A Tidings of Magpies

by Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno You can try to strangle light: use your hands and think you've found the throat of it, but you haven't. You could use a rope or a garrote or a telephone cord, but the light, amorphous, implacable, will make a fool of you in the end. You could make it your mission to shut it out forever, to crouch in the dark, the blinds pulled tight— still, in the morning, a gleaming little ray will betray you, poking its optimistic finger through a corner of the blind, and then more light, clever, nervy, impossible, spilling out from the crevices warming the shade. This is the stubborn sun, choosing to rise, like it did yesterday, like it will tomorrow. You have nothing to do with it. The sun makes its own history; light has its way.

It's spring recital time at the CinCity Dance Academy as it is in many other cities throughout the country and HoneyHaired has been wished by many to "break a leg." Recitals, graduations, weddings, baby showers...We in the Distracted household are doing our best to keep the economy stimulated with purchases of flowers, photos, DVD's and meals on wheels. Anyway...one performance last night. Two today. Then the hair freezing glue can go back into the closet to be lost for another year until the challenge of the ballet bun arises anew.

Now see...now that is just wrong !!!! Curiously though, I'm very hungry. uhhmmmm, brains...

by Donald Justice This one was put in a jacket, This one was sent home, This one was given bread and meat But would eat none, And this one cried No No No No All day long. This one looked at the window As though it were a wall, This one saw things that were not there, This one things that were, And this one cried No No No No All day long. This one thought himself a bird, This one a dog, And this one thought himself a man, An ordinary man, And cried and cried No No No No All day long.

My cup runneth over... THANK YOU'S all 'round:>) A quite hung-over WATERCAT from across the pond has tagged me in a selfless effort to spread the joy and love internationally. I could barely work over the past few days for worry of it all and pondering the answers needed to complete this masterpiece. But, blogger etiquette and duty calls. I shan't break this sacred trust. The rules are as follows: respond and rework answer questions on your blog replace one question tag eight other people. TAGGED BLOGS 1. georgie k. buttons 2. a knitting nurse 3. erin davis 4. from skilled hands 5. cheshire cat 6. cause for concern 7. easy for me to say 8. the heART of words If you have recently been memed, or have done this meme before, please forgive my tagging you. If you haven't had this one placed in your In Box and are chopping at the bit to add your particular styling to it, you just go on with your bad self and do it. (And if you read your name anywhere along this posti...

Evening by Jo McDougall From a wood beyond the fields, something dark has not yet advanced toward the yellow light of the kitchen. A woman puts away the dishes. A man goes through the mail. A child leans over the table, saying her homework. The dog looks up once and growls as if not meaning to, a sound almost inaudible. He clicks across the floor, nosing for crumbs.

Soldier rest! thy warfare o'er, Sleep the sleep thast knows not breaking, Dream of battled fields no more, Days of danger, nights of waking... Huntsman, rest! thy chase is done; While our slumbrous spells assail ye, Dream not, with the rising sun, Bugles here shall sound reveille. Sleep! the deer is in his den; Sleep! thy hounds are by thee lying; Sleep! nor dream in yonder glen How thy gallant steed lay dying. Huntsman, rest! thy chase is done, Think not of the rising sun, For at dawning to assail ye, Here no bugles sound reveille. --Sir Walter Scott

Driving West in 1970 by Robert Bly My dear children, do you remember the morning When we climbed into the old Plymouth And drove west straight toward the Pacific? We were all the people there were. We followed Dylan's songs all the way west. It was Seventy; the war was over, almost; And we were driving to the sea. We had closed the farm, tucked in The flap, and we were eating the honey Of distance and the word "there." Oh whee, we're gonna fly Down into the easy chair. We sang that Over and over. That's what the early Seventies were like. We weren't afraid. And a hole had opened in the world. We laughed at Las Vegas. There was enough gaiety For all of us, and ahead of us was The ocean. Tomorrow's The day my bride's gonna come. And the war was over, almost.

