Category Archives: Mary Frances Erler

Happy New Year from Saturn?

Posted on by under M.F. Erler, Mary Frances Erler

by Mary Frances Erler

A new year has finally arrived!  I’m sure almost everyone is glad to see 2021 go away. Old Father Time, known as Chronos (the source of words like chronology and chronometer) to the Greeks, and Saturn to the Romans, is still a feature of our new year celebrations.  You know, the old bearded man with the scythe, who hobbles away as the old year passes.

When I took high school Latin, we were told “Io Saturnalia” meant Merry Christmas, sort of.  Most of Roman history was pre-Christianity, so Saturnalia was actually a pagan holiday celebrating the arrival of the New Year, as well as the Winter Solstice.

Saturn was the “grandfather” of the Gods, the father of Jupiter (Zeus in Greek) who was, in turn, father of most of the rest of the gods in mythology. I find it interesting that old Saturn still shows up this time of year as Father Time, the thing we cannot control, because it just marches on. 

The planet Saturn was in the news in 2020, because Saturn and Jupiter were closer together in our viewpoint here on earth than they’ve been for over 600 years.  Some hoped this was a good omen for the year 2021.  Now that it’s 2022, we need all the hope we can get!

When Change Comes is it Man that Counts? The Wild? Or Both?

Posted on by under Mary Frances Erler, Montana Women Writers, poetry, Uncategorized, writers

by Mary Frances Erler

Today I ran across a book of poetry and quotes about wilderness that I made in response to a canoe trek I took in Minnesota’s Boundary Waters back in 1970.  Nearly 50 years ago–hard to believe so much time has passed in my life since then.  It was a very formative time in my life, influencing much of what I have become.  As I was reading the quotes I chose from Thoreau, Aldo Leopold, Theodore Roosevelt, and others, I was surprised to find one unsigned poem.  I have a feeling I wrote it–otherwise it would be identified with the author’s name. It was a long time ago, 1970, but as I re-read it, I could tell the words had originally come from within me. And I was surprised to find that my 18-year-old mind had thought such deep things.  But then, maybe not so surprising, for I was a very philosophical person back then.  Maybe still am.  So here it is.

Its original title was “Is It Man That Counts?”

‘How can you be so no-caring?’ a boy demanded,
Staring into the old man’s eyes;
‘Do you want all our life to die
And leave nothing to show our lives ranged?’

‘Every animal dies,’ the old chief would say
And gaze with deep-seeing silent eyes
About the village around them.
‘Timeless is not changeless,’ he would repeat.

But a boy’s heart-strength is different
And his restless feet thus wandered,
Searching over forest-depth and countryside,
His mind straining with searches just as deep.

He drank in the wildness ’round him,
Knowing in his animal-part
It had no time, no beginning,
And no end?  Their village

Already was shrinking, the forest depths
Pricked by hard, cold disruption,
A steeling chill so unlike winter–
More senseless–as rape or pillage.

And as the Wild spread its winter
Blanket, with its natural death,
He prayed that this might be
The end–to die as wild things died.

Then as the cold and steel creeping in
On them increased its breath to a roar,
He knew it wasn’t death that was coming–
Just as the old man had tried

To tell.  It was what the Wild was really
Made of; so though their villages–
And all men–passed; the Wild would
Sustain itself–timeless because it changed.