July 21, 2026: “The Game,” Easily Distracted, “Someplace Happy”

Yes, it has been a hot minute since my last post.  I could flood you with excuses, talk about how busy life has been, list everything’s that’s happened.  Independence Day.  Heat waves.  Toxic wildfire smoke.  Performing in Calumet.  Two Republican senators meeting their ends.  (Sorry, Mitch isn’t sucking down margaritas at a cushy rehab facility.)  War crimes against Iran.  Billionaires getting richer.  Teaching my summer class for the university.  The pigeon lady from Home Alone 2 dying.  

I’m easily distracted these days.  I have good intentions to write blog posts, new poems, a novella.  Make a dent in the stack of books I want to read.  Finish art projects.  Grade student papers.  Edit my new poetry manuscript.  So many plans, so little time.  

Marie Howe writes about childhood games . . .

The Game

by: Marie Howe

And on certain nights,

maybe once or twice a year,

I’d carry the baby down

and all the kids would come

all nine of us together,

and we’d build a town in the basement

from boxes and blankets and overturned chairs.

And some lived under the pool table

or in the bathroom or the boiler room

or in the toy cupboard under the stairs,

and you could be a man or a woman 

a husband or a wife or a child, and we bustled around

like a day in the village until

one of us turned off the lights, switch

by switch, and slowly it became night

and the people slept.

Our parents were upstairs with company or

not fighting, and one of us—it was usually

a boy—became the Town Crier,

and he walked around our little sleeping

population and tolled the hours with his voice,

and this was the game.

Nine o’clock and all is well, he’d say,

walking like a constable we must have seen

in a movie.  And what we called an hour passed.

Ten o’clock and all is well.

And maybe somebody stirred in her sleep

or a grown up baby cried and was comforted.

Eleven o’clock and all is well.

Twelve o’clock.  One o’clock.  Two o’clock . . . 

and it went on like that through the night we made up

until we could pretend it was morning.

This poem has so much truth in it.  As kids, we dream of growing up—all those freedoms of adulthood.  As adults, we dream of times gone by—childhoods filled with water balloon fights and school crushes and eternal summer vacations.  The grass is always greener in someone else’s backyard.  Younger people don’t get this until they become older people.  (How many times have I heard young people in my life, after working their first full-time job, saying to me after a couple of weeks, “Man, being an adult sucks!”?)

Yes, human beings rarely enjoy the present.  We look ahead all the time.  Oh, if I can just finish this poem, I’ll be happy!  Oh, I can’t wait for my vacation in six months!  Oh, I live for weekends!  Oh, I’m going to start enjoying life once I retire!  It seems like the future is always better and brighter.  

On the flip side, adults always look back wistfully on their childhoods.  There’s a reason why books like Little House on the Prairie and movies like The Breakfast Club and A Christmas Story are so popular.  They tap into that current of nostalgia that runs through all our veins.  True or not, we believe things were simpler and easier in the past.

My mother, in the last years of her life, lived in the past.  Her eyesight was bad.  Her hearing wasn’t much better.  She couldn’t remember who I was sometimes, and other times she would tell me stories about her girlhood in Detroit.  After my father died, she frequently asked about his whereabouts.  If we reminded her that Dad had died, her face crumpled with confusion and sadness as she experienced his loss anew.  The past became Mom’s happy place, where grief didn’t exist and joy was just a trip to Dairy Queen away.

Of course, that’s all bullshit.  There was still racism and misogyny and homophobia and Ronald Reagan in the past.  And I think we (current residents of the United States) can vouch for that fact that the future holds no promises of sunshine or low gas prices or peace. All we really have is the present, in all its current fucked-upness.  Worrying about tomorrow is about as useful as a wildfire smoke tariff on Canada..  

Here are things I celebrate about today:  blue sky, dinner and drinks with friends, chocolate, a puppy kiss, and warm pajamas.

Saint Marty wrote a poem about his mother for tonight , , ,

Someplace Happy

by: Martin Achatz

after she lost    her         husband          she didn’t

     remember         kept asking

when he was coming    home    accused him

of staying out         late        drinking with his pals

     from the Elks club    or    even worse

holing up at hunting camp         while she

slaved at home         took care of their nine kids

     they are    all grown     now        two dead

one with Down’s syndrome & Alzheimer’s

why would         you draw someone         back from

     someplace happy        with all her loves

still around        and she can still         remember

how to make          the good         tapioca from the pearls

     without having to           con         sult         the box

why    why    why    why    would you           want

to lure Dorothy back         from Oz         or

     Max back         from           the wild rum         pus

with all         the wild things         isn’t it bet    ter

if she just         keeps         wearing         those ruby      shoes

    eating emer    ald macarons         know         ing

Auntie Em is          still         there         wait         ing for           her

October 8: "The Flight of the Statues," Routine, Hardcover

Most days are pretty routine.  I did the same thing this Tuesday that I did last Tuesday.  Tomorrow, I will follow my Wednesday rituals:  working, teaching, writing, and working some more.  Nothing truly surprising will happen.

Billy Collins is taken by surprise . . .

The Flight of the Statues

by: Billy Collins

The ancient Greeks…. used to chain
their statues to prevent them from fleeing.
--Michael Kimmelman

It might have been the darkening sky
that sent them running in all directions
that afternoon as the air turned a pale yellow,

but were they not used to standing out
in the squares of our city
in every kind of imaginable weather?

Maybe they were frightened by a headline
on a newspaper that was blowing by
or was it the children in their martial arts uniforms?

Did they finally learn about the humans
they stood for as they pointed a sword at a cloud?
Did they know something we did not?

Whatever the cause, no one will forget
the sight of all the white marble figures
leaping from their pedestals and rushing away.

In the parks, the guitarists fell silent.
The vendor froze under his umbrella.
A dog tried to híde in his owner's shadow.

Even the chess players under the trees
looked up from their boards
long enough to see the bronze generals

dismount and run off, leaving their horses
to peer down at the circling pigeons
who were stealing a few more crumbs from the poor.

Okay, I didn't see any marble statues running down the street today.  However, when I got home this evening, there was a box waiting for me.  Inside the box:  hardcover copies of my new book.  This may not seem like such a big deal to you, faithful disciple, but it is huge to me, equivalent to Lincoln stepping down from the Lincoln Memorial and skipping off to Dairy Queen.  Or the faces on Mount Rushmore breaking into a barbershop quartet version of "Stand by Me."

Six months ago, my Bigfoot book was still just a file on a flash drive.  The poems were disorganized and in need of revision.  Tonight, the hairy guy is out in the world.  I'm not sure if people are going to like or buy my book, and, frankly, at this moment, I don't really care.

Cuz Saint Marty has a hardcover copy of his book in his hot little hands.

July 28: "On Not Finding You at Home," Surprises, Control Freak

Billy Collins tries to visit a friend . . . 

On Not Finding You Home

by: Billy Collins

Usually you appear at the front door

when you hear my steps on the gravel,

but today the door was closed,

not a wisp of pale smoke from the chimney.

I peered into a window

but there was nothing but a table with a comb,

some yellow flowers in a glass of water

and dark shadows in the corners of the room.

I stood for a while under the big tree

and listened to the wind and the birds,

your wind and your birds,

your dark green woods beyond the clearing.

This is not what it is like to be you,

I realized as a few of your magnificent clouds

flew over the rooftop.

It is just me thinking about being you.

And before I headed back down the hill,

I walked in a circle around your house,

making an invisible line

which you would have to cross before dark.

I'm not a person who spontaneously drops by someone's house for an impromptu visit.  Perhaps it's my upbringing, but I think surprise appearances like the one Collins describes in today's poem border on rudeness.  (And my loyal disciples know how much I dislike surprises anyway.  They rank right up there with oral surgery and compound fractures.)