So CollegeGrrrl calls me out of the blue and says,"I've had an epiphany." Epiphany she said, my hand to God. I said, "Yes...?" and waited and she proceeded to tell me how she had thought about things, her life mostly, and how it had come to her in a flash of light, the way truthiness generally appears, that I had been right all along "about everything" and she was going to change some things. She was going to put school first and look for some new friends. I admit I've been worried sick about her, watching her life swerve toward the side of the road where it's easy to fall through the cracks. I've been praying and I even moved the statue of the Virgin Mary closer to the Grrrrl's picture on the bookshelf. Was hoping for some insight, was not expecting an epiphany. I'm grateful, to say the least, for even a day's change of heart. Today is HoneyHaired's last day of school. She is slowly jogging over that finish line. Can't...

by William Matthews I was miserable, of course, for I was seventeen, and so I swung into action and wrote a poem, and it was miserable, for that was how I thought poetry worked: you digested experience and shat literature. It was 1960 at The Showplace, long since defunct, on West 4th St., and I sat at the bar, casting beer money from a thin reel of ones, the kid in the city, big ears like a puppy. And I knew Mingus was a genius. I knew two other things, but they were wrong, as it happened. So I made him look at the poem. "There's a lot of that going around," he said, and Sweet Baby Jesus he was right. He laughed amiably. He didn't look as if he thought bad poems were dangerous, the way some poets do. if they were baseball executives they'd plot to destroy sandlots everywhere so that the game could be saved from children. Of course later that night he fired his pianist in mid-number and flurried him from the stand. "We've suffered a diminuendo in personnel...

Ghassan Zaqtan translated from the Arabic by Fady Joudah He has to return to shut that window, it isn't entirely clear whether this is what he must do, things are no longer clear since he lost them, and it seems a hole somewhere within him has opened up Filling in the cracks has exhausted him mending the fences wiping the glass cleaning the edges and watching the dust that seems, since he lost them, to lure his memories into hoax and ruse. From here his childhood appears as if it were a trick! Inspecting the doors has fully exhausted him the window latches the condition of the plants and wiping the dust that has not ceased flowing into the rooms, on the beds, sheets, pots and on the picture frames on the walls Since he lost them he stays with friends who become fewer sleeps in their beds that become narrower while the dust gnaws at his memories "there" ... he must return to shut that window the upper story window which he often forgets at the end of the stairway that lea...

by Reginald Gibbons In cold spring air the white wisp- visible breath of a blackbird singing— we don’t know to un- wrap these blind- folds we keep thinking we are seeing through

by Irene McKinney I remember a Sunday with the smell of food drifting out the door of the cavernous kitchen, and my serious teenage sister and her girlfriends Jean and Marybelle standing on the bank above the dirt road in their white sandals ready to walk to the country church a mile away, and ready to return to the fried chicken, green beans and ham, and fresh bread spread on the table. The sun was bright and their clean cotton dresses swirled as they turned. I was a witness to it, and I assure you that it's true. I remembered this thirty years later as I got up from the hospital bed, favoring my right side where something else had been removed. Pushing a cart that held practically all of my vital fluids, I made my way down the hall because I wanted to stand up, for no reason. I had no future plans, and I would never found a movement nor understand the simplest equation; I would never chair the Department of Importance. Nevertheless, I was about to embark on a third life, having u...

A weekend at work, with a skeleton crew...I know. I am sooooo funny I can barely contain myself. Hope your weekend is fabulous and you don't run into either of these two characters.

Hubby was gone for a few days to hike and visit with our CowGrrrrl friend recovering from breast cancer treatment. It gave HoneyHaired and I more days to have our GRRRRLZ ONLY time and watch Sense and Sensibilty without editorial comment, but we missed him. I didn't sleep well those nights and heard every snap, crackle, pop out in the yard which is probably one of the various wild critters that live in the wooded area behind us. Hubby's home now. Slept great the first night, but the snoring's begun again. And when it's not Hubby, it's BoxerBoy. And when it's not the snoring it's Shadow,the dog next door, howling along with the frequent sirens the squads love to blast on their way to "Pill Hill." Then the BoxerBoy growls and yelps in his sleep in response to Shadow. It could be quite amusing. So while the video is not of my dog 'cause this dog's way cuter(and I have no inkling how to video &/or youtube)here is a small excerpt of the n...

