, but he did.  And it felt like Thomas Merton visiting Our Lady of Gethsemani for the first time.  As if I'd returned home after a long trip abroad.  After walking around the coastline of Africa for a while, I'd come back to a landscape I knew like my children's breath.  A winter landscape, full of snow and glacial lake water.  

I'm not sure if this means that I'm finally going to make the push to finish this book up, or, like Walt Whitman with Leaves of Grass, I'm just going to keep coming back and back and back for the rest of my life.  I'm hoping it's the former, but it just may be the latter.  I may be poetically chasing Bigfoot forever.

So, tonight, I am home.  On my couch.  Covered in an electric blanket.  And Bigfoot is sitting next to me, smelling like old fish and rotten eggplant.  An old friend.

Saint Marty gives thanks for the miracle of this homecoming.

Bigfoot Multiple Choice Haibun

after Todd Kaneko

by:  Martin Achatz

Bigfoot growled last night in my backyard.  No moon-blind snow.  Banks hunched like marble surf, a cemetery of ice.  My dog, fur a mini-map of the world, squatted in a yoga pose of defecation.  I stood, stared into midnight's mouth, heard it.  Low as the separation of sea and shore, crabapple and crawfish.  It rolled over us both, a haired wall of mud and sand and God's toes.  My dog sniffed, raised her muzzle, buried her nose in constellations, made the sound pharaohs made when they were sealed in their pyramids, a wail that opened the gates of Duat.  And I knew I was about to become a footprint, a skunk-filled memory.

Question:  What do you do when Bigfoot growls?

a) Let your dog eat a meteor.

b) Sink into earth like salt.

c) Become an eardrum.

July 9: Plato's Honey Head, Phobias, Supreme Court Nominee

Nimble as a cat, Tashtego mounts aloft; and without altering his erect posture, runs straight out upon the overhanging mainyard-arm, to the part where it exactly projects over the hoisted Tun. He has carried with him a light tackle called a whip, consisting of only two parts, travelling through a single-sheaved block. Securing this block, so that it hangs down from the yard-arm, he swings one end of the rope, till it is caught and firmly held by a hand on the deck. Then, hand-over-hand, down the other part, the Indian drops through the air, till dexterously he lands on the summit of the head. There- still high elevated above the rest of the company, to whom he vivaciously cries- he seems some Turkish Muezzin calling the good people to prayers from the top of a tower. A short-handled sharp spade being sent up to him, he diligently searches for the proper place to begin breaking into the Tun. In this business he proceeds very heedfully, like a treasure-hunter in some old house, sounding the walls to find where the gold is masoned in. By the time this cautious search is over, a stout ironbound bucket, precisely like a well-bucket, has been attached to one end of the whip; while the other end, being stretched across the deck, is there held by two or three alert hands. These last now hoist the bucket within grasp of the Indian, to whom another person has reached up a very long pole. Inserting this pole into the bucket, Tashtego downward guides the bucket into the Tun, till it entirely disappears; then giving the word to the seamen at the whip, up comes the bucket again, all bubbling like a dairy-maid's pail of new milk. Carefully lowered from its height, the full-freighted vessel is caught by an appointed hand, and quickly emptied into a large tub. Then remounting aloft, it again goes through the same round until the deep cistern will yield no more. Towards the end, Tashtego has to ram his long pole harder and harder, and deeper and deeper into the Tun, until some twenty feet of the pole have gone down.

Now, the people of the Pequod had been baling some time in this way; several tubs had been filled with the fragrant sperm; when all at once a queer accident happened. Whether it was that Tashtego, that wild Indian, was so heedless and reckless as to let go for a moment his one-handed hold on the great cabled tackles suspending the head; or whether the place where he stood was so treacherous and oozy; or whether the Evil One himself would have it to fall out so, without stating his particular reasons; how it was exactly, there is no telling now; but, on a sudden, as the eightieth or ninetieth bucket came suckingly up- my God! poor Tashtego- like the twin reciprocating bucket in a veritable well, dropped head-foremost down into this great Tun of Heidelburgh, and with a horrible oily gurgling, went clean out of sight!

"Man overboard!" cried Daggoo, who amid the general consternation first came to his senses. "Swing the bucket this way!" and putting one foot into it, so as the better to secure his slippery hand-hold on the whip itself the hoisters ran him high up to the top of the head, almost before Tashtego could have reached its interior bottom. Meantime, there was a terrible tumult. Looking over the side, they saw the before lifeless head throbbing and heaving just below the surface of the sea, as if that moment seized with some momentous idea; whereas it was only the poor Indian unconsciously revealing by those struggles the perilous depth to which he had sunk.

At this instant, while Daggoo, on the summit of the head, was clearing the whip- which had somehow got foul of the great cutting tackles- a sharp cracking noise was heard; and to the unspeakable horror of all, one of the two enormous hooks suspending the head tore out, and with a vast vibration the enormous mass sideways swung, till the drunk ship reeled and shook as if smitten by an iceberg. The one remaining hook, upon which the entire strain now depended, seemed every instant to be on the point of giving way; an event still more likely from the violent motions of the head.

"Come down, come down!" yelled the seamen to Daggoo, but with one hand holding on to the heavy tackles, so that if the head should drop, he would still remain suspended; the negro having cleared the foul line, rammed down the bucket into the now collapsed well, meaning that the buried harpooneer should grasp it, and so be hoisted out.

"In heaven's name, man," cried Stubb, "are you ramming home a cartridge there?- Avast! How will that help him; jamming that iron-bound bucket on top of his head? Avast, will ye!"

"Stand clear of the tackle!" cried a voice like the bursting of a rocket.