I prefer surprises that are planned out, announced in advance.  I know, I know.  That is antithesis of a surprise.  However, if you expect me to invest time in any kind of endeavor, I need to be forewarned.  Then I will be able to prepare for spontaneity.  Do not show up at my library office and expect me to go on a joy ride to Dairy Queen.  (Okay, I might be tempted by that one.)  At the very least, send me a text message a couple hours prior, allowing me to restructure my schedule.

Am I a control freak?  A little bit.  Yes.  When you work three and four jobs, you have to be a little . . . stringent when it comes to your day.  I was watching the Paris Olympics last night on NBC, and there was a story about one of the captains of the United States swim team.  This guy works full time, trains for hours every day, and has a wife and five-month-old son.  His life is a series of alarms followed by workouts followed by Zoom meetings followed by more workouts followed by family time followed by even more workouts.

My days during the school year are very similar in terms of switching gears all the time.  I work at the library.  Alarm.  I teach.  Alarm.  I work at the library.  Alarm, I pick up my son from school.  Alarm.  I work at the library.  Alarm.  I pick up my wife from work.  Alarm.  I work at the library (probably hosting a program).  Drive home.  Pick out clothes for the next day.  Write a blog post/poem.  Bed.  

Now, I'm not punishing my body with three hour swims or weight training.  Yet, at the end of the day, I often feel like I've run a marathon or played a game of water polo.  (That's different from a game of Marco Polo, by the way.)  I need structure in order to accomplish everything I do in 24 hours.  Thus, surprises and spontaneity are anathema to me.  A wet dog nose in an unwelcome body crevice. 

Now that Saint Marty has finished this blog post, he will brush and floss, set his alarm for tomorrow morning, and try to sleep.  Just like every other night.

Photo courtesy of Abby Berry

March 21: Words, Shane Koyczan, "To This Day"

Yes, I've been thinking a lot about bullying today.  Because of my daughter.  Because of my son.  I've been thinking about how much words can hurt.

For a person who loves words, makes somewhat of a living with them, I am always angry when I hear words used as weapons to tear people down, to kick people out of their tree houses.  To push people on swings to the highest point, and then cut the ropes.  To see someone beautifully happy, eating a banana split at Dairy Queen, and add glass to the hot fudge.  To watch a kid learning to ride a bike, and throw a brick at his head.

Words shouldn't be guns or knives or pieces of dynamite or hunks of barbed wire.

Words should be clouds in a blue sky on an August afternoon, just before it's time to jump in the car to go swimming.  Words should be forty degrees on a January day, when the world gets all soft and watery and muddy.  Words should be ice cubes in water.  Whipped cream in cocoa.  Lime in gin and tonic. 

Words should always make things a little sweeter.

I found this spoken word poem by Shane Koyczan this evening.  It tore my heart out.

Saint Marty is tired of living in a world run by bullies.

To This Day

by:  Shane Koyczan

When I was a kid
I used to think that pork chops and karate chops
were the same thing
I thought they were both pork chops
and because my grandmother thought it was cute
and because they were my favourite
she let me keep doing it
not really a big deal
one day
before I realized fat kids are not designed to climb trees
I fell out of a tree
and bruised the right side of my body
I didn’t want to tell my grandmother about it
because I was scared I’d get in trouble
for playing somewhere that I shouldn’t have been
a few days later the gym teacher noticed the bruise
and I got sent to the principal’s office
from there I was sent to another small room
with a really nice lady
who asked me all kinds of questions
about my life at home
I saw no reason to lie
as far as I was concerned
life was pretty good
I told her “whenever I’m sad
my grandmother gives me karate chops”
this led to a full scale investigation
and I was removed from the house for three days
until they finally decided to ask how I got the bruises
news of this silly little story quickly spread through the school
and I earned my first nickname
pork chop
to this day
I hate pork chops
I’m not the only kid
who grew up this way
surrounded by people who used to say
that rhyme about sticks and stones
as if broken bones
hurt more than the names we got called
and we got called them all
so we grew up believing no one
would ever fall in love with us
that we’d be lonely forever
that we’d never meet someone
to make us feel like the sun
was something they built for us
in their tool shed
so broken heart strings bled the blues
as we tried to empty ourselves
so we would feel nothing
don’t tell me that hurts less than a broken bone
that an ingrown life
is something surgeons can cut away
that there’s no way for it to metastasize
it does
she was eight years old
our first day of grade three
when she got called ugly
we both got moved to the back of the class
so we would stop getting bombarded by spit balls
but the school halls were a battleground
where we found ourselves outnumbered day after wretched day
we used to stay inside for recess
because outside was worse
outside we’d have to rehearse running away
or learn to stay still like statues giving no clues that we were there
in grade five they taped a sign to the front of her desk
that read beware of dog
to this day
despite a loving husband
she doesn’t think she’s beautiful
because of a birthmark
that takes up a little less than half of her face
kids used to say she looks like a wrong answer
that someone tried to erase
but couldn’t quite get the job done
and they’ll never understand
that she’s raising two kids
whose definition of beauty
begins with the word mom
because they see her heart
before they see her skin
Because she’s only ever always been amazing
he
was a broken branch
grafted onto a different family tree
adopted
not because his parents opted for a different destiny
he was three when he became a mixed drink
of one part left alone
and two parts tragedy
started therapy in 8th grade
had a personality made up of tests and pills
lived like the uphills were mountains
and the downhills were cliffs
four fifths suicidal
a tidal wave of anti depressants
and an adolescence of being called popper
one part because of the pills
and ninety nine parts because of the cruelty
he tried to kill himself in grade ten
when a kid who could still go home to mom and dad
had the audacity to tell him “get over it” as if depression
is something that can be remedied
by any of the contents found in a first aid kit
to this day
he is a stick of TNT lit from both ends
could describe to you in detail the way the sky bends
in the moments before it’s about to fall
and despite an army of friends
who all call him an inspiration
he remains a conversation piece between people
who can’t understand
sometimes becoming drug free
has less to do with addiction
and more to do with sanity
we weren’t the only kids who grew up this way
to this day
kids are still being called names
the classics were
hey stupid
hey spaz
seems like every school has an arsenal of names
getting updated every year
and if a kid breaks in a school
and no one around chooses to hear
do they make a sound?
are they just the background noise
of a soundtrack stuck on repeat
when people say things like
kids can be cruel?
every school was a big top circus tent
and the pecking order went
from acrobats to lion tamers
from clowns to carnies
all of these were miles ahead of who we were
we were freaks
lobster claw boys and bearded ladies
oddities
juggling depression and loneliness playing solitaire spin the bottle
trying to kiss the wounded parts of ourselves and heal
but at night
while the others slept
we kept walking the tightrope
it was practice
and yeah
some of us fell
but I want to tell them
that all of this shit
is just debris
leftover when we finally decide to smash all the things we thought
we used to be
and if you can’t see anything beautiful about yourself
get a better mirror
look a little closer
stare a little longer
because there’s something inside you
that made you keep trying
despite everyone who told you to quit
you built a cast around your broken heart
and signed it yourself
you signed it
“they were wrong”
because maybe you didn’t belong to a group or a clique
maybe they decided to pick you last for basketball or everything
maybe you used to bring bruises and broken teeth
to show and tell but never told
because how can you hold your ground
if everyone around you wants to bury you beneath it
you have to believe that they were wrong
they have to be wrong
why else would we still be here?
we grew up learning to cheer on the underdog
because we see ourselves in them
we stem from a root planted in the belief
that we are not what we were called we are not abandoned cars stalled
out and sitting empty on some highway
and if in some way we are
don’t worry
we only got out to walk and get gas
we are graduating members from the class of
fuck off we made it
not the faded echoes of voices crying out
names will never hurt me
of course
they did
but our lives will only ever always
continue to be
a balancing act
that has less to do with pain
and more to do with beauty.

