July 13: "The Arrowhead," Appropriation, Nickname and Mascot

Mary Oliver tells a ghost story . . . 

The Arrowhead

by:  Mary Oliver

The arrowhead,

which I found beside the river,

was glittering and pointed.

I picked it up, and said,

"Now, it's mine."

I thought of showing it to friends.

I thought of putting it--such an imposing trinket--

in a little box, on my desk.

Halfway home, past the cut fields,

the old ghost

stood under the hickories.

"I would rather drink the wind," he said,

"I would rather eat mud and die

than steal as you still steal,

than lie as you still lie."

It's a terrifying poem.  Oliver is confronted by the ghost of white America's history with Indigenous peoples, and that history, as we all know, is not pleasant.  It's rife with land theft and genocides.  I can almost taste the smoky indignation of the ghost as he chastises Oliver for her appropriation of the arrowhead.  Make no mistake, the arrowhead is not Oliver's.  She has no connection to it--its origins or history or usage.  For her, it's just a "trinket," an artifact to keep on her writing desk.  She must lie to herself in order to claim ownership

Appropriation is something that humans are really good at.  We appropriate all kinds of things.  Land.  Seas.  Water.  Outer space. Moons and stars.  People.  We accomplish all of this by means of war and colonialism and murder and larceny.  We see something we want, and we take it.

Mind you, this isn't anything to be proud of.  At the end of the poem, Oliver isn't feeling quite so excited about her acquisition.  In fact, there is more than a little shame involved in those last lines.  Oliver respects nature and the environment.  Yet, this respect arises from white privilege.  This pond is beautiful, so I think I'll build a house near it.  This land is rich and fertile, so I think I'll plant a garden on it.  This arrowhead is glittering and pointed, so I think I'll take it home and turn it into a conversation piece.

We are all guilty of this appropriation, to a greater or lesser extent.  Living in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, I am reminded daily that these are stolen lands.  By the names of places and rivers and lakes, for instance.  One of the greatest ongoing debates right now in my neck of the U. P. woods is a local school district's nickname and mascot.  The mascot is the image of a Native American chief in full headdress.  The nickname is "Redmen."  For 70 years, this name and mascot have been in place.

Rabid traditionalists claim that the school district is "honoring" Indigenous heritage.  It's an issue that has fractured the community in many ways, resulting in screaming matches at school board meetings.  There are Native American students at the school.  Local tribal members have requested a rebranding of the name and mascot.

You'll forgive my language, but the argument that the school is "honoring" Native Americans is a load of complete cow shit.  It's a red herring, introduced without any kind of supporting evidence, except anecdotal.  ("My grandpa was Native American, and he didn't mind the name or mascot.")  Going into a public space and calling someone who is Native American a "red man" would undoubtedly be considered hate speech.  So, why is it appropriate for a school to endorse inflammatory racial language and cultural stereotypes?

Even if only a three students at the school in question feel uncomfortable about the mascot and nickname, that's three students too many.  Students shouldn't be ashamed about anything when they enter a school building.  And if the administration is responsible for perpetuating that shame, that's tantamount to school-sanctioned bullying.

Let's consider a "what if."  What if son was being called a "fag" or "fat" when he went to school every day?  You can bet your ass I'd be in the principal's and superintendent's offices every day until it stopped.  Any parent would do the same.  Even if my son was the only gay or overweight teen in the school, that behavior just wouldn't be tolerated.  

The use of this nickname and logo is no different.  

If you don't like what I've just said, I think you should do a little self examination.  Think about the color of your skin.  Your ethnicity.  Your cultural heritage.  Your gender.  If you've never been denigrated for any of these things, count yourself lucky.  And if you refuse to do that self examination, then I think you should just keep your fucking mouth closed.  

Because Saint Marty doesn't endorse hate speech.

July 12: "Beans," Virtue, Growing Pumpkins

Mary Oliver writes about the virtue of beans . . .

Beans

by:  Mary Oliver

They're not like peaches or squash.  Plumpness isn't for them.  They like being lean, as if for the narrow path.  The beans themselves sit quietly inside their green pods.  Instinctively one picks with care, never tearing down the fine vine, never not noticing their crisp bodies, or feeling their willingness for the pot, or the fire.

I have thought sometimes that something--I can't name it--watches as I walk the rows, accepting the gift of their lives to assist mine.

I know what your think:  this is foolishness.  They're only vegetables.  Even the blossoms with which they begin are small and pale, hardly significant.  Our hands or minds, our feet hold more intelligence.  With this I have no quarrel.

But, what about virtue?

The definition of "virtue" is "the quality of doing what is right and avoiding what is wrong."  I agree with Oliver that beans do not have intelligence.  They don't have to think about sprouting or taking root or blossoming.  These things are hardwired into their nature.  However, the question Oliver asks at the end of the poem is whether beans know the difference between doing good and doing bad.

Beans are willing to go to the cooking pot and fire.  They sacrifice themselves to plucking fingers.  Of course, beans don't have mouths to protest or feet to run away.  They just sit in the soil, offering up the gift of their lives to save Oliver's.

I am a person who has a hard time saying "no" to anything, but especially to people I love who are in need.  I'm not sure if that makes me as virtuous as beans.  Certainly, I know the difference between right and wrong.  Helping an injured bird--right.  Paying to see a movie based on QAnon conspiracy theories--bad.  Virtue is all about making the world a better place without harming anyone or anything.  

I've never had much of a green thumb.  One year, when both of my children were very young, I decided that I was going to grow pumpkins in my backyard.  I got some pumpkin sprouts from a good friend.  Went out and bought two, 50-pound bags of good, enriched soil.  Spread the dirt and planted the sprouts.  Then, I watered.  And watered.  And watered.  

To my surprise, the pumpkins grew and, after a couple weeks, blossomed with yellow flowers.  For my non-gardening disciples, I will explain that pumpkin flowers eventually mature into pumpkins.  I was doing something virtuous and amazing.  Instead of supporting commercial pumpkin farms where pesticides and unnatural growth enhancers destroy the environment, I was growing my pumpkins organically, without the use of harmful chemicals.

And then, rabbits began to appear at night and in the mornings to nibble away my pumpkin blossoms.  Not only that, but the tiny pumpkins that did manage to escape the jaws of rabbit death eventually rotted on their stems before they achieved any measurable size.

I waged war on those varmints (as Granny Clampett would have called them) all summer long.  Some nights, I just chased them away with noise and body movements.  Other times, I resorted to my garden hose, spraying the little bastards until they disappeared.  (They always came back.)  

After three months of tireless pumpkin duty, I had three pitiful pumpkins the size of avocados.  That's it.  Hundreds of dollars in water and soil.  Hours and hours of being Mr. McGregor to all the Peter Rabbits within five square miles of my home.  All I got from the experience was a certainty that I was a serial vegetable killer, plus a severe aversion to members of the Lepus family.  

I like to think I was being virtuous.  My kids loved watering those plants and chasing rabbits with me.  Plus, I was teaching them about being self-sustaining and living off the land.  In my mind, I was just one step away from being Pa Ingalls.

In the end, it wasn't a successful exercise in plant growth or virtue, unfortunately .  One night, about the beginning of October, I made a midnight trip to Walmart, bought three large pumpkins, went home, and put those pumpkins in my pumpkin patch out back.  When my daughter and son woke up the next morning, I told them that the pumpkin fairy had come under cover of darkness and transformed some of our blossoms into gigantic pumpkins.  My kids were thrilled.

By that point in the whole adventure, my virtue had taken a back seat to fatherly panic.  I didn't want my kids to think I was a loser.  So, I cheated a little, and it worked.

Am I proud of what I did?  Not really.  Did I ever try to grow pumpkins again.  Absolutely not.  But, for three months one summer, my kids learned about plant growth and soil and water and rabbits.  That's pretty cool.

Saint Marty, however, is the Ted Bundy of the vegetable kingdom.

July 11: "At Black River," Good or Evil, Crocodile Poem

Mary Oliver meditates on the crocodile . . . 

At Black River

by:  Mary Oliver

All day

     its dark, slick bronze soaks

          in a mossy place,

               its teeth,

a multitude

     set

          for the comedy

               the never comes--

its tail

     knobbed and shiny,

          and with a heavy-weight's punch

               packed around the bone.

In beautiful Florida

     he is king

          of his own part

               of the black river,

and from his nap

     he will wake

          into the warm darkness

               to boom, and thrust forward,

paralyzing

     the swift, thin-waisted fish,

          or the bird

               in its frilled, white gown,

that has dipped down

     from the heaven of leaves

          one last time,

               to drink.

Don't think

     I'm not afraid.

          There is such an unleashing

               of horror.

Then I remember:

     death comes before

          the rolling away

               of the stone.

There is no judgement on the part of Mary Oliver here.  Nature really isn't good or evil, despite the serpent's guest appearances as Satan in the Bible.  Hurricanes are not vindictive.  Fires can rejuvenate a forest.  Sharks get hungry, as do wolves and lions.  The crocodile naps in the warm mud until it needs a snack or is threatened.  Then it bellows and barks and brings death to the black river.  But there is nothing inherently bad in the crocodile or hurricane or wolf.  It's just the way things are.

