May 29: Sunday Afternoon, Reading a Good Book, Classic Saint Marty

Sunday.  The day before Memorial Day.  The afternoon is spreading out before me with little to do, except writing this post.  I am trying not to think of the work week ahead, my last in the cardiology office where I'm currently employed.  If I think about what's ahead, I tend to panic a little bit.  Just a little.

So, instead, I will spend the rest of the day finishing reading a book.  It was written by one of my former writing professors and a good friend.  It's called Wolf's Mouth, and it's by John Smolens.  It's fantastic.  I have a little less than a hundred pages left.  That will keep my mind off the future for a little while.

In church today, I read a poem that I wrote on Memorial Day, five years ago.  My son was two years old, and life was quite a bit simpler (although I probably didn't realize it at the time).  All of my siblings were still alive.  My own family was intact after a few years of real turmoil and struggle.  I had actually forgotten about the poem until about a week ago.

So, I am hoping and wishing that both of my Constant Readers have a relaxing day.  Full of quiet happiness.

Now, a note from a . . . different time:

May 30, 2011:  Memorial Day, New Poem, Dance Party

I just dropped my daughter off at the local Pizza Hut for a party with her dance instructor and fellow students.  I have about an hour until I have to pick her up, plenty of time to get this post done.

It's been a fairly lazy morning and afternoon.  My family and I went to a Memorial Day parade, which lasted all of five minutes.  From what I understand, Memorial Day parades used to be as big a deal as Fourth of July parades around here.  However, over the years, people have forgotten the true meaning of Memorial Day and simply think of it as the three-day weekend that kicks off summer.  I want my daughter and son to realize the true significance of Memorial Day.  Therefore, I make them go to the parade, and then I take them to the local cemetery for the service conducted by the VFW.

My daughter is used to this little tradition.  She has learned to pay attention and be respectful.  My son, who is only two-years-old, is another story.  He doesn't get it.  So I spent most of my time at the cemetery walking with him among the headstones, catching bits and pieces of the ceremony over the loudspeakers.  However, he will eventually understand in years to come.

My heart and my thanks go out to all people serving in the military this day, and to their families, as well.  I can sit here, blogging away on my computer without fear of censorship, because of the sacrifices made by soldiers who protect my freedoms.  And to all who have lost loved ones in current and past wars, my deepest gratitude and prayers.

My poem is about this ultimate sacrifice.

Today, Saint Marty humbly salutes people who really understand the meaning of bravery.

Thank you.  Amen.

In Memoriam

I take my two-year-old son
To the cemetery this Memorial Day,
Walk him around gravestones
As local war veterans conduct
A service solemn as evening rain,
As a high school band plays
Stars and Stripes Forever,
As the local Methodist pastor
Talks of ultimate sacrifice.
I remain a respectful distance away
So my son's screams won't
Disrupt the placing of wreaths,
The recognition of the Gold Star mother,
A woman whose son bled
To death in a jungle over 40 years ago.
On this day, in this place,
Her grief is fresh, delicate
As the white rose pinned
To the lapel of her jacket.
I lift my son into my arms
When I see the honor guards
Shoulder their rifles and aim.
I whisper in my son's ear,
Warn him of the noise to follow.
He still flinches, jumps
When the guns crack.
Seven of them.  Three times.
I hold my son close, as if I need
To protect him from some unseen
Enemy.  The trumpet begins
To play for the dead.  My son squirms,
Wants down, wants to run,
Collect fistfuls of dandelions.
I struggle to keep him still
Until the music ends,
Until the horn's last notes fade
In the gray morning.  My son
Kicks, pushes, yells until even
The Gold Star mother turns, looks
At us.  I surrender, put my son down.
I watch him race away from me,
Laughing among the stones,
The rows of waving flags.
Happy.  Free.

May 24: Dirty Lice. Tornadoes, Temporal Disjunction

It's all I can do to stand.  I feel dizzy, drawn, mauled.  Below me the floodwater roils to a violent froth that looks like dirty lice, a lace that continuously explodes before my eyes.  If I look away, the earth moves backwards, rises and swells, from the fixing of my eyes at one spot against the motion of the flood.  All the familiar land looks as though it were not solid and real at all, but painted on a scroll like a backdrop, and that unrolled scroll has been shaken, so the earth sways and the air roars.

Dillard is talking about the effects of Hurricane Agnes on Tinker Creek.  Floodwater, walls of it, driving everything downstream.  Trees.  Bushes.  Chicken coops.  Dead horses.  Dillard finds it disorienting, her familiar landscape turned alien, rolling and unstable.

I had my own mini-version of the Tinker Creek flood this afternoon.  The Upper Peninsula of Michigan was assaulted with thunderstorms and tornadoes.  Now, this may not sound like anything unusually noteworthy to my two Constant Readers, but tornadoes are not normal occurrences in the U. P.  Our landscape isn't really conducive to tornadoes, thank goodness.  Blinding blizzards, yes.  Ice storms, certainly.  Twisters, however, belong in Kansas and Missouri.  Not in my little piece of rock jutting into Lake Superior and Lake Michigan.  

Yes, for a few hours, the world was a little disorienting, like Dillard's.  I ran an errand in the basement of the medical center where I work, and I found the entire lower level filled with evacuated patients and employees, waiting out the tornado warning.  Weird.  People were laughing, texting, and emitting funky scents.  I thought to myself, "This isn't an emergency.  It's an unexpected afternoon break."

I had an earlier disorienting experience, as well.  This morning, I worked for the first time at my new/old job for a couple of hours.  I hadn't slept well, was up three or four times during the night.  When I got to the medical center, I did something I hadn't done since my sister died:  I took the back stairs.  This may not sound earth-moving, but it was for me.

You see, my sister walked those stairs every weekday for close to twenty years.  Two flights up to the second floor, dressed in her scrubs, carrying her Diet Coke.  My sister was my boss at the surgery center for 17 years.  She was a creature of habit (like me).  She parked in the same spot every day, took the same route into the building every day.  Opened her office and turned on the light at the same time every day.

So, when I walked the stairs and walked through the doors of the surgery center, I had this moment of disconnection, as if I'd stepped back in time.  For a few seconds, I actually expected my sister to be sitting at her desk, looking over her glasses at me, telling me to get my ass to work.  It was only a few seconds of temporal disjunction, but it made me feel like I was . . . home.

I got to work.  Fell into a rhythm.  Started remembering things.  It was good.

Saint Marty is happy.  Mark this day on your calendar.

May 9: Mouthful of Blood, Mouse, Traps

I have to look at the landscape of the blue-green world again.  Just think:  in all the clean beautiful reaches of the solar system, our planet alone is a blot; our planet alone has death.  I have to acknowledge that the sea is a cup of death and the land is a stained altar stone.  We the living are survivors huddled on flotsam, living on jetsam.  We are escapees.  We wake in terror, eat in hunger, sleep with a mouthful of blood.

Dillard does not paint a very comforting picture--our planet as an altar for blood sacrifice.  She is right of course.  Earth is the only planet in the solar system where death exists.  Every minute of every day.  Mars does not have Ebola.  Jupiter never suffered a flu epidemic.  Saturn has no documented cases of breast cancer on its surface.  Our little blue marble is fatally unique.

I am not going to bore you with some poetic reflection on death.  That's not my goal tonight.  I want to write about one of my greatest fears tonight, and it's not the Grim Reaper.  Granted, the Angel of Death does make my top ten list.  However, it is not number one.  That spot would be reserved for a much larger phobia:  rodents.

My two Constant Readers know of my irrational loathing of our furry, disease-carrying friends.  I have made no attempt to hide it.  Last night, my wife heard something small and cunning in our bedroom, gnawing in the wall.  In the past, I may have completely freaked,  Covered the floors of my house with glue traps, mousetraps, rat poison.  Instead, I have been a little more Obama-esque in my attack:  strategic strikes.  I have placed three traps in three separate rooms.  I'm hoping that tomorrow morning, I will have caught the little hairy terrorists in my home.

So, Death will be paying a visit tonight, hopefully.  Dead mouse,  Happy Saint Marty.

April 14: Spirit and Mannerisms, One Post, Judith Minty

Whatever, in those moments, [Ives'] faith seemed nothing more than a construct, that he had merely learned to mimic the spirit and mannerisms of his truly devout father, that deep down inside he was nothing more than a fake, an actor, a sense of worthlessness coming over his foundling soul . . . and though he did not feel this all the time, he regarded such feelings as one of his little secrets.

Another struggle for Ives.  He starts his life in a foundling home.  Never knows who his biological mother and father are, although he wonders his whole life.  His whole life, Ives feels like a fraud, a castoff, an unwanted soul.  Worthless.

I just finished conferences with some of my poetry students.  As the two Constant Readers of this blog know, I, myself, sometimes struggle with feelings similar to the ones Ives feels in the above paragraph.  As I was sitting, talking with my students this evening, I could hear whispers of self-doubt in my ear:  You don't know what you're talking about.  They're going to find out you know absolutely nothing about poetry.  Faker.  Fool.

You get the idea.  Anyway, tonight, I actually think I helped a couple of people.  I think I gave some good writing advice.  That's very gratifying.  Like Ives, those moments of self-doubt are fleeting, dark secrets.  Except on this blog.

I have time for only one post this evening.  I have a ton of grading to complete tonight.  So, I am scaling back a little.  Out of necessity.  However, I do want to end with a couple more sections of Yellow Dog Journal.

Saint Marty is still in love with Judith Minty this week.

13

Crazy, Crazy woman.
     I've stopped combing my hair.
     Now I whisper in the cabin
     and cross myself at dusk.
Crazy, Crazy woman.
     Tonight, on the porch,
     I unbutton my shirt, let my breasts
     swim in the full moon's light.

21

When the sun falls,
oaks pull in their branches
and shadows
creep closer to the cabin.
I am never alone in these woods.

I guess we all experience self-doubt...