February 24: "Used Book," Perpetually Tired, Back in the Saddle

Billy Collins reading a . . .

Used Book

by:  Billy Collins

I turn a page

someone dog-eared,

like the bent ear

of a dog who's still lost.

Yes, I have been absent for quite a while.  I know that.  I'd like to say that I've been putting the finishing touches on a novel or collection of poems (I've been doing a little of the latter).  But that's not the reason.  I could claim sickness, but that's not the reason, either.  Teaching?  Nope.  Planning the Great Lakes Poetry Festival for the library where I work?  A little.  Working as an undercover poet for President Biden writing limericks about his predecessor?  Sounds like fun, but no.

The truth of the matter is that I've been tired.  Perpetually tired.  I usually write these blog posts either very early in the morning (when everyone in my house is still asleep) or very late at night (when everyone in my house has gone to bed).  However, my writing impulses have been running on low battery for the last month or so, and all I want to do is . . . sleep.  And once you fall out of a routine, it's hard to pick it up again.

People don't realize the energy it takes to write.  There are constant distractions--laundry to fold, papers to grade, a book to finish, a movie or TV show to watch.  Being able to set all that aside takes willpower and determination.  (Notice I didn't say "inspiration."  If I always waited to be inspired before I pick up a pen to write, I would never write again.)  Writing is plain hard work.

What have I been doing instead or writing?  Well, I've been rereading some of my favorite books and poetry collections.  Books that I've scribbled marginalia in, dog-eared pages of, and memorized passages from.  Old friends.  Collins compares the bent pages of well-loved books to the bent ear of a lost dog.  We're both saying the same thing--the words and pages of used books are comforting in times of chaos and upheaval and exhaustion.

I'm going to try to get back into the writing saddle.  No guarantees what I produce will be profound or funny or even interesting.  The next post I write may simply be my grocery list or a catalogue of Sharon Olds' books on my bookshelf (there are a lot).  But Rome wasn't built in a day, and runners don't start with marathons.  (Apologies for the clichés.  It's the best I can do at the moment.)

So, this lost dog is back home, and hopefully you will be reading a lot more of the Gospel of Saint Marty in the coming days.

 

August 1-2: My Heart Was Full, Difficult Time, "First Morning, After Joy Harjo"

Merton on his way to the rest of his life . . . 

I had to slam the book shut on the picture of Camaldoli and the bearded hermits standing in the stone street of cells, and I went out of the library, trying to stamp out the embers that had broken into flame, there, for an instant, within me. 

No, it was useless: I did not have a vocation, and I was not for the cloister, for the priesthood. Had I not been told that definitely enough? Did I have to have that beaten into my head all over again before I could believe it? 

Yet I stood in the sun outside the dining hall, waiting for the noon Angelus, and one of the Friars was talking to me. I could not contain the one thing that filled my heart: 

“I am going to a Trappist monastery to make a retreat for Holy Week,” I said. The things that jumped in the Friar’s eyes gave him the sort of expression you would expect if I had said: “I am going to go and buy a submarine and live on the bottom of the sea.” 

“Don’t let them change you!” he said, with a sort of a lame smile. That meant “Don’t go reminding the rest of us that all that penance might be right, by getting a vocation to the Trappists.” 

I said: “It would be a good thing if they did change me.” 

It was a safe, oblique way of admitting what was in my heart—the desire to go to that monastery and stay for good. 

On the morning of the Saturday before Palm Sunday I got up before five, and heard part of a Mass in the dark chapel and then had to make a run for the train. The rain fell on the empty station straight and continuous as a tower. 

All the way down the line, in the pale, growing day, the hills were black, and rain drenched the valley and flooded the sleeping valley towns. Somewhere past Jamestown I took out my Breviary and said the Little Hours, and when we got into Ohio the rain stopped. 

We changed stations at Gabon, and on the fast train down to Columbus I got something to eat, and in southern Ohio the air was drier still, and almost clearing. Finally, in the evening, in the long rolling hills that led the way in to Cincinnati, you could see the clouds tearing open all along the western horizon to admit long streaks of sun. 

It was an American landscape, big, vast, generous, fertile, and leading beyond itself into limitless expanses, open spaces, the whole West. My heart was full! 