October 10: Dairy Queen, Joy Harjo, "It's Raining in Honolulu"

It has been a long day of work and student conferences again.  I want a vacation.

England or Greece or Italy sound nice.  I'd even settle for something a little closer--Big Sur or Mount Rushmore or the Grand Canyon.  Heck, I'd even take a trip to Dairy Queen for a Blizzard at the moment. 

On days/weeks like this, I really think back to the time my wife and I spent in Hawaii on our honeymoon.  I remember hiking over a mile of black igneous in Volcano National Park.  It was night, and the stars were like milky clouds of gnats in the sky.  When we reached the edge of a cliff, we looked out across a bay.  Lava was pouring into the Pacific, an orange tongue licking the salt.  And the sound of it hitting the water was deafening.  A Jurassic roar.

Saint Marty needs to go back to Hawaii.

It's Raining in Honolulu

by:  Joy Harjo

There is a small mist at the brow of the mountain,

each leaf of flower, of taro, tree and bush shivers with ecstasy.

And the rain songs of all the flowering ones who have called for the rain

can be found there, flourishing beneath the currents of singing.

Rain opens us, like flowers, or earth that has been thirsty for more than a season.

We stop all of our talking, quit thinking, or blowing sax to drink the mystery.

We listen to the breathing beneath our breathing.

This is how the rain became rain, how we became human.

The wetness saturates everything, including the perpetrators of the second
     overthrow.

We will plant songs where there were curses.

April 10: A Better Day, Classic Saint Marty, Toothache

Today has been a better day than yesterday.  For some reason, yesterday was long and stressful.  My daughter had another teenage boy visiting for the day.  There was a lot of tension between them.  I felt horrible for the poor kid who's been visiting and staying at our house on weekends.  He looked absolutely miserable.  I just kept on telling him that everything was going to be alright.  If my daughter is anything, she's loyal and loving.

Don't get me wrong.  I don't have anything against the other boy.  He was charming and polite, played with my seven-year-old son.  Nice looking.  His father is a college professor, and his mother is a nurse.  He did everything right to make me like him.  And I did like him.

But I have a strong affection for the other kid.  He's a little shy, a little awkward.  Funny as hell.  He's the one that went on a date with me to Dairy Queen last Thursday.  He said he was spending "quality time" with me. 

He just left for home.  He lives about two hours away from us.  However, he will be returning on Thursday night because he is going on a trip with us to Grand Rapids.  My daughter has a dance competition.  The invitation was my idea, and his parents agreed to let him come.  He was smiling hugely when he left.

It is the end of the weekend.  Work tomorrow.  Dreading, dreading, dreading.  I've had a toothache for the past week.  At first, I thought it was due to tooth-grinding at night while I sleep.  This weekend, however, my jaw hurt all day long.  So, I put in a call to my dentist yesterday.  I'm hoping to get an appointment tomorrow. 

So, that's where I am tonight:  dreading work, aching tooth, posting blog.

Tonight's Classic Saint Marty comes from my Charlotte's Web year--2014:

April 10, 2014:  Stretched Out, A Funeral, A Nap

Lurvy appeared, carrying an Indian blanket that he had won.

"That's just what we need," said Avery.  "A blanket."

"Of course it is," replied Lurvy.  And he spread the blanket across the sideboards of the truck so that it was like a little tent.  The children sat in the shade, under the blanket, and felt better.

After lunch, they stretched out and fell asleep.

This evening, I am tired.  I'm sitting in my office at the university, grading quizzes, and getting more and more tired.  I am so thankful this day (and this work week) is almost done.  It's been a really exhausting five days.

This afternoon, I played the pipe organ for the funeral of a friend's wife.  They were married over 50 years.  He looked so sad and lost in the front pew.  I played his favorite songs, and my wife sang his wife's favorite hymn.  In a lot of ways, it really was a celebration, but I left the church very depressed.

Then, I came to school and finished showing Brokeback Mountain to my film class.  By the time it was over, I was emotionally exhausted.  That's the way it's been all week for me, and I don't know why.  Working at the medical office depressed me.  Teaching depressed me.  Now, typing this post is depressing me.  I may have to drag out my DVD of It's a Wonderful Life this weekend.

I think my mood has a lot to do with my impending job change.  After working in the same office for 17 years, I think I'm allowed to mourn a little bit.  I'm not saying my current job is perfect.  It isn't.  However, I love the people with whom I work, and I'm really good at what I do.  In some ways, it almost feels like my coworkers are treating me like I'm already gone.  They keep asking me, "When's your last day?"

So I'm thankful for this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday of respite.

I know I'm supposed to write about what's in my book bag on Thursdays, and I apologize.  I haven't had the time or energy to read anything this week.

Saint Marty just wants to crawl under Lurvy's Indian blanket tent and fall asleep.

This cartoon has nothing to do with my post, but it's funny as hell.

September 12: Share Secrets, Poet Dad, Judith Minty, "Celebrating the Mass," Confessions of Saint Marty

When Caroline was in college Annie would spend hours with her on the telephone, and they would talk like sisters.  They would often share secrets...

Annie Ives tries to remain close to her daughter.  Ives has drifted into a pattern of grief:  overwhelming sadness, dark brooding evenings, outbursts of anger followed by immediate remorse.  Annie has become estranged from her long-suffering husband, and she feels her family slowly drifting away.  Caroline is the lighthouse in the turbulent sea of her life.

Last night, my wife and I attended a football game at my daughter's high school.  I am not a fan of sports.  I can count on one hand the number of live football games I've attended in my life.  My daughter, however, is part of the school pep band.  So I went to hear and see her play. 

It was a really cold evening, and, when the sun dipped below the horizon, it was hot chocolate time.  People were screaming and laughing and talking.  Every once in a while, I'd look over at my daughter in the band.  She was purposely not looking for my wife and me.  It was all about her friends and classmates.

I have noticed that my daughter has been pulling away from me a little bit.  She no longer kisses me hello or goodbye or goodnight.  If prodded, she will present her forehead for me to venerate.  I understand why she's doing this.  She's a high school freshman, trying to become her own person.  I'm no longer the cool dad.  I'm the poet dad.  Dance fan dad.  Musician dad.  Embarrassing dad.

When we're together and nobody else is around, she is her old self.  Funny.  Affectionate.  Loving.  This afternoon, we're going to a dance store to purchase a new pair of pointe shoes.  Then we're going to do a little more school clothes shopping for her.  It will be a good afternoon, once she fully wakes up.  Maybe we'll even go to Dairy Queen for ice cream on the way home.  A daddy-daughter day.

I know moments like these are going to be fewer and farther between in the upcoming years.  Soon, I will be the man who doesn't know anything and doesn't understand.  Then, I will be the banker.  Transporter.  Car-provider.  Birthday- and Christmas-present giver.  Curfew enforcer.  Hopefully, I won't have to be the ranter or worrier or reality-checker too much.

I love my daughter and son.  Being a parent has been one of the great joys of my life.  I'm entering a new phase in my parenthood.  I have a received a promotion to father/manager of a teenage girl.

God help Saint Marty.

Celebrating the Mass

by:  Judith Minty

In this hospital room, lacking the hands
of a nurse, I braid my daughter's hair
into corn rows.  She is nineteen now.
When did I stop touching my child?
We have eaten sandwiches brought in and picked
at food on her tray, then turned to the mirror.
Helpless in these weeks of testing, waiting,
we want to alter her life in some way.

I think of those other mothers who have done this,
their backs aching, their hands tightening.
I think of them standing long hours
on porches of farm shacks maybe, or in tenement rooms.
I think of them weaving dark strands
to make their daughters beautiful
after the meals were served, after
the mending, the washing hung, the fields hoed.