I had an unexpected evening off.  The library event that was supposed to occur tonight was cancelled.  So, I found myself at home quite early, eating dinner with my family and catching up on various writing projects I've been neglecting.  I ate some leftover July 4th bratwursts, watched The Shining with Jack Nicholson, and wrote a couple new poems.

I haven't been able to sit down just to write poetry in a long, long time.  It felt like I was feeding a part of myself that I didn't know was starving.  Two or three hours went by so quickly that I didn't even realize the sun had set.  It's almost like my inner poet crocodile had been sleeping in the mud of the black river, waiting for an egret to swoop down from the cypresses for a drink of water.  

I'm not sure the poems I wrote were any good, but I wrote them.  And it filled me with a joy I haven't experienced in a while.  I love what I do at the library, and, for the most part, I love teaching at the university.  However, sitting down to write poetry, that is my natural habitat.  My black river.

As I said at the beginning of this post, Oliver doesn't see anything she encounters or experiences in the world as good or evil.  Even loss and grief are gifts, along with crocodiles and cormorants.  Poetry is a gift.  Whether you believe it or not, everyone experiences poetry every day of their lives.  Those storm clouds are poetry.  Sky so blue it hurts the eyes--poetry.  The rabbit eating grass in the backyard--poetry.  Just because you don't sit down and write a poem about the rabbit doesn't make it NOT poetry.  

So, the next time a mosquito drains some of your blood or a crocodile lunges out of the lagoon or a toad hops on your foot, remember that all of it is poetry.  Hungry for your attention.

However, Saint Marty will set traps if he sees a mouse poem in his home.

July 10: "Snow Geese," Long Day, Gilded in Gold

Mary Oliver loves something that will not last . . . 

Snow Geese

by:  Mary Oliver

Oh, to love what is lovely, and will not last!

     What a task

          to ask

of anything, or anyone,

yet it is ours, 

     and not by the century or the year, but by the hours.

One fall day I heard

     above me, and above the sting of the wind, a sound

I did not know, and my look shot upward; it was

a flock of snow geese, winging it

     faster than the ones we usually see,

and, being the color of snow, catching the sun

so they were, in part at least, golden.  I

held my breath

as we do 

sometimes

to stop time

when something wonderful

has touched us

as with a match

which is lit, and bright,

but does not hurt 

in the common way,

but delightfully,

as if delight 

were the most serious thing

you ever felt.

The geese

flew on.

I have never 

seen them again.

Maybe I will, someday, somewhere.

Maybe I won't.

It doesn't matter.

What matters

is that, when I saw them,

I saw them

as through the veil, secretly, joyfully, clearly.

I had a Mary Oliver snow geese moment this evening.

I'd just arrived home after a long day of work.  Tired and hungry, I sat on the couch to wolf down a late dinner of leftover ravioli and meatballs.  No energy.  Eyes watering for sleep.  I wanted to do nothing but eat, grab a pillow, stream some random movie I've seen a hundred times, and go to sleep.

My wife came out of the kitchen and said, "Have you seen outside?"

I shook my head.

"You should go look," she said.

It was 9:30 p.m., and most of the evening had been a downpour of rain, lightning, and thunder.  Reluctantly, I put aside my bowl of ravioli and went to my front door, not expecting anything mind-blowing or breath-catching.

The whole neighborhood was gilded in gold.  That's the best way I can describe it.  The trees and grasses and houses and parked cars.  It wasn't the green light that appears before a tornado.  Or the pink light that sometimes signals the end of a hot summer day.  It literally seemed like I was looking at the world through yellow-tinted glasses.  

I stood there, staring, holding my breath as Oliver does when she sees the snow geese.  Then, my cellphone rang.  It was my daughter, telling me to look out the window.  I told her I was standing outside already.  I looked at my arms and hands.  My skin was tinged with gold.

Then, I saw a double rainbow above my neighbor's roof.  It arced over the heavens, dividing the sky into two pieces.  As I was standing there, the world morphed into another color--salmon pink.  I took some pictures, although that goes against my better judgment.  My phone camera can never capture what my eyes see.  (I'm positive Mary Oliver never mediated her experiences of nature.  She saw stuff and then went home and wrote poems about it instead.)  

I may never see a sky like that again.  Or maybe I will, someday, somewhere.  

As Oliver says, what matters is that Saint Marty saw it tonight as through a veil--secretly, joyfully, clearly.