August 5, 2026: “For Three Days,” Miracles, “On the Roof”

It’s been a long day of meetings and work.  In fact, as soon as I’m done typing this post, I’m probably going to sleep.  I’ve had dinner.  My breakfast and lunch for tomorrow are packed and in the fridge.  I even took my puppy for a walk.    

Marie Howe writes about her brother . . .

For Three Days

by: Marie Howe

For three days now I’ve been trying to think of another word for gratitude

because my brother could have died and didn’t,

because for a week we stood in the intensive care unit trying not to imagine

how it would be then, afterwards.

My youngest brother, Andy, said:  This is so weird.  I don’t know if I’ll be

talking with John today or buying a pair of pants for his funeral.

And I hated him for saying it because it was true and seemed to tilt it,

because I had been writing his elegy in my head during the seven-hour drive

and trying not to.  Thinking meant not thinking.  It meant imagining

my brother surrounded by light—like Schrödinger’s Cat that would be dead

if you looked and might live if you didn’t.  And then it got better, and then

it got worse, and it’s story now:  He came back.

And I did, by that time, imagine him dead.  And I did begin to write the other

story:  how the crowd in the stifling church snapped to a tearful attention,

how my brother lived again, for a few minutes, through me.

And although I know I couldn’t help it, because fear has its own language

and its own story, because even grief provides a living remedy,

I can’t help but think of that woman who said to him whom she considered

her savior:  If thou hadst been there my brother had not died, how she might

have practiced her speech, and how she too might have stood trembling, 

unable to meet the eyes of the dear familiar figure stumbling from the cave

when the compassionate fist of God opened

and crushed her with gratitude and shame.

It’s a familiar story—Lazarus dying, Mary (his sister) getting pissed at Jesus, Jesus weeping, and Lazarus rising from the tomb.  Howe’s brother is Lazarus in the ICU, dying, and Howe is Mary, waiting for a miracle to arrive.  

Sometimes miracles are answers to desperate prayers--Please save the life of my brother.  Other times, miracles are smaller, not even recognized as miracles--I had nachos for dinner tonight that were so good they tasted like grace.  I've said it before, but it bears repeating:  human beings are surrounded by miracles all day, every day, but we are simply miracle-blind from years of indifference and distraction.

Let me a share one of these little miracles that happened for me tonight . . . 

About a week or so ago, my son applied for a job at the local Children's Museum.  He made a resumé, dressed up, put his hair in a ponytail, and went to the interview.  This evening, he told me that he got hired.  He starts his training on Friday.

I am so proud of my son.  First job interview results in his first job.  At the end of a long, long day, this news was just the miracle I needed to lift my spirits.

Plus, Saint Marty wrote a new poem (another little miracle) . . . 

On the Roof

Peter White Public Library

October 28, 2021

by: Martin Achatz

I imagine I'm standing inside

God's blue lung where gulls circle,

scream, and the waves swell & recede,

divine sighs full of fishy hope and

sadness.  Not many people have access

to this place so close to heaven.

Maybe that's why, on this morning

after I trapped my mother's last breath

in my hands, felt it slap my palms

like a panicked sparrow, I climb

these steps, open my fingers, watch

that breath rise and rise and rise away

from this eggshell world.

August 4, 2026: “The Dream,” Ten Million, “Thaw”

I never remember my dreams.  As soon as I wake up, whatever movie has been playing against my eyelids simply fades quickly, and I’m left with whatever vague emotion the interrupted dream evoked.  Sometimes terror or sadness.  Other times, joy or lust.  But there’s never any dream hook to hang this emotional hat on.

Marie Howe dreams about death . . . 

The Dream

by: Marie Howe

I had a dream in the day:

I laid my father’s body down in a narrow boat

and sent him off along the riverbank with its cattails and grasses.

And the boat—it was made of bark and wood bent when it was wet—

took him to his burial finally.

But a day or two later I realized it was my self I wanted

to lay down, hands crossed, eyes closed . . . 

Oh, the light coming up from down there,

the sweet smell of the water—and finally, the sense of being carried

by a current I could not name or change.

Funny.  Howe’s version of death isn’t all that terrifying.  In fact, it’s almost comforting with its sweet smell of water and rocking current.  This isn’t Emily Dickinson’s Death, stopping by in a horse-drawn buggy to take you for a joyride.  As I said, I never remember my dreams, so, if I’ve dreamed about death before, I have no recollection.

Of course, I’m afraid of dying.  Everyone is, or else they’re lying.  It’s the unknowable.  As a Christian, I suppose I shouldn’t say that, but I just don’t buy the whole wings and clouds and harps jazz.  Do I think there is life after dearth?  Yup.  I’m just not sure what that ghostly life entails, and I’m in no hurry to find out.  

Perhaps sleep is just practice for death, and dreams are sneak previews of what lies beyond this mortal coil.  I don’t know.  But I have dreams.  Real dreams.  A couple days ago, this little blog that I started over ten years ago just exceeded ten million page views.  In June alone, over one million people visited Saint Marty.  That blows me away.  Perhaps my little poetic musings make a difference in the world.  That seems like a dream to me.

And dreams sometimes do come true.

Here’s another little poetic musings from Saint Marty.

Thaw

by: Martin Achatz

I’ve always loved the word thaw,

which sounds a lot like raw,

and that seems appropriate, considering

those days of early March, sometimes April

or May, when the rime of white holding

Superior’s waves at bay begins to recede

the way my hairline receded in my 20s,

and soon the ice is chattering its teeth

on the sandy shores and beach grass.

We use the word thaw all the time,

when we’re cooking Thanksgiving turkeys

or Christmas hams, or when we find

a piece of frozen wedding cake in the freezer,

decide to eat it for dessert after 30 years

of marriage.  Just invoke the word, say it

three times when winter seems eternal.

Thaw , , , Thaw , , , Thaw , , .

Maybe Rumpelstiltskin will appear, promise

to spin the snow into golden summer.

July 31 2026: “The Girl,” Struggles, “Rafter”

Yes, I am still alive.  I have received some messages from friends and acquaintances who were worried about me because I have been a non-presence for most of this month.  My only answer to the question “Where have you been?” is simply that I needed a break.  So perhaps I should have titled this post “What I Did on My Summer Vacation.”

When I was a kid, the months of June, July, and August were my favorite.  No homework or studying.  A relaxation of strict bedtimes and curfews.  Just endless days and nights moving at the pace of a glacier.  As you get older, I think time has a way of speeding up.  When you’re born, you’re a ball balanced at the top of a hill.  With your first breath, you start rolling, slowly at first, imperceptibly.  As hours, days, weeks, months, and years go by, you pick up speed as the hill becomes steeper and steeper.  I’m so far away from the top of that hill now that it’s barely visible.  Like the top of Mount Everest seen from India.

Marie Howe writes about her childhood . . . 

The Girl

by: Marie Howe

So close to the end of my childbearing life

without children

—if I could remember a day when I was utterly a girl

and not yet a woman—

but I don’t think there was a day like that for me.

When I look at the girl I was, dripping in her bathing suit,

or riding her bike, pumping hard down the newly paved street,

she wears a furtive look—

and even if I could go back in time to her as me, the age I am now

she would never come into my arms

without believing that I wanted something.

Adulting kind of sucks at times.  When you’re childing, you don’t (or shouldn’t) have things like car payments or mortgages or addictions or grief weighing you down.  Perhaps that’s why summer vacations seemed to last for eons when I was a boy—time just stops when your only worry is whether the ice cream truck will come by.  Like Howe, I don’t think my younger self would want anything to do with my older self.  I’ve become the grumpy guy who doesn’t want people walking on his lawn.

The biggish adult thing I’ve been struggling with in the last month or so is sadness.  My sister Sally’s birthday was July 17.  She died on August 19.  Since her passing, during this timeframe every year, I always feel heavy.  Some years, the heaviness descends, and I don’t even realize why I’m feeling low.  Like my body and unconscious mind are aware of it before the rest of me catches up.

I finally realized about four or five days ago that I’m in the midst of this heaviness.  Then everything made sense to me.  As a kid, I didn’t experience a whole lot of real loss.  Some older relatives, sure, but grief stayed away from my immediate family until around 2014, when my brother died.  For a clan as big as mine (nine siblings in total, including myself), we were lucky, I think.  Statistically, we should have experienced  death a lot sooner than that.

But death has been with me for a long time.  I was a strange kid.  From a very young age (like 12 or 13), I’ve had my funeral planned out, from the songs to the eulogies.  I’ve kept that practice up, updating the plans over time.  Maybe that’s why I became a poet?  Just sayin’.

This morning, I’ve been dealing with another adulting thing—a plugged sewer.  I have a couple guys here who are currently cabling the sewer line.  I think they’ve got it unplugged, but now I’m waiting to see how much it’s going to cost me.  That’s the kind of shit (literally) old people deal with all the time, and that’s why I’m going to reiterate:  adulting kind of sucks.  

As a kid, I never had to worry about plugged drains or busted toilets or brake jobs on cars.  In summer, I just threw on shorts, wolfed down breakfast, and headed out the door until sunset.  So much simpler and easier.  I let my mom and dad take care of business while I got into stupid, adolescent mischief.  I never realized how good I had it.

Nowadays, when I open my phone, I run across obituaries of high school classmates on my Facebook feed.  This happened one morning a few days ago.  I found out that a really good guy with whom I graduated passed away after a short cancer battle.  I just sat there, looking at his picture on my phone screen.  It was a moment of adulting colliding with childing.  Remembering us as teenagers, only worried about how to score some beer or weed, versus us as adults, constantly worried about discolored moles and weird abdominal pains.  

That’s what I’ve been dealing with this last month.  Lots existential angst.

Earlier this week, dropping my wife off at work, I encountered a brood of wild turkeys on the side of the road.  I pulled over and watched them for a little while.  A friend once told me that turkeys represent coming abundance and wealth.

Saint Marty would settle for peace of mind and an ice cream sandwich.

Rafter

by: Martin Achatz

What does a flock of turkeys in the wood

portend?  Some say the toms and hens foretell—

all plump and regal, each a plumed god—

a coming fortune, gold and pearls to quell

the hungry tongues of want and jealousy.

You press your starved lips to maple trunk

to slurp its sugared blood so greedily

your belly swells with sweet thanksgiving, drunk

enough to swing a psalm or write a poem

to waddles, claws, and snoods, to oracles

of seed and grub and acorn.  Ancient Rome

had Juno’s peacocks, Neptune’s salt-soaked gulls.

I have a gobbler host in this wild space,

to peck and scratch and preen in feathered grace.

July 21, 2026: “The Game,” Easily Distracted, “Someplace Happy”

Yes, it has been a hot minute since my last post.  I could flood you with excuses, talk about how busy life has been, list everything’s that’s happened.  Independence Day.  Heat waves.  Toxic wildfire smoke.  Performing in Calumet.  Two Republican senators meeting their ends.  (Sorry, Mitch isn’t sucking down margaritas at a cushy rehab facility.)  War crimes against Iran.  Billionaires getting richer.  Teaching my summer class for the university.  The pigeon lady from Home Alone 2 dying.  

I’m easily distracted these days.  I have good intentions to write blog posts, new poems, a novella.  Make a dent in the stack of books I want to read.  Finish art projects.  Grade student papers.  Edit my new poetry manuscript.  So many plans, so little time.  

Marie Howe writes about childhood games . . .

