May 16, 2026: “Keeping Still,” Writing Conference, “What a Wonderful World”

It has been a very busy day.

I was invited to lead a youth poetry workshop and participate in a panel discussion today.  It was the annual meeting of UPPAA (Upper Peninsula Publishers & Authors Association) at the library where I work.  Maybe four years ago, I delivered the keynote address for UPPAA, so I am familiar with the organization and its people.  

Doing these kinds of events always makes me a little anxious.  Some of the questions running through my head:  Will these kids like me?  What do I know about recording audiobooks?  Did I leave the iron on?  (Okay, that last question was an allusion to the movie Airplane, but you get the idea.)  My inner Catholic schoolboy was fully present for most of the day.  Lots of noise in my head.

Marie Howe writes about finding a quiet place . . . 

Keeping Still

by: Marie Howe

If late at night, when watching the moon, you still

sometimes get vertigo, it’s understandable

that you wish suddenly and hard for fences, for someone

to marry you.  Desiring a working knowledge,

needing to know some context by heart, you might

accept anything:  the room without windows,

the far and frozen North, or the prairie, the prairie 

even, if it means that.

The long wide space and cold dirt that will not

be seduced into hills, and the dust, that even after

you have kicked and swept and fallen on it pounding,

will not produce a tree.  It will allow you

to rise with certainty and move with the relief

of necessary things to the wash on the line,

to the small maple you brought here that must be tied

for the winter or die.

Even the prairie night, blind with snow,

when no one comes, and you no longer look

to the mirror but force your fingers to the stitching

and produce a child to help with the lambing

and the carrying of water.  Although it might be years

before you turn and stop, startled

by the sweet and sudden smell of sheets snapping

in the sun, and the drunken lilac, prairie purple,

blooming by the doorway, because you planted it.

Keeping still is difficult because there’s so much noise in the world these days.  There are wars and inflation and soaring gas prices and an idiot tearing down/destroying national monuments.  (Said idiot is responsible for everything else in that previous sentence, as well.)

I don’t keep still very often.  Even when I fall asleep at night, I have to have some kind of noise.  Lately, it’s been old movies like Steel Magnolias and Crocodile Dundee.  My ADD mind doesn’t rest easily.  It requires distraction and, sometimes, medication.  (Not afraid to admit that I have a customer loyalty account at my local cannabis dispensary.)

Today, keeping still was impossible for me.  Too many things happening.  However, after my youth poetry workshop, I was able to sit in my office and write for a while, and it was glorious.  I rarely get more than 30 or 40 minutes of writing time in a 24-hour period.  Plus, I went to the laundromat after supper tonight, and I was able to write there, too.  So I found a few still moments during the parade of this day.  

I wish I was more like my puppy.  She can fall asleep practically anywhere, and very little disturbs her when she’s dozing.  (Every once in a while, in the middle of the night, I’ll hear her quietly bark in her crate, undoubtedly chasing a bunny or chipmunk in her dreams.  But that’s it.)  Dogs aren’t gifted with consciences or concepts of sin.  They just eat and sleep and (if they’re not neutered or spayed) fuck.  That’s it.  Maybe everyone should aspire to a dog’s life.  The world would be a much happier place, I think.

Saint Marty wrote the following poem at the laundromat tonight . . . 

What a Wonderful World

by: Martin Achatz

No offense, Louis, but it’s pretty hard

to notice rainbows in the sky or friends

shaking hands, saying “How do you do?”

or even imagining those three words 

(I and love and you) uttered in polite

company these days, when poets

are murdered in their cars and bombs

fall on school buildings filled with girls

too young to even know how to hate

anything but peas or an 8 p.m. curfew.

I want the world to be wonderful.

I really do.  But even bees are having

trouble finding the wonder of pollen,

and polar bears drown because the wonder

of ice can only be found in poems like this

by people like me who remember their parents

swaying in the kitchen, holding each other

close as you, Louis, growled your way

through that wonder-filled song, their hard

bodies shining like new pennies, the kind

no longer being minted these days.  Oh, yeah.

May 15, 2026: “Gretel, from a sudden clearing,” Rose, “On Your 61st Birthday”

Greetings, faithful disciples.  

Yes, I’ve been out of commission for the last couple weeks when it comes to blogging.  I had a little mishap with my iPad.  Basically, I was grading some final exams, and my iPad fell off the corner of a table.  The screen shattered.  So, for the past 14 or so days, I’ve been waiting for my replacement iPad, screen protector, and bluetooth keyboard.

Well, as evidenced by this post, I am back in business, and just in time for my sister Rose’s birthday.  She passed in 2022, and, since that time, I don’t think a day has gone by that I haven’t thought of her.  I miss her terribly.  She would have been 61 years old today.

Marie Howe writes about a sister missing her brother . . . 

Gretel, from a sudden clearing

by: Marie Howe

No way back then, you remember, we decided,

but forward, deep into a wood

so darkly green, so deafening with birdsong

I stopped my ears.

And that high chime at night,

was it really the stars, or some music

running inside our heads like a dream?

I think we must have been very tired.

I think it must have been a bad broken-off

piece at the start that left us so hungry

we turned back to a path that was gone,

and lost each other, looking.

I called your name over and over again,

and still you did not come.