by Robert Polito "I seen a shooting star tonight, and I thought of you... " In a San Francisco basement apartment There's a woman I keep hearing about, who Claims for the last twenty years she's lived With Bob Dylan, and wishes to write a book about it. That might mostly be new to him—hey man, You must be putting me on. But she sells scarves From her own North Beach shop, and according To this woman Dylan's changed—a lot— Heavy now, yet kind, if also a little Crazy, in and out of hospitals, he doesn't look Like himself. Still, wherever he travels He mails her love poems in his familiar '60s style, and she'd be honored to show them around. A sleepy kitchen at dawn, the woman steps Towards the kettle, pajamas open to her waist, An owlish man, drunken, slothful, lags behind. The glamour of the damaged, but how much More gratifying for her not to have spun the whole Hazy farrago out of loneliness, madness, or for money, And this morning to wake beside some...

by Cleopatra Mathis It's not easy living here, waiting to be charmed by the first little scribble of green. Even in May the crows want to own the place, and the heron, old bent thing, spends hours looking like graying bark, part of a dead trunk lying over opaque water. She strikes the pose so long I begin to worry she's determined to be something ordinary. The small lakes continue their slide into bog and muck— remember when they ran clear, an invisible spring renewing the water? But the ducks stay longer, amusing ruffle and chatter. I can be distracted. If I do catch her move, the heron appears to have no particular fear or hunger, her gaunt body hinged haphazardly, a few gears unlocking one wing, then another. More than a generation here and every year more drab. Once I called her blue heron, as in Great Blue, true to a book—part myth, part childhood's color. Older now, I see her plain: a mere surviving against a weedy bank with fox dens and the ruthless, overhead patrol....

It may be the effects of the full moon or the brain irritating yearly allergies to spring pollen, but there's been a bit o' drama at Chez Distracted over the past two weeks and I'm hoping it subsides soon. First, there's just end of school pressure with HoneyHaired Grrrl's projects, exams, and recitals barreling down the calendar. She's also starting a job--her first--today after school and that adds to the scheduling can of worms. She's not been one to plan ahead much and we try to let the lessons of procrastination run their course, but it stresses me. CollegeGrrrrl is having mid-college crisis and has changed her major only to find that it requires a whole lot more studying than she anticipated. Whether or not she stays with it is up in the air and, again, I know this is all part of maturing, but it stresses me. I want my grrrls to be happy and to do well. It's worrisome to see them having difficulty on their path. I wish I had Magic Fairy Dust to s...

And Here You Are by Michael Blumenthal It's such a relief to see the woman you love walk out the door some nights, for it's ten o'clock and you need your eight hours of sleep, and one glass of wine has been more than enough and, as for lust—well, you can live without it most days and you are glad, too, that the Ukrainian masseuse you see every Wednesday is not in love with you, and has no plans to be, for it's the pain in your back you need relief from most, not that ambiguous itch, and the wild successes of your peers no longer bother you nor do your unresolved religious cravings nor the general injustice of the world, no, there is very little that bothers you these days when you turn, first, to the obituaries, second to the stock market, then, after a long pause, to the book review, you are becoming a good citizen, you do your morning exercises, count your accumulated blessings, thank the Lord there's a trolley just outside your door your girlfriend can take back ...

by Walter McDonald Wind chimes ping and tangle on the patio. In gusty winds this wild, sparrow hawks hover and bob, always the crash of indigo hosannas dangling on strings. My wife ties copper to turquoise from deserts, and bits of steel from engines I tear down. She strings them all like laces of babies' shoes when the squeal of their play made joyful noise in the hall. Her voice is more modest than moonlight, like pearl drops she wears in her lobes. My hands find the face of my bride. I stretch her skin smooth and see bone. Our children bring children to bless her, her face more weathered than mine. What matters is timeless, dazzling devotion—not rain, not Eden gardenias, but cactus in drought, not just moons of deep sleep, not sunlight or stars, not the blue, but the darkness beyond.

"...Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs." --Julia ward Howe Be generous in prosperity, and thankful in adversity. Be fair in thy judgment, and guarded in thy speech. Be a lamp unto those who walk in darkness, and a home to the stranger. Be eyes to the blind, and a guiding light unto the feet of the erring. Be a breath of life to the body of humankind, a dew to the soil of the human heart, and a fruit upon the tree of humility. --Baha'i Prayer for Peace

Letter of Resignation by William Baer Dear [blank]: After much deliberation, without qualm, scruple, or further delay, I hereby tender my formal resignation as your lover and future fiancé. The job provides too little satