October 4: "Moles," Pushing the Dirt, Quiet Desperation

Mary Oliver admires . . . 

Moles

by:  Mary Oliver

Under the leaves, under

the first loose

levels of earth

they're there--quick

as beetles, blind

as bats, shy 

as hares but seen

less than these--

traveling

among the pale girders

of appleroot,

rockshelf, nests

of insects and black

pastures of bulbs

peppery and packed full

of the sweetest food:

spring flowers.

Field after field

you can see the traceries

of their long

lonely walks, then

the rains blur

even this frail

hint of them--

so excitable,

so plush,

so willing to continue

generation after generation

accomplishing nothing 

but their brief physical lives

as they live and die,

pushing and shoving

with their stubborn muzzles against

the whole earth,

finding it

delicious.

There it is--the life of the mole.  Pushing and shoving dirt all their lives, their heavens studded with appleroot and rockshelf, eclipses of bulbs and the promise of spring flowers.  In general, nobody sings the praises of these small, blind creatures of the earth.  Nobody, that is, except Mary Oliver.

I think most of us live our lives like this--doing our things, pushing the dirt, getting the necessary work done without needing an "attaboy" or "nice job" or "holy shit!"  As Thoreau said, most humans "lead lives of quiet desperation."  I don't expect a praise psalm every time I teach a class or lead a poetry workshop.  My impulse, when I receive a compliment, is to deflect and deprecate.  After all, most successes are team efforts,  For example, the winners of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman, were a team whose work led to the development mRNA COVID vaccines.  A team.  And they saved millions of people.  

I'm so blessed in my life to have supportive and loving family and friends, even with all my poet weirdness.  The choices I've made in my life haven't all been the greatest.  I've fucked up just as much as I've succeeded.  If I were a mole, I probably would have broken my muzzle trying to dig a hole through solid granite.  Yet, my tribe has stuck by me, supporting me through my lowest of lows as well as my highest of highs.  

Moles move mountains of dirt during their humble lives, and they find the work delicious. 

Saint Marty has shoveled a lot of shit in his lifetime, and he has been graced with more than his fair share of auroras, rainbows, and mind-blowing sunrises.

August 8: "Am I Not Among the Early Risers," Grace, Buckshot with Light

Mary Oliver asks . . . 

Am I Not Among the Early Risers

by:  Mary Oliver

Am I not among the early risers

and the long-distance walkers?

Have I not stood, amazed, as I consider

the perfection of the morning star

above the peaks of the houses, and the crowns of the trees

     blue in the first light?

Do I not see how the trees tremble, as though

     sheets of water flowed over them

thought it is only wind, that common thing,

     free to everyone and everything?

Have I not thought, for years, what it would be

worthy to do, and then gone off, barefoot and with a silver pail,

     to gather blueberries,

thus coming, as I think, upon a right answer?

What will ambition do for me that the fox, appearing suddenly

at the top of the field,

her eyes sharp and confident as she stared into mine,

has not already done?

What countries, what visitations,

     what pomp

would satisfy me as thoroughly as Blackwater Woods

on a sun-filled morning, or, equally, in the rain?

Here is an amazement--once I was twenty years old and in

     every motion of my body there was a delicious ease,

and in every motion of the green earth there was

     a hint of paradise,

and now I am sixty years old, and it is the same.

Above the modest house and the palace--the same darkness.

Above the evil man and the just, the same stars.

Above the child who will recover and the child who will

     not recover, the same energies roll forward,

from one tragedy to the next and from one foolishness to the next.

     I bow down.

Have I not loved as though the beloved could vanish at any moment,

or become preoccupied, or whisper a name other than mine

     in the stretched curvatures of lust, or over the dinner table?

Have I ever taken good fortune for granted?

Have I not, every spring, befriended the swarm that pours forth?

Have I not summoned the honey-man to come, to hurry,

     to bring with him the white and comfortable hive?

And while I waited, have I not leaned close, to see everything?

Have I not been stung as I watched their milling and gleaming,

     and stung hard?

Have I not been ready always at the iron door,

     not knowing to what country it opens--to death or to more life?

Have I ever said that the day was too hot or too cold

or the night too long and as black as oil anyway,

or the morning, washed blue and emptied entirely

     of the second-rate, less than happiness

as I stepped down from the porch and set out along 

the green paths of the world?

I think the key question that Oliver asks in this poem is this:  "Have I taken good fortune for granted?"

Really, that encompasses all the other questions she asks, from whether she's an early riser to whether she's been stung hard by a bee.  It's almost as if Oliver is trying to remind herself of all of the grace she's experienced in her life.  And the thing about grace is that it's not something that you earn.  Grace is simply given, with no strings attached, to people who live in modest houses and palaces, to evil men and just men, to the child who will live and the child who will die.  

So, what grace have I experienced today?  Because everyone experiences grace every day of their lives.  The problem is that, unless you're actively looking for it, grace is like the sun hiding behind a tree.  It's visible in the glittering leaves, in the clouds buckshot with light, but most people simply don't look up long enough to see it.

I had a pretty uneventful day.  Nothing terrible happened.  Nothing wonderful happened.  I just worked, ate, graded essays, ate some more, and took my puppy for a walk.  Unfailingly normal.  Henry David Thoreau wrote, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation, and go to the grave with the song still in them."  For Thoreau, nothing could be worse than going through life with our dreams locked safely inside ourselves, safely unfulfilled.