Here, a comb sets our boundaries.
Fingers separate and part, we begin
another row:  blond hair lifted, pulled,
the pattern worked in.  I sculpt to the shape of bone.
Now six braids done.  Now an hour.  Now nineteen years.
We learn each other again.  Hands to head,
fingers knitting a cap, we begin
at the temple, around the ear, crown to nape.

Confessions of Saint Marty

September 6: Feeling Dark, Classic Saint Marty, Confessions of Saint Marty

Welcome to Sunday afternoon in the last weekend of summer, 2015. 

If you haven't noticed before, I find Sundays a little melancholy.  Always have, ever since I was a child.  I remember listening to the church bells ring in the afternoon on Sundays and suddenly experiencing an overwhelming sadness.  I don't think it had anything to do with church or work or school.  It was simply this free-floating sorrow.

This afternoon, I'm feeling it quite strongly.  I spent the afternoon back-to-school shopping with my wife and kids.  We bought groceries and lunchboxes and folders and clothes.  And then we went to Dairy Queen.  It was quite lovely, and a good distraction from my general malaise.

Now that it's near supper time, and I have time for reflection, the sadness has returned.  Looking back one year for the episode of Classic Saint Marty, I did not find any solace.  It's all about loss and disappointment.  Things haven't changed much in 365 days.  I'm still teaching part-time at the university with no hope of full-time employment.  I'm not the Poetry Editor of the university's literary magazine anymore (a change), and my sister just passed away of lymphoma of the brain.  In short, I have taken about five or six steps back.

I was also taken aback from the Charlotte's Web passage, as well.  Charlotte's last words, her last goodbye.  Those two sentences have always affected me strongly.  This year, I can barely read them.

I'm sure you're all getting tired of my darksome moods and posts.  I, myself, am getting tired of them.  I just can't seem to shake them.  Tomorrow, I promise to write something more uplifting.  Perhaps a reflection on genocide in the twentieth century.

September 6, 2014:  All Her Strength, Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Carrion Comfort

"Good-bye!" she whispered.  Then she summoned all her strength and waved one of her front legs at him.

Charlotte's last words in the book.  It's an incredibly sad moment.  It depressed me so much as a child I locked myself in the bathroom and cried for a half hour.  It felt like I had lost my best friend.  Of course, it's natural.  Spiders do not have long life spans, and E. B. White is being accurate in his account of Charlotte's end.  Charlotte must die.


You'll forgive me if I'm in a sort of darksome mood this evening.  I don't know why this pall has settled upon me.  Perhaps it's my week-long illness.  Perhaps I'm too tired.  Perhaps it's the sound of my neighbor's lawnmower, a dull, lonely drone.  Or perhaps it's the silence of my house.  My kids are spending the night at grandma's house.  My wife is working.

Whatever the reason, I'm a little sad this evening.  Rereading the end of Charlotte's Web only emphasizes my state of mind.  I'm feeling a little stuck maybe.  At the beginning of the summer, I had this grand idea that I was on the verge of obtaining a full-time teaching position at the university.  That I would be able to support my family doing exactly what I love doing:  teaching and writing.  Yet, here I sit, at the beginning of September, facing another year of part-time happiness.  Stuck.

I will not prolong this meander into self pity.  It's tedious, I know.  Forgive me.  I will be on to happier subjects tomorrow.  Good poetry.  Good books.  Good movies.  Good family.  Good life.  Tonight, however, I give you a really good, dark poem from Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Saint Marty is summoning all his strength to wave at you and say, "Good night."

Carrion Comfort

by:  Gerard Manley Hopkins

Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist--slack they may be--these last strands of man
In me or, most weary, cry I can no more.  I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.
But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me
Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me?
     scan
With darksome devouring eyes my bruised bones? and fan,
O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee
     and flee?
     Why?  That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear.
Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod,
Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh,
     cheer.
Cheer whom though?  the hero whose heaven-handling flung me,
     foot trod
Me?  or me that fought him?  O which one?  is it each one?  That
     night, that year
Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!)
     my God.

Confessions of Saint Marty