Merton knows somehow that his life is about to change forever.  Instead of running for the hills like Jonah does when God tells him to go to Nineveh, Merton listens to God, gets on the train, and sets out for Kentucky.  And he is overflowing with happiness.

If you can't tell, I've been having a difficult time blogging and writing recently.  I've tried to write early in the morning.  And in the afternoon.  Late at night.  Each time I sit down at the keyboard to pound out a post, exhaustion sort of overtakes me.  My mind gets foggy.  And it's over for the day.

Right now, it's past midnight, and I am ready to give up again.  This past weekend, as part of a writing challenge with a good friend, I did get almost 20 pages of poetry written.  An entire chapbook.  It felt great to sort of be back in the saddle.  I'm not saying every single poem I wrote was good.  In fact, I'd say I've got a few stinkers in the manuscript.  However, I did it.

And that fills Saint Marty's heart.  For the first time in a long while.

One of my new poems . . . 

First Morning, after Joy Harjo

for Celeste

by:  Martin Achatz

I think of that first morning I held you
after a night of wind, ice, snow, the world
clear, fragile as a pane of Windexed glass.
As you settled into my elbow, I told you
my arms were forever, that you would be
part of me until my lungs gave up
their last pocket of air, my heart said
your name one last time before going silent.
There have been 7,547 mornings since,
each stitched with tiny acts of surrender,
seeing you take those necessary steps away
from that first morning, with you pressed
to my chest until our breaths, hearts joined,
and I couldn’t tell where you ended,
I began. On this morning, another necessary
letting go, you into another person’s waiting
arms, I want you to know I still hold all
your breaths, every note your heart has sung,
like constellations in the Milky Way of my body.

May 16: Back to Work, Lost Dog, New Poem

I won't lie to you.  It was difficult getting back in the saddle this morning.  Getting up at 4:15 a.m. was tough.  But, of course, I dragged my ass out of bed, showered, and drove to work.  The first few hours were even tougher, but I worked through my exhaustion.  I think all of the stress and excitement of the trip finally caught up with me.  On top of that, usually Mondays are fairly slow.  Not this Monday.  The phone was ringing.  The FAX machine was humming.  And I was sucking down Diet Mountain Dew faster than the Titanic took on water.

However, I made it through the morning.  After lunch, I decided to go for a run, since I have meetings tonight at church.  I won't have time after work to run.  As I followed my normal running route around the college campus, I came upon a little dachshund standing in the middle of the street in front of a really big car.  The car wasn't moving.  The dog wasn't moving.  I really wanted to finish my run, but my friggin' conscience wouldn't let me.  So I went and scooped the dog up.  Then I spent ten minutes knocking on doors around the neighborhood, trying to find the dog's owner.  No luck.  I walked back to the medical office at which I work.  I got the dog some water and a blanket.  Then I called the police.  The city animal control officer came and picked the little guy up.

That has been my day, so far.  I have a new poem.  It is about the little lost dog, sort of.  I just wrote it a little while ago, so be kind.

Just call me Saint Marty of Assisi.



Unfortunately, I don't look good in brown

 Assisi

They say Francis used to preach
To olive trees filled with meadowlarks,
Sang to them so sweetly, they filled
The air around him with the flutter
Of wing and heart and breath.
They say Francis crawled into the den
Of a man-eating wolf, traced
A cross on its forehead, tamed
Its hunger with his long fingers,
His voice of sunset, night, rest.
They say, when Francis lay dying,
He praised his donkey, thanked it
For bearing him over rock, through
Storm and heat, for never tripping
Or braying complaint.  The donkey wept.

As I ran this afternoon, I saw
A dog almost get hit by a Toyota.
It was a miniature dachshund,
Gray around the muzzle.  It shivered
Before the car as I walked over.
The dog stared up at me, and I could see
Fear, wild as blueberries or lightning,
In its eyes.  For a moment, I thought
It would sink its teeth into the flesh
Of my ankle.  Then I began to speak,
The way, I imagine, Francis always
Spoke, with the sound of God's feet
Walking through Eden's grass at dusk.
I reached down, picked up the dog.
It leaned into my heartbeat
As I walked and spoke, petted
Its black head.  The birds of Assisi swooped,
Danced, blessed the afternoon sunlight.