August 10, 2025: “May 1968,” Home Again, “Spending Time with My Daughter the Weekend Before She Starts Med School”

There are moments in your life you know will change you completely.  Sometimes those moments are pretty obvious—graduations, weddings, births.  Other times, they take you by surprise—a serious diagnosis, sudden loss, unexpected death of a loved one.  

Sharon Olds has one of those moments . . . 

May 1968

by: Sharon Olds

When the Dean said we could not cross campus
until the students gave up the buildings,
we lay down in the street,
we said the cops will enter this gate
over us. Lying back on the cobbles,
I saw the buildings of New York City
from dirt level, they soared up
and stopped, chopped off—above them, the sky,
the night air, over the island.
The mounted police moved, near us,
while we sang, and then I began to count,
12, 13, 14, 15,
I counted again, 15, 16, one
month since the day on that deserted beach,
17, 18, my mouth fell open,
my hair on the street,
if my period did not come tonight
I was pregnant. I could see the sole of a cop's
shoe, the gelding's belly, its genitals—
if they took me to Women's Detention and did
the exam on me, the speculum,
the fingers—I gazed into the horse's tail
like a comet-train. I’d been thinking I might
get arrested, I had been half-wanting
to give myself away. On the tar—
one brain in my head, another
in the making, near the base of my tail—
I looked at the steel arc of the horse's
shoe, the curve of its belly, the cop's
nightstick, the buildings streaming up
away from the earth. I knew I should get up
and leave, but I lay there looking at the space
above us, until it turned deep blue and then
ashy, colorless, Give me this one
night, I thought, and I'll give this child
the rest of my life, the horse's heads,
this time, drooping, dipping, until
they slept in a circle around my body and my daughter.

There’s a lot going on in this tiny moment Olds describes.  A student protest.  Hostile police.  Horses.  Possible arrest.  An unplanned pregnancy.  Whatever happens, the speaker of the poem is never going to be the same again.

I am home again after attending my daughter’s white coat ceremony and spending time with her and her significant other.  This morning, we had breakfast with them at IHOP, and then we packed up and hit the road.  

Now, that sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it?  It doesn’t really touch upon how I felt like a piece of myself was dying as I drove away from my daughter who was standing outside her apartment, waving at us.  Or how I would just start crying occasionally as the miles between us increased.  Or all the government vehicles at Mackinaw City (where we stopped for fudge)—ICE and/or Border Control.  Or how moody my 16-year-old son was because he doesn’t really know how to deal with his big emotions.  Or the emptiness of being home again, knowing that my daughter is six hours and a new life away.

It’s a big moment of change.  Our lives will never be the same again.  My daughter is pursuing her dream, and I’m doing my damndest to support her in any way I can.  Yet, another part of me mourns for my little girl in pigtails.  That’s where I’m stuck, and I think I’m going to be stuck for a while.

Saint Marty wrote a poem about this big moment, based on the following prompt from August 9 of The Daily Poet:

On this day in 1854, Henry David Thoreau published Walden.  Write a poem that uses the names of two regional trees in your area and two types of flowers or ground over.  Have the poem begin in an urban environment and end in a wooded setting.  For extra credit, include a name of a regional bird, shrub, and amphibian.

Spending Time with My Daughter

     the Weekend Before She Starts Med School

by: Martin Achatz

A good friend of mine sees

the world we live in

as a shitty place, filled 

with Hitlers, Stalins, Trumps.

We exchange text messages

about the ash we’re leaving

for our children to

inherit, we even use

the word apocalypse.

I think we’ve both read

way too much Bukowski.

This weekend before, I am

surrounded by asphalt

and buildings and heat,

progress some people

would call it.  I’ve toured

campus, been surrounded

by young people with 

faces bright as ripe

apples, my daughter

one of them.  All are

living in the future

right now, time travelers

who see themselves

not as “I am”

but “I will.”

For me, an old man

more than halfway

through his “I am,”

I drink their optimism

like gin and tonic

on a 100-degree day,

bitter and sweet.

When I hug

my daughter goodbye

tomorrow, head home

over hundreds 

of blacktop miles

(more evidence of our

misguided progress), 

I will take

her spirit with me

like a shiny penny

in my pants pocket.

I will cross

the Mackinac Bridge

into a place

that’s been stubborn

in its battle to survive,

a place my daughter

was born, full of

trembling aspen,

sugar maple and lupine,

butterfly weed and wild

turkeys, sweet gale,

and blue-spotted 

salamanders crossing

a paved road to

lay their eggs

near the waves

of vast, blue

waters.

July 13, 2025: “His Ashes,” Long Trip Home, “Just Because”

As I was driving home today after helping my daughter move into her new apartment downstate, I kept on seeing and hearing and smelling little things that reminded me of her.  A song on the radio.  A piece of long hair she left on my teeshirt when she hugged me goodbye.  A can of Diet Coke, her favorite.