I'm not saying that my existence is one of quiet desperation.  On the contrary, I have been the recipient of so much grace in my life that I feel as though I should give some of it back.  I have a beautiful wife whom I love.  Two beautiful children who fill me with pride.  A puppy who rolls on her back and lets me scratch her belly any time.  Extended family and friends who love me, despite all of my failings.  A job that is full of books and poetry and authors and music and art and movies.  And a gift for writing that has given me some pretty amazing experiences.  (I've had personal conversations with Joy Harjo and Natasha Trethewey and Diane Seuss, for God's sake.)

That's a ridiculous amount of grace for one person to receive.

Sure, I struggle, too.  Grace isn't an antidote for pain.  Grace is what makes the pain bearable.  August 19 will be the eighth anniversary of my sister Sally's death.  Grief doesn't ever really go away.  It's a lifelong process of saying goodbye.  So, I get sad every once in a while, especially this time of year.  Yet, I still have grace, that sun hiding in the trees.

Tonight, I watched Ghost with my son.  He'd never seen it before.  When it go to the final scene, where Patrick Swayze says goodbye to Demi Moore, I started crying.  As the credits were rolling, my son stood up and said, "That movie was alright."  Then he went back upstairs to his bedroom.

But my son spent time with me this evening.  He sat and watched an old (to him) movie.  Maybe he thought it was corny or stupid or predictable, but he didn't say these things aloud.  Instead, this surly 14-year-old boy just graced me with his company because he knew I needed it.

For Saint Marty, that is an unchained melody.

September 28: Quiet Desperation, Joys and Sorrow, "Before 4:30 Mass"

Henry David Thoreau wrote, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." 

I agree with that statement.  Think about it.  Walking through Walmart, imagine the stories of every person that you pass in the aisles.  Each person has a story, full of joys and sorrows, triumphs and failures.  And we all started out the same way:  newborn babies, placed in our mothers' arms, pink and innocent, full of all kinds of hope.

I remind myself of that fact almost every day.  The man who flips me off as I'm driving down the highway may have just received a cancer diagnosis.  The woman who glares at me when I bump into her shopping cart may have a grown child suffering from schizophrenia.  The teenage boy who jokes about me with his pack of friends in McDonald's may have a father or mother with a drinking problem.  We just don't know.

I am not immune to being judgmental.  I'm human, and I fall into the same traps as everybody else.  But that makes me one of the mass of men, as well.  Leading my life of quiet desperation.

Saint Marty is in good company.

Before 4:30 Mass

by:  Martin Achatz

I look down from the choir loft
At the silence gathered below.
Mrs. MacDonald wears her wool coat
In the same pew she sat in
With her parents, seventy years ago.
She looks behind her, as if she expects
Her father to march up the aisle,
Sit next to her, his boots
Still red with dust from the mines.
Father George flits from person-to-person,
Like a hummingbird in an apple tree,
Pausing long enough to taste
The blossom of each sinner's grief
Before moving on.  My daughter, white
Acolyte, lights candles on the altar,
Checks chalice and paten, makes sure
Gospel and cloth are in place
For the coming show.  So much quiet
Desperation fills the sanctuary,
Everyone craving a piece of holiness
To bring home, bake with eggs and oatmeal,
Spaghetti and meatloaf for the week.
I reach down, press the red button.
The pipe organ takes a long breath,
Groans to life, resurrected again.
It waits for my fingers, holds
Music in its gold pipes that reach
Up and up to the vaulted ceiling,
To the bell in the steeple.  It waits
For that low D of the first hymn,
Voices rising like seagulls

Above the waves of Galilee.

February 6: Bronze Stars, Lancelots, Quiet Desperation

In real life, Weary was retracing his steps, trying to find out what had happened to Billy.  He had told the scouts to wait while he went back for the college bastard.  He passed under a low branch now.  It hit the top of his helmet with a clonk.  Weary didn't hear it.  Somewhere a big dog was barking.  Weary didn't hear that, either.  His war story was at a very exciting part.  An officer was congratulating the Three Musketeers, telling them that he was going to put them in for Bronze Stars.

"Anything else I can do for you boys?" said the officer.

"Yes, sir," said one of the scouts.  "We'd like to stick together for the rest of the war, sir.  Is there some way you can fix it so nobody will ever break up the Three Musketeers?"

I wish I could be a little like Roland Weary, constantly rewriting my life so that I'm always the knight in shining armor, riding in to save the day.  Of course, Weary is deluded.  In reality, none of his companions like him all that much.  He's a reckless and stupid soldier.  That's the reality.

My reality is similarly unimpressive.  I'm no hero.  I work in a medical office and teach English part-time at a university.  I own a house that needs major repairs, and I'm constantly juggling my finances, trying to figure out which bill is the most overdue and which bill can wait to be paid.  Most of the week, I'm chronically tired.

Yet, I know that my situation is pretty normal.  Most people have similar struggles.  There are very few Lancelots or Wonder Women out there.  As Thoreau said, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."  It's a good quote.  In a strange way, Thoreau's words give me comfort, because I know that I'm not alone in my struggles.

I try to be a good husband and father.  I attempt to be a trustworthy friend and confidante.  I care about my parents and siblings.  I worry about Syrian refugees and U. S. troops stationed overseas.  I do my best to be a good teacher for my students, hopefully leaving their lives with a little more light than darkness.  

When I wake up every morning, those are my goals.  Sometimes I succeed at them.  Sometimes I fail.  That is my life of quiet desperation.

Tonight, Saint Marty is thankful that he hasn't caused any psychological trauma in the world.