Almost in the same instant, with a thunder-boom, the enormous mass dropped into the sea, like Niagara's Table-Rock into the whirlpool; the suddenly relieved hull rolled away from it, to far down her glittering copper; and all caught their breath, as half swinging- now over the sailors' heads, and now over the water- Daggoo, through a thick mist of spray, was dimly beheld clinging to the pendulous tackles, while poor, buried-alive Tashtego was sinking utterly down to the bottom of the sea! But hardly had the blinding vapor cleared away, when a naked figure with a boardingsword in his hand, was for one swift moment seen hovering over the bulwarks. The next, a loud splash announced that my brave Queequeg had dived to the rescue. One packed rush was made to the side, and every eye counted every ripple, as moment followed moment, and no sign of either the sinker or the diver could be seen. Some hands now jumped into a boat alongside, and pushed a little off from the ship.

"Ha! ha!" cried Daggoo, all at once, from his now quiet, swinging perch overhead; and looking further off from the side, we saw an arm thrust upright from the blue waves; a sight strange to see, as an arm thrust forth from the grass over a grave.

"Both! both!- it is both!"-cried Daggoo again with a joyful shout; and soon after, Queequeg was seen boldly striking out with one hand, and with the other clutching the long hair of the Indian. Drawn into the waiting boat, they were quickly brought to the deck; but Tashtego was long in coming to, and Queequeg did not look very brisk.

Now, how had this noble rescue been accomplished? Why, diving after the slowly descending head, Queequeg with his keen sword had made side lunges near its bottom, so as to scuttle a large hole there; then dropping his sword, had thrust his long arm far inwards and upwards, and so hauled out poor Tash by the head. He averred, that upon first thrusting in for him, a leg was presented; but well knowing that that was not as it ought to be, and might occasion great trouble;- he had thrust back the leg, and by a dexterous heave and toss, had wrought a somerset upon the Indian; so that with the next trial, he came forth in the good old way-head foremost. As for the great head itself, that was doing as well as could be expected.

And thus, through the courage and great skill in obstetrics of Queequeg, the deliverance, or rather, delivery of Tashtego, was successfully accomplished, in the teeth, too, of the most untoward and apparently hopeless impediments; which is a lesson by no means to be forgotten. Midwifery should be taught in the same course with fencing and boxing, riding and rowing.

I know that this queer adventure of the Gay-Header's will be sure to seem incredible to some landsmen, though they themselves may have either seen or heard of some one's falling into a cistern ashore; an accident which not seldom happens, and with much less reason too than the Indian's, considering the exceeding slipperiness of the curb of the Sperm Whale's well.

But, peradventure, it may be sagaciously urged, how is this? We thought the tissued, infiltrated head of the Sperm Whale, was the lightest and most corky part about him; and yet thou makest it sink in an element of a far greater specific gravity than itself. We have thee there. Not at all, but I have ye; for at the time poor Tash fell in, the case had been nearly emptied of its lighter contents, leaving little but the dense tendinous wall of the well- a double welded, hammered substance, as I have before said, much heavier than the sea water, and a lump of which sinks in it like lead almost. But the tendency to rapid sinking in this substance was in the present instance materially counteracted by the other parts of the head remaining undetached from it, so that it sank very slowly and deliberately indeed, affording Queequeg a fair chance for performing his agile obstetrics on the run, as you may say. Yes, it was a running delivery, so it was.

Now, had Tashtego perished in that head, it had been a very precious perishing; smothered in the very whitest and daintiest of fragment spermaceti; coffined, hearsed, and tombed in the secret inner chamber and sanctum sanctorum of the whale. Only one sweeter end can readily be recalled- the delicious death of an Ohio honey-hunter, who seeking honey in the crotch of a hollow tree, found such exceeding store of it, that leaning too far over, it sucked him in, so that he died embalmed. How many, think ye, have likewise fallen into Plato's honey head, and sweetly perished there?

A terrible tale of near death.  Tashtego nearly drowns, encased in the decapitated head of a sperm whale as it sinks to the bottom of the ocean.  Buried alive at sea, so to speak.  The image sends cold hands up and down my spine, whether it's true or not.  It combines two of my greatest fears--drowning and whales.  Ever since I saw Walt Disney's Pinocchio as a kid, heard the story of Jonah in Sunday school, I've harbored these anxieties.

I've written about my phobias before, rodents being at the top of the list.  Of course, a phobia is completely irrational.  The chances of me being is the same body of water as a whale are very remote.  Ditto being covered by a swarm of hungry rats.  The chances of me drowning are a little better, since I sometimes do go swimming in pools and lakes.  In August, I'm going on a vacation at a resort that has a water park.  Slides and whirlpools and lazy rivers.  Thank goodness I'm not quite as terrified of drowning.

Tonight, Donald Trump announces his nominee to fill Anthony Kennedy's spot on the Supreme Court of the United States.  Given his track record, I'm positive that Mr. Trump is going to piss me off.  In fact, I have become a little phobic about even turning on the news.  The sound of the President's voice is practically painful to my ears.  I find my hand reaching for the remote control or "off" button the second he starts speaking.

I will not be watching his little press conference tonight.  I'm going to try to avoid the radio or TV for the next day or so, although the fallout from his decision will be difficult to avoid.  I'm not burying my head in the sand.  That's what people did in Germany during Adolf Hitler's rise to power.  I won't do that.

For tonight, however, I will not allow myself to fall into the sperm whale's head as it sinks to the bottom of the sea.  Instead, I will work on a new Bigfoot poem.  It's safer.  Healthier.  More truthful.

Saint Marty is thankful tonight for Bigfoot.