That’s the nature of memory, though.  It ambushes you.

Sharon Olds writes about her father’s cremains . . .

His Ashes

by: Sharon Olds

The urn was heavy, small but so heavy,

like the time, weeks before he died,

when he needed to stand, I got my shoulder

under his armpit, my cheek against his

naked freckled warm back

while she held the urinal for him—he had

lost half his body weight

and yet he was so heavy we could hardly hold him up

while he got the fluid out, crackling and

sputtering like a wet fire.  The urn had that

six-foot heaviness, it began

to warm in my hands as I held it, under

the blue fir tree, stroking it.

The shovel got the last earth

out of the grave—it must have made that

kind of gritty iron noise when they

scraped his ashes out of the grate—

the others would be here any minute and I 

wanted to open the urn as if then

I would finally know him.  On the wet lawn,

under the cones cloaked in their resin, I

worked at the top, it gave and slipped off and

there it was, the actual matter of his being:

small, speckled lumps of bone

like eggs, a discolored curve of bone like a

fungus grown around a branch;

spotted pebbles—and the spots were the channels of his marrow

where the live orbs of the molecules

swam as if by their own strong will

and in each cell the chromosomes

tensed and flashed, tore themselves

away from themselves, leaving their shining 

duplicates.  I looked at the jumble

of shards like a crushed paper-wasp hive;

was that a bone of his wrist, was that from the

elegant knee he bent, was that

his jaw, was that from his skull that at birth was

flexible yet—I looked at him,

bone and the ash it lay in, chromium-

white as the shimmering coils of dust

the earth leaves behind it, as it rolls, you can

hear its heavy roaring as it rolls away.

In her hands, Olds holds all that is left of her father’s body.  The man who loved her into being.  Held her as an infant.  Self-medicated his disappointment and anger with alcohol.  Physically abused her and her siblings.  The urn contains the weight of all that.

It was a long, weighty trip home.  We went out to breakfast with my daughter and her significant other before we left.  IHOP.  My daughter ordered blueberry pancakes—they’ve always been her favorite.  In fact, it’s almost blueberry season in the U.P., and for the first time in a long while, she’s not going to be able to go picking with me.  (I’m hoping to talk my son into accompanying me this year.)

Did I cry?  Did she cry?  Did we all cry?  

Yes.  Yes.  Yes.

All day long, I felt a weight on my shoulders.  When we finally pulled into the driveway, I looked at the house and thought to myself, “This place is never going to feel the same.”  A part of it is missing.  Of course, there are reminders of my daughter all over the place.  On Friday night, we watched one of her favorite movies—The Corpse Bride.  The DVD was still sitting by the TV.  There’s a framed photo collage of my daughter hanging on the wall.  And, I kid you not, I swear I could still smell her presence in the house.

So, as I sit typing this post, I am surrounded by her.  She haunts this house, in a good way.  Am I crying again?  Maybe.

I’m sure, in a couple months, this is all going to feel normal, whatever normal is.  However, right now, I don’t feel normal.  I feel like an open wound.

Saint Marty wrote a poem for tonight, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

For today’s poem, begin by making a list of your burdens.  They may be real or imagined, great or small, but make sure they are specific; for instance, not “my child,” but “the weekly trips to the sensory gym and speech therapy.”  Once you’ve done this, make an accompanying list of your pleasures:  knitting, berry picking, fishing, calligraphy.  Write a poem that contrasts your passions with your commitments using “because” to create anaphora, the literary term for the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginnings of successive clauses.  Example:  Because I rehabilitate in a stuffy gym each Tuesday afternoon, I fill my basket with blueberries, my ego dissolving with each plunk.  Because I writhe at the suggestion that I must break into a sweat, I recline in my chaise, blueberries unbrooding my brain.

Just Because

by: Martin Achatz

Because poetry chases me, I lock

the front door, turn off all lights,

watch a movie I’ve seen dozens 

of times, maybe Jaws or Raiders.

Because sadness visits in the middle

of night, I eat vanilla ice cream

sprinkled with Lucky Charms

even though Mom told me once

that all my teeth wold fall out.

Because the toilet tank leaks

a bucket every couple hours, I collect

copies of A Christmas Carol—hardcover,

paperback, illustrated, Muppet, 

pocket-size—so I’m surrounded

by ghosts and plum pudding always.

Because I’m middle-aged and hate

to sweat, I take my dog for walks

in the woods where she can

hunt yellowtails in long grass.

Because my daughter just moved

away to attend college, I unlock

the front door tonight, sit down, pick

up a fountain pen, begin writing

this poem.  I’ll mail it to her

tomorrow with an IHOP gift card.

Blueberries are in-season, and she

won’t be able to go picking

with me this year.