March 29: "The Visit," Good Friday, Dead and Living

Billy Collins welcomes a guest . . .

The Visit

by:  Billy Collins

The wind blew

open the front door

and sat down

in my father's chair.

It is Good Friday, and I've hardly written anything this whole Lenten season  I had big intentions to write a new poem every day, from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday, this year.  But, the best laid plans of mice and poets . . . 

So, here I sit at a Subaru dealership, scribbling in my journal while my car gets an oil change and tire rotation, and I have only one or two terrible drafts of Lenten poems under my belt, feeling guilty, which is an appropriate emotion, I suppose, for this particular day of the Christian calendar.

I find myself kind of . . . haunted this morning.  The wind has kicked open the front door and plopped down on the couch beside me, metaphorically speaking.  The wind looks a lot like my mother.

You see, my mom was the person who brought me into the life of a church musician when I was about 17 years old.  Holy Week was always a marathon of Masses and music, my mother selecting the hymns, telling me when to show up at church.  Me, being a dutiful son, always followed her directions.  Thus, the Triduum resurrects my mother for me.  For the next three days, I feel her close by, hear her shadow soprano when I play, see her shadow form in the corners of the choir loft.

Right beside my mother is an army of ghosts.  My dead.  They gather beneath the arms of "The Old Rugged Cross," standing there (do ghosts stand?) as the pipe organ sighs and hums and booms.  My dad.  Two sisters.  A brother.  A passel of friends.  They sing and leap, dance and cry.  Crowd around me, waiting to hear favorite songs in their spectral ears (do ghosts have ears?).

Saint Marty can hear the stones rolling away, graves emptying, the dead and the living crowded in the kitchen, waiting for ham sandwiches, colored eggs, and baskets of chocolate.

March 28: "The Sunday Times," Sausages, Maunday Thursday

Billy Collins has breakfast . . . 

The Sunday Times

by:  Billy Collins

There's so much 

going on in the world

besides these sausages. 

It's so much easier to focus on the sausages instead of the latest from Ukraine or Washington, D. C.  Lot's of people choose simply to avoid the news, deeming it too depressing or slanted.  (I will be the first to admit that misinformation has exploded, thanks to AI, politicians, and general public gullibility.)  Of course, just focusing on the sausages on your plate hasn't always worked out for the best, historically speaking.  How many German citizens were preoccupied with their sauerbraten instead of what was happening at the Reichstag?  You see what I mean.

It is Maunday Thursday.  This evening, I played keyboard for a service at a local Lutheran church.  The narrative of the Last Supper was read.  Attendees were called forward by the pastor to lay hands on, bless, and give absolution.  Communion was distributed.  Then, at the end, we sang "O Sacred Head Surrounded" while the altar was stripped bare and sanctuary lights extinguished.  We left in silence.

It was a time to really pay attention to more than just the pizza you had for dinner or the mint sitting in the pocket between your gums and cheek.  I find all of Holy Week a pretty raw experience.  Because it's about examining your conscience and life.  It's impossible for me to attend these church services and not emerge bruised and more than a little bloody.

Introspection is difficult.  Nobody likes to think of their failings.  The Biblical story of Christ's passion is brutal, full of torture and death.  According to Christian tradition, that's the price Jesus paid for all the cruelties we inflict on each other day after day.  Things haven't changed all that much in 21 centuries.  We've just found better, more effective ways of hurting each other.  (If you don't believe that, you really do need to look up from your breakfast sausages.)

That's what the days of Holy Week are all about:  salvation from all the times we've fucked up our lives, relationships, and the world.  We need to be saved from our own myopic selves.  Just because Ukraine is 5000 miles away doesn't mean that what happens there has nothing to do with you.  If you call yourself a Christian, you're supposed to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, comfort the stranger and sick and oppressed.  Jesus is pretty clear about this in almost everything he says.

If you don't believe Saint Marty, try to find redemption in your oatmeal or bacon.

March 25: "Flash," Speeding Trains, Middle Finger

Billy Collins goes on a trip . . . 

Flash

by:  Billy Collins

As my train

sped by a schoolyard,

I caught a tall boy

missing a basket.

Reading this poem reminds me that life really is a flash.  We're all on speeding trains headed toward the same destination, staring out our windows to catch glimpses of . . . what?  Moments of happiness?  Sadness?  Boredom?  Rage?  Victory?  Failure?  Great food?  Lousy food?  Grief?  Joy?

It's impossible to avoid some of these stops on our journey.  They're like neighboring towns.  Love is just a few miles up the tracks from Loss.  Happiness Junction is a suburb of Sadness Springs.  You see what I mean?

They say the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.  That may be true.  However, most people don't walk or run or drive or fly or locomotive in straight lines.  No, the human race meanders, gets off the train on the edges of swamps and tundras.  We are drawn to difficulty and struggle, perhaps because they make victory and joy even sweeter.

When I was a kid, vacations seemed to last centuries.  The two weeks at Christmastime stretched out like a beached Blue Whale.  Summer vacation was like Lake Superior--blue on blue on blue all the way to the horizon, no end in sight.  Now, vacations are flashes--short as a plate of pancakes, gobbled up before I have a chance to even smell them.

That's what happens when you get older.  The train speeds up, and each day is just a snapshot from a passenger seat window.  Blink and you may miss your stop.  It seems like just yesterday when my daughter took her first breath, and now she's preparing for medical school.  And wasn't it just this morning when my son learned how to use his middle finger to piss me off?

I don't know how to slow things down.  The best I can do is write these blog posts and poems about these flashes.  Sometimes that works.  A lot of the times, it doesn't.  It's like holding your breath before blowing out the candles on a birthday cake.  As long as that pocket of air is held in the fists of your lungs, time stands still, and any wish seems possible.

Maybe Saint Marty is just a flash in the pan of your hour or day or life.  Close your eyes, and he'll be gone.

March 23: "View," Miraculous, Joy Fest

Billy Collins cloud watches . . . 

View

by:  Billy Collins

In the summer sky

a cloud with its mouth open

eats a smaller cloud.

Clouds are pretty magical when you think about it.  I remember spending hours watching clouds when I was a kid, finding walruses and penguins and dragons and Darth Vader.   According to Google, an average one kilometer by one kilometer cumulus cloud weighs around 1.1 million pounds.  That's 550 tons of water vapor floating above our heads.

There's so much in the universe that's miraculous.  I know I go through each and every day with blinders on, not really noticing things like one cloud eating another cloud.  Or bumblebees (they beat their wings more than 130 times per second).  Or the moon (it experiences moonquakes caused by Earth's gravity).  Or trees (there are 12 times the number of trees on our planet than there are stars in the Milky Way).  

Today, I hosted/attended an event at the library where I work.  The event was called the Joy Festival, and it was inspired by the spirit of my dear friend, Helen, who was an instrument of creativity and happiness her whole life.  We (Helen's friends) continued her mission today, lifting spirits, acknowledging pain, spreading wholeness and healing.

My job was probably the most un-Helen-ish part of the day.  As the host, I watched the clock, made sure that the presentations began and ended as scheduled.  Relatively.  Helen never really paid that much attention to time.  We all base our days on Greenwich Mean Time.  Helen ran on Helen Joy Time.  Standing around the Joy Center kitchen, eating crackers and chocolates and hummus, was just as important to her as the poetry workshop or meditation or yoga.  It was all part of the experience.

Helen loved every part of life, from joy to grief and back again.  She embraced the entire mess, and she taught others to do the same.  On a typical Helen day, she would slip sandals on her feet in the morning and go for a 20-plus mile hike, ending up on the shores of Lake Superior.  Along the way, she would run into friends and soon-to-be friends (everyone she met eventually became her friend); stop to forage raspberries when she got hungry; and, when she reached the shores of Superior, she would celebrate her adventure by greeting the seagulls and wading in the water.

Helen was like a cloud--immense and weightless at the same time.  She could be an otter or Queen Elizabeth.  She feasted on each day as if it was going to be her last.  

In short, Helen was a miracle in Saint Marty's life.