The Game

by: Marie Howe

And on certain nights,

maybe once or twice a year,

I’d carry the baby down

and all the kids would come

all nine of us together,

and we’d build a town in the basement

from boxes and blankets and overturned chairs.

And some lived under the pool table

or in the bathroom or the boiler room

or in the toy cupboard under the stairs,

and you could be a man or a woman 

a husband or a wife or a child, and we bustled around

like a day in the village until

one of us turned off the lights, switch

by switch, and slowly it became night

and the people slept.

Our parents were upstairs with company or

not fighting, and one of us—it was usually

a boy—became the Town Crier,

and he walked around our little sleeping

population and tolled the hours with his voice,

and this was the game.

Nine o’clock and all is well, he’d say,

walking like a constable we must have seen

in a movie.  And what we called an hour passed.

Ten o’clock and all is well.

And maybe somebody stirred in her sleep

or a grown up baby cried and was comforted.

Eleven o’clock and all is well.

Twelve o’clock.  One o’clock.  Two o’clock . . . 

and it went on like that through the night we made up

until we could pretend it was morning.

This poem has so much truth in it.  As kids, we dream of growing up—all those freedoms of adulthood.  As adults, we dream of times gone by—childhoods filled with water balloon fights and school crushes and eternal summer vacations.  The grass is always greener in someone else’s backyard.  Younger people don’t get this until they become older people.  (How many times have I heard young people in my life, after working their first full-time job, saying to me after a couple of weeks, “Man, being an adult sucks!”?)

Yes, human beings rarely enjoy the present.  We look ahead all the time.  Oh, if I can just finish this poem, I’ll be happy!  Oh, I can’t wait for my vacation in six months!  Oh, I live for weekends!  Oh, I’m going to start enjoying life once I retire!  It seems like the future is always better and brighter.  

On the flip side, adults always look back wistfully on their childhoods.  There’s a reason why books like Little House on the Prairie and movies like The Breakfast Club and A Christmas Story are so popular.  They tap into that current of nostalgia that runs through all our veins.  True or not, we believe things were simpler and easier in the past.

My mother, in the last years of her life, lived in the past.  Her eyesight was bad.  Her hearing wasn’t much better.  She couldn’t remember who I was sometimes, and other times she would tell me stories about her girlhood in Detroit.  After my father died, she frequently asked about his whereabouts.  If we reminded her that Dad had died, her face crumpled with confusion and sadness as she experienced his loss anew.  The past became Mom’s happy place, where grief didn’t exist and joy was just a trip to Dairy Queen away.

Of course, that’s all bullshit.  There was still racism and misogyny and homophobia and Ronald Reagan in the past.  And I think we (current residents of the United States) can vouch for that fact that the future holds no promises of sunshine or low gas prices or peace. All we really have is the present, in all its current fucked-upness.  Worrying about tomorrow is about as useful as a wildfire smoke tariff on Canada..  

Here are things I celebrate about today:  blue sky, dinner and drinks with friends, chocolate, a puppy kiss, and warm pajamas.

Saint Marty wrote a poem about his mother for tonight , , ,

Someplace Happy

by: Martin Achatz

after she lost    her         husband          she didn’t

     remember         kept asking

when he was coming    home    accused him

of staying out         late        drinking with his pals

     from the Elks club    or    even worse

holing up at hunting camp         while she

slaved at home         took care of their nine kids

     they are    all grown     now        two dead

one with Down’s syndrome & Alzheimer’s

why would         you draw someone         back from

     someplace happy        with all her loves

still around        and she can still         remember

how to make          the good         tapioca from the pearls

     without having to           con         sult         the box

why    why    why    why    would you           want

to lure Dorothy back         from Oz         or

     Max back         from           the wild rum         pus

with all         the wild things         isn’t it bet    ter

if she just         keeps         wearing         those ruby      shoes

    eating emer    ald macarons         know         ing

Auntie Em is          still         there         wait         ing for           her