February 25: Eve, Beauty Anywhere, Cold Medicine

Next to the golden boots were a pair of feet which were swaddled in rags.  They were crisscrossed by canvas straps, were shod with hinged wooden clogs.  Billy looked up at the face that went with the clogs.  It was the face of a blond angel, of a fifteen-year-old boy.

The boy was as beautiful as Eve.

I don't have a whole lot of time to get deep this morning.  The fifteen-year-old boy is another image of innocence.  That the innocence is attached to a Nazi youth is a little troubling.  The blond angel may not be an angel, but Billy, unstuck in time, inexperienced at war, is grasping at any possibility of kindness and beauty.

It is going to be a busy day.  As I said last night, there's a wrestling tournament, a dance rehearsal, and a church service.  Some time in there, I need to work on a new poem and figure out what I'm going to read at Tuesday night's poetry reading, all the while hopped up on cold medicine.

There's always the possibility of finding beauty anywhere you go.  There's snow coming down hard right now.  There are pancakes in front of me.  I'm on the front page of the local newspaper for being the new Poet Laureate of Upper Peninsula.  Despite feeling like I've been run through a wood chipper, I think today is going to be pretty good.

Saint Marty is thankful today for kids who pass along illnesses.  Not.

Febraury 24: Colson Whitehead, Untied States, "In the Beginning"

Sorry that I didn't post last night.  Too tired after my book club gathering.  This month, we read Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad.  It was fantastic and disturbing and led to a long discussion of immigrants and travel bans in the Untied States (typo intentional). It was a really great night, but I was exhausted when it was all over.

I am still pretty tired, so I let my daughter pick out a poem tonight.  She paged through my collection, came up with a poem about herself.

Saint Marty has a date with some cold medicine and a pillow.

In the Beginning

by:  Martin Achatz

Celeste rolls on the carpet
like dice that won't pause
on green felt, won't give
me the satisfaction
of 3 or 6, 1 or 5.
There is too much in her
knee-and-wall world to touch, too
many snakes with cardboard wings,
neon troikas plastered with words--
apple, cow, star.  When I speak to her,
she studies me, tries to unravel
my dictionary of sound.
Can I teach her to love language
the way lightning loves redwoods?
What will her first word be?
Will she shock me
with hamster, fridge, triangle?  Will
she point out the window, say
wind?  Will she sing the world,
the way Christ sang when He slid
from Mary's iron-taut uterus,
tasted her blood, saw Joseph radiant
with sweat?  Will Celeste's mouth open,
flood waters pour out, 40 days
and nights, preparing the world
for the rainbow of her tongue?