July 11: Mother and Child, Little Man, Matthea Harvey, "Cheap Cloning Process Lets You Have Your Own Little Elvis"

He [Ives] prayed, his eyes upon the painting of the Mother and Child near the altar.  He prayed for his dead adoptive father, and for his mother and father whom he had never known.  For all the things he never knew.

This paragraph comes one page before the end of the book.  Ives has made his peace with God.  Now, Ives returns to the prayers he said when he was young.  He accepts that he will never fully understand the universe in all its complexity.  Yet, he has trust and faith in the goodness of God.

That's what I'm going to do today.  I'm giving my worries and cares away.  I know I'm in control of nothing.  My sister's life is in God's hands.  This morning, she was Skyping with my parents, and she said to my six-year-old son, "Hey, little man."  That makes me incredibly happy.

This morning, I ran a two-mile race with my daughter (she placed first in her age bracket, I placed fourth).  Then I went to a parade in a neighboring city.  Tonight, I'm taking my kids and nieces and nephews to another fireworks show on the shores of a lake.

I'm not going to get all profound today.  I want to maintain that happiness I felt earlier.  Thus, Matthea Harvey's final poem for this week makes me smile.  I hope it will do the same for you.

Saint Marty is going to buy some kettle corn tonight, sit back on a blanket by a lakeshore, and enjoy the light show in the sky.

Cheap Cloning Process Lets You
Have Your Own Little Elvis

by:  Matthea Harvey

If the real Elvis was a racecar,
the little matchbox-sized Elvis we buy
are the half-galaxies of other cars'
odometers seen through a cab window
at night.  When my Elvis does a hip swivel
(like a bobblehead dog on the dash, he's game,
will swivel all day long) it doesn't cause
a full-on swoon, just a tiny pinprick
of desire felt in the arch of the foot.
Like a lozenge when you want a meal.
The Elvi are smart not to serenade us
with "Baby, If You'll Give Me all of Your Love"
on their nanoguitars--we'd crush them
with one corresponding hip spiral of our own.
They stick to strumming "Dainty Little Moonbeams"
while we smoke cigarettes and cloak them
in smoke.  My friend, who's strangely loyal
to the Original Elvis timeline, maintains hers
nicely, smoothes baby oil onto his black hair.
Using a microscope, she's already sewn him
a tiny sequined jumpsuit for his later fatter years
and to that end she deep-fries breadcrumbs stuffed
with a dab of peanut butter and one Baco Bit.
Once I caught mine manhandling a sprig of parsley,
pretending it was Priscilla.  Every month or so
we meet at a playground on our lunchbreak
and corral them all in a sandbox.  Fights flare up
instantaneously over who's the real Elvis,
who's an imposter, and while they pull on
each other's pompadours, we munch on
our pastrami sandwiches, imagining
what's up next:  a tiny Jesus, or a mini
Michael Jackson wearing Disco Barbie's glove.

Love me tender...

April 22: Mother and Child, Praying, Scary Movie

He prayed, his eyes upon the painting of the Mother and Child near the altar.  He prayed for his dead adoptive father, and for his mother and father whom he had never known.  For all the things he never knew.

Okay, Ives prays a lot in the book.  He prays for his son and parents.  For understanding and forgiveness.  He struggles with his feelings for God, but Ives never turns his back on Him.

I spend a lot of my day praying.  I wake up, stumble into the bathroom, and start thinking about people who need help.  People who are sick or struggling.  Who need to be uplifted.  My sister and mother.  A friend with lung cancer.  That's all before I brush my teeth.

And then, driving to work, I pray.  I'm not always happy at the medical office, so I pray for patience and maybe a little joy.  All day long, I say little prayers, especially when I find myself getting angry or annoyed.

Tonight, I'm praying that I don't have nightmares.  I screened The Exorcist for my students this evening.  I've seen it many times.  It still scares the shit out of me.

Saint Marty is going to bed now.  Hopefully, he'll stay awake long enough toooooooooooooo........

I sometimes pray for other people, too...

August 5: A Trip, Sharon Olds, "First Weeks"

Tomorrow, I will be going on a trip with my family.  We will be staying at a wonderful resort with a water park, hay rides, and zip lining.  I will slide down water slides.  I will get hay in my underwear.  I will not attach myself to a cable and send myself careening down a hill to certain death.  And I will have a great time with my kids, my wife, and my sister.

So, tomorrow, I will begin blogging from downstate Michigan, relaxing, eating pizza, watching my children be children.

Tonight's poem from Sharon Olds is about a mother and a child.  The small moments that imprint themselves on your heart.

It speaks to Saint Marty tonight.

First Weeks

by:  Sharon Olds

Those first weeks, I hardly knew how to
love our daughter.  Her face looked crushed,
crumpled with worry--and not even
despairing, but just disheartened, a look of
endurance.  The skin of her face was finely
wrinkled, there were wisps of hair on her ears,
she looked a little like a squirrel, suspicious,
tranced.  And smallish, 6.13,
wizened--she looked as if she were wincing
away from me without moving.  The first
moment I had seen her, my glasses off,
in the delivery room, a blur of blood
and blue skin, and limbs, I had known her,
upside down, and they righted her, and there
came that faint, almost sexual, wail, and her
whole body flushed rose.
When I saw her next, she was bound in cotton,
someone else had cleaned her, wiped
the inside of my body off her
and combed her hair in narrow scary
plough-lines.  She was ten days early,
sleepy, the breast engorged, standing out nearly
even with the nipple, her lips would so much as
approach it, it would hiss and spray.
And when we took her home, she shrieked
and whimpered, like a dream of a burn victim,
and when she was quiet, she would lie there and peer, not quite
anxiously.  I didn't blame her,
she'd been born to my mother's daughter.  I would kneel
and gaze at her, and pity her.
All day I nursed her, all night I walked her,
and napped, and nursed, and walked her.  And then,
one day, she looked at me, as if
she knew me.  She lay along my forearm, fed, and
gazed at me as if remembering me,
as if she had known me, and liked me, and was getting
her memory back.  When she smiled at me,
delicate rictus like a birth-pain coming,
I fell in love, I became human.

A small moment