At night, I was afraid of the black dogs

and often I dreamed you.next to me,

but even then, you were always turning

down the thick corridor of trees.

In daylight, every tree became you.

And pretending, I kissed my way through

the forest, until I stopped pretending

and stumbled, finally, here.

Here too, there are step-parents, and bread

rising, and so many other people

you may not find me at first.  They speak

your name, when I speak it.

But I remember you before you became

a story.  Sometimes, I feel a thorn in my foot

when there is no thorn.  They tell me,

not unkindly, that I should imagine nothing here.

But I believe you are still alive.

I want to tell you about the size of the witch

and how beautiful she is.  I want to tell you

the kitchen knives only look friendly,

they have a life of their own,

and that you shouldn’t be sorry,

not for the bread we ate and thought

we wasted, not for the turning back alone,

and that I remember how our shadows walked

always before us, and how that was a clue,

and how there are other clues

that seem like a dream but are not,

and that every day, I am less

and less afraid.

Howe’s poem is kind of heartbreaking.  I can almost taste the grief in Gretel’s words, that longing to find her lost brother—every tree in the forest reminding her of Hansel.

My sister Rose was unforgettable, too.  She wrote letters to friends and family, even though the doctor told my mom when my sister was born that she would never be able to walk or speak.  She did latch hook rugs, even though she barely followed the designs, instead creating her own, Picasso-esque images.  She watched movies on repeat—Mama Mia! and Sleeping Beauty and Steel Magnolias, even though she frequently wore out the VHS tapes and DVDs.  And Rose had Down syndrome.  I put that fact last because, if I put it first, people tend to define her by it.  She was much more than her extra chromosome.

The last few years of Rose’s life were a struggle.  She suffered from terrible asthma and frequently ended up in the hospital with bouts of pneumonia.  During her final hospital stay, she struggled and fought for breath for days.  Then, one morning, one of her lungs collapsed.  Her body was tired, and she was ready to be with all the people she missed—Mom, Dady, sister Sally, and brother Kevin.  The nurses removed her oxygen, and, in the silence that followed, her breathing got quieter and quieter until it ceased altogether.

That winter morning, the sky was pink and orange with the rising sun, as if it knew Rose would soon be coming and wanted to throw her a huge “Welcome Home” party.  It was one of the most beautiful and difficult moments of my life.  She passed so peacefully that, at first, I didn’t even realize she was gone.

Like Gretel in Howe’s poem, I see Rose everywhere—in the shapes of trees and clouds, taste of Diet Coke on my tongue, melodies of ABBA songs on my playlist.  She’s gone, but she’s never been gone.

Saint Marty wrote this poem for Rose tonight . . . 

On Your 61st Birthday

by: Martin Achatz

I think of you before gulls

picked your brain clean of words,

when you could still spoon Dairy Queen

ice cream cake to your mouth, or strip

your KFC breast so clean the bones

looked like they belonged in a Georgia 

O’Keeffe desert scape.  In a photo, 

my daughter kneels beside you, my son 

hovers behind your chair, and you smile

as if you’ve just discovered how

to smile and can’t wait to share

your discovery with the rest of the world.

I wish there was a museum of your

smiles I could visit today.  I’d sit

on a bench in the wing dedicated 

to all the smiles you gave me, each

lip and tooth thick and alive

as brushstrokes on a van Gogh canvas,

you know the one with all the screaming

stars and black finger of a tree pointing

heavenward, as if directing me to the cloud

where hosts of seraphs are singing 

hosannas to your bright birthday comet.

January 29: Not Out of the Woods, Fair Grounds, Prayer for Sister

So my sister in Utah is not out of the woods yet.  She went to a doctor's appointment this afternoon and had to be transported from there to the hospital by ambulance.  Her oxygen levels were very low, which may indicate that her infection has spread to her lungs.

My other sister called to tell me the news at work this afternoon.  It really bothered me.  My coworker, who's one of my best friends, asked me, "How're you doing?"  I shrugged.  She said, "Have you made peace with your sister yet?"  It was a question that carried a certain finality about it, as if I only had a little time left to mend my relationship with my sister.

My sister's condition is very serious.  Possibly life-threatening.  I guess I wasn't admitting how serious it actually was.  I'm still not at the point where I think my sister could pull a Steel Magnolias on me.  I can't get there in my head.  It would feel too much like giving up.

Charlotte doesn't give up on Wilbur, either.  Even though she knows the end is near for her life, she decides to go to the County Fair with him:

"I shall go, too," she said softly.  "I have decided to go with Wilbur.  He may need me.  We can't tell what may happen at the Fair Grounds.  Somebody's got to go along who knows how to write..."  

I know nothing is guaranteed, but I have to believe that I still have time to get to the County Fair with my sister.  I'm just not sure who's Wilbur and who's Charlotte in our situation.  Who needs to be saved and who needs to do the saving.

Dear God of the County Fair,

My sister needs Your help again.  Or still.  I'm asking You to give us more time.  Put some healing in her life.  For her kids.  They need her.  And I need more time to find forgiveness and love in my heart.  She can be a blue ribbon person.  I know that.

Keep her in the Fair a little bit longer.  Her life deserves to be saved.

Your loving servant,

Saint Marty

Not ready for this yet