January 21, 2026: "Postscript," Cold, "There Are No Flowers in Minneapolis"

I truly appreciate all the people who responded to my last post.  It's easy to feel isolated right now.  You're never sure where people are politically or what subject is "safe."  It's exhausting.  So all the messages I received (both on this blog and privately) have made me feel less alone.

I am going to try to balance the good and the bad in my posts this year.  Believe it or not, there's still a lot of beauty in the world.  (It's just difficult to see it through all the teargas.  Sorry, not sorry.)  For example, I'm currently sitting in my new office at the library, looking out at Lake Superior from my window.  The lake is gray and cold-looking, the shoreline fringed with ice and snow.  It's austere and lovely, like a stern grandfather who always has a butterscotch in his pocket for you.  The world is full of wonder.

Marie Howe reflects on how we've treated the world . . . 

Postscript

by: Marie Howe

What we did to the earth, we did to our daughters

one after the other.

What we did to the trees we did to our elders

stacked in their wheelchairs by the lunchroom door.

What we did to our daughters, we did to our sons

calling out for their mothers.

What we did to the trees, what we did to the earth

we did to our sons, to our daughters.

What we did to the cow, to the pig, to the lamb,

we did to the earth, butchered and milked it.

Few of us knew what the bird calls meant

or what the fires were saying.

We took of earth and took and took, and the earth

seemed not to mind,

until one of our daughters shouted:  It was right

in front of you, right in front of your eyes

and you didn't see.

The air turned red.  The ocean grew teeth.

Yes, humankind has fucked up this planet greatly.  Howe is right about that.  We have taken and taken and taken, without considering the cost of each taken.  Hence, Deepwater Horizon and Exxon Valdez and Chernobyl.  The air is turning red, and the oceans do bite.

At the moment, my little corner of the Upper Peninsula is cold, and it's going to get colder and colder.  By Friday, windchills will hit -30 and -40 degrees Fahrenheit.  Those kinds of temperatures seem vindictive, like the earth is getting even with us for being such terrible stewards of its resources.  

But there was warmth and joy in my life this evening.  I hosted a concert at the library featuring two lovely musicians—the Seth Brown Duo.  The music lifted my spirits and reminded me that there are still good people in the world, despite the violence and outright cruelty occurring in the streets and neighborhoods of Minneapolis and St. Paul.  It’s very easy to lose sight of beauty and joy these days.

Tonight, I am grateful for music and friends.  Yes, the United States is a big ol’ dumpster fire at the moment, but change is coming.  It’s inevitable.  And, for 60 minutes tonight, I forgot to be frightened or pissed off.  Instead, I sang “Don’t Worry Be Happy” and “Imagine.”

Maybe John Lennon got it right—no heaven, no hell, just a world living as one.  We all need to be dreamers.

Saint Marty wrote a poem tonight about happiness.

There Are No Flowers in Minneapolis

by:  Martin Achatz

No fresh daisies push through

cracks in sidewalks, no plumes

of lilac dust the air.  Geraniums

stay hidden behind locked

doors, refuse to open, bloom.

Even florists hide their silken

arrays in basements, secret back

rooms, Anne Frank orchids that dream

of riding on young girls’ wrists

and sparrow chests for junior prom.

Even the morning glory avoids

the rising sun, hides its face

from anyone who wants to pluck

it before smiles start to blossom.

March 16: Terrific Friend, Seamus Heaney, "The Spirit Level," New Cartoon

What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.

I know I've used this Holden quote before when I've talked about books and writers I love.  I can honestly say that I love the writer I'm going to talk about today, but I don't think I'd want to call him up on the phone whenever I felt like it.

Seamus Heaney, the Nobel Prize winning Irish poet, is one of my favorite writers.  His poems are like precious stones, cut and polished and glinting with light.  However, I've talked to people who have met Heaney, and, from their reports, he's kind of an asshole in person.  He can afford to be.  He's brilliant and accomplished and doesn't suffer fools very gladly.  I wouldn't mind having dinner and drinks with him, but I don't know if I'd be able to hold up my end of the conversation for very long.  I have a feeling I'd end up being one of those fools.

The Spirit Level is Heaney's collection of poems published in 1996 by Farrar Straus Giroux.  His poems, as always, are stunning, filled with the music and myth and mud of the world.  He's able to take ordinary stuff of everyday life and transform into something beautiful.  In the poem "St. Kevin and the Blackbird," he takes as his subject the sacred nature of Nature:

St. Kevin and the Blackbird

And then there was St. Kevin and the blackbird.

The saint is kneeling, arms stretched out, inside

His cell, but the cell is narrow, so

One turned-up palm is out the window, stiff

As a crossbeam, when a blackbird lands

And lays in it and settles down to nest.

Kevin feels the warm eggs, the small breast, the tucked

Neat head and claws and, finding himself linked

Into the network of eternal life,

Is moved to pity:  now he must hold his hand

Like a branch out in the sun and rain for weeks

Until the young are hatched and fledged and flown.

*

And since the whole thing's imagined anyhow,

Imagine being Kevin.  Which is he?

Self-forgetful or in agony all the time

From the neck on out down through his hurting forearms?

Are his fingers sleeping?  Does he still feel his knees?

Or has the shut-eyed blank of underearth

Crept up through him?  Is there distance in his head?

Alone and mirrored clear in love's deep river,

'To labour and not to seek reward,' he prays,

A prayer his body makes entirely

For he has forgotten self, forgotten bird

And on the riverbank forgotten the river's name.

Heaney is a master of making these kinds of moves, from hagiography into legend into feather and finger.  His poems have that kind of muscle, assured in each leap of thought and image.  I'm not always sure where his leaps land.  Sometimes, I find myself in places strange and frightening.  But Heaney is always there, in command, leading me where he wants me to go: 

Postscript 

And some time make the time to drive out west

Into County Clare, along Flaggy Shore,

In September or October, when the wind

And the light are working off each other

So that the ocean on one side is wild

With foam and glitter, and inland among stones

The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit

By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,

Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,

Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads

Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.

Useless to think you'll park and capture it

More thoroughly.  You are neither here not there,

A hurry through which known and strange things pass

As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways

And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.

That's what Seamus Heaney does.  He blows our hearts open with his every word.  He may puzzle me, make me feel inadequate, a little foolish.

But Seamus Heaney also makes Saint Marty want to be a better writer, to strive to understand the mysteries of everyday life just a little more.
 

Confessions of Saint Marty

August 24: Postscript, Possible Flat Tire

The second one of the summer...

As a postscript to my post this morning, one of my coworkers just arrived and told me that she thinks one of the tires on my car is going flat.  I went out to check, and, friggin' A, it sure looks like it's on its way to complete and total flatness.  I'm going to go out and check in another hour.  If it's flat, I'm going to get it fixed this morning.

Join Saint Marty in singing, "It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood..."