May 31: Sleep Well, Lipps Inc., Bigfoot Poet

The boy talks about great fishermen with Santiago . . . 

"The great Sisler's father was never poor and he, the father, was playing in the big leagues when he was my age."

"When I was your age I was before the mast on a square rigged ship that ran to Africa and I have seen lions on the beaches in the evening."

"I know. You told me."

"Should we talk about Africa or about baseball?"

"Baseball I think," the boy said. "Tell me about the great John J. McGraw." He said Jota for J.

"He used to come to the Terrace sometimes too in the older days. But he was rough and harsh-spoken and difficult when he was drinking. His mind was on horses as well as baseball. At least he carried lists of horses at all times in his pocket and frequently spoke the names of horses on the telephone."

"He was a great manager," the boy said. "My father thinks he was the greatest."

"Because he came here the most times," the old man said. "If Durocher had continued to come here each year your father would think him the greatest manager."

"Who is the greatest manager, really, Luque or Mike Gonzalez?"

"I think they are equal."

"And the best fisherman is you."

"No. I know others better."

"Qué va," the boy said. "There are many good fishermen and some great ones. But there is only you."

"Thank you. You make me happy. I hope no fish will come along so great that he will prove us wrong."

"There is no such fish if you are still strong as you say."

"I may not be as strong as I think," the old man said. "But I know many tricks and I have resolution."

"You ought to go to bed now so that you will be fresh in the morning. I will take the things back to the Terrace."

"Good night then. I will wake you in the morning."

"You're my alarm clock," the boy said.

"Age is my alarm clock," the old man said. "Why do old men wake so early? Is it to have one longer day?"

"I don't know," the boy said. "All I know is that young boys sleep late and hard."

"I can remember it," the old man said. "I'll waken you in time."

"I do not like for him to waken me. It is as though I were inferior."

"I know."

"Sleep well, old man."

The boy went out. They had eaten with no light on the table and the old man took off his trousers and went to bed in the dark. He rolled his trousers up to make a pillow, putting the newspaper inside them. He rolled himself in the blanket and slept on the other old newspapers that covered the springs of the bed.

Santiago doesn't feel comfortable with the boy's praise.  He accepts the compliment, but he knows that he's only as good as the next fish he catches.  Resting on your past is like Lipps Inc. going on Jimmy Fallon to sing "Funkytown."  Again.  And again.  And Again.

As a poet, I know the danger of always pulling out the poems people expect you to read.  When I first started publishing, my one-hit wonder was a poem about a dead squirrel.  Everyone knew me for it.  And I read it.  A lot.  Even though I had written much better stuff.  The squirrel poem was eventually replaced by another audience favorite.  A poem about about the ugliest fish in North America.  And, eventually that one was replaced.  It might have been the one about my grandfather and Robert Frost.  Or the one about my sister who, at the time, was suffering with a serious illness.  I read a poem titled "Orange Day" about my son so much, people started referring to him as my orange child.

Nowadays, it's Bigfoot all the way.  If I do a poetry reading without including a Bigfoot poem or two, I feel like I've let the audience down.  At my last public reading, I read a ton of new, non-Bigfoot poems.  Really good stuff, in my estimation.  But, it was only when I dragged Bigfoot out of the poetic forest that I saw everyone in the room smile.  Literally everyone.  Bigfoot is my "Funkytown."

And I don't mind right now that I'm known as the Bigfoot poet.  It could be worse.  I could known for writing serial killer poems.  Or poems from the mind of Marjorie Taylor Greene (what little of it she has).  Eventually, I WILL move on to another obsession.  After I get my Bigfoot manuscript out in the world.

For now, however, Bigfoot is always looking over my shoulder.  He's my muse.  I call on him when I need strength or courage.  And he opens doors for me, to spoken-word albums and documentary films and podcasts.  Plus, Bigfoot makes me cool with my 13-year-old son.  A difficult feat.

So, at this time, Saint Marty sleeps well knowing Bigfoot is watching over him.

December 20: Winter Solstice, Fairies, "The Ugliest Fish in North America"

Tomorrow is the winter solstice.  The longest night of the year in my neck of the woods on this little cosmic rock called Earth.  Of course, there's all kind of legends that surround the solstice.  One of my favorites is that, on December 21st, the animals of the world are given the gift of speech.  The cow can complain about her aching teats.  The horse can tell the donkey that he's a pain in the ass.  You get the idea. 

Another legend that surrounds the solstice involves fairies.  On December 21st, the fairies of the world come out in the moonlight to play and dance.  I'm not sure if they leave presents for children or kidnap/kill them.  Think Rossetti's Goblin Market.  I had a friend who used to hang cookies in trees for the fairies on the winter solstice.

Tonight, my poem is about a creature that could legend.  The giant lake sturgeon.  It's one of my better known works and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize when it was first published.

The Ugliest Fish in North America

by:  Martin Achatz

for Lydia

The mother worries about DNA, how helix

Can twist, like shadows on bedroom walls,

Into something terrifying, tree into banshee,

Chair into dragon, son into a person

She’d avoid on street corners, thin

As a blade of grass, arms full of purple

Canals, a universe of scabby stars.

She wonders how the collision of egg

With sperm inside her belly created

This creature so drawn to the smell

Of carbon monoxide, the taste of razor.

From where in the evolution of family

Did this vestigial finger or toe of insanity

Come?  Was it grandpa from Buffalo,

Who got drunk at Niagara Falls, walked

The railing like a Wallenda, one arm

Stretched toward his new bride,

The other toward thunder, mist, oblivion?

Was it great grandma from Russia,

Who buried two daughters in wheat

Fields before they could suckle because

They were daughters, couldn’t work the earth

From rock and frost into mud, into yam,

Corn, cabbage?  Or was it someone she

Didn’t know, someone further than memory,

Who planted this seed in her tree,

This son flower who now fills her pillows

With the wail of loon over moon and lake?

One day when she was a girl, she stood

In the shallows of Superior, her body just

A promise of woman, mother.  She felt

A monster slide by her in the water,

Larger than her father, a freight, all

Cartilage and fin, scute and armor,

A live fossil against her skin.  She reached out,

Touched its flank, her fingers connected

To a thing ancient:  carnosaurus, tarbosaurus,

Pteranodon.  It moved slower than glacier,

Gave her time to know its prehistoric form,

Shape unchanged by seventy million years

 Of spawn and weed, the skim for minnow,

Mayfly, mosquito.  As a girl, the mother

Didn’t fear this car of a fish, instead accepted

Its presence as blessing, Paraclete, spirit

To pass on to her mother, father, mate, child.

Beside her son’s hospital bed today, she watches

Him, counts his breaths, wants to press

Her thumb to the flutter in his wrist.

She thinks of Longfellow’s hero, swallowed

By the sturgeon, crawling down its throat,

Through rib, toward the drumming darkness.

She closes her eyes, wraps her arms around

Nahma’s great heart, lets it throb, convulse

Against her face and breasts, hears blood

Roaring in and out, to gill, brain, nose, tail. 

She holds on the way she wants to now hold

Her son.  To save him, reverse Darwin, genetics.

Force Him backwards to the time when his life

Was still cretaceous, a mystery.  A shining,

Black egg in the vast water of her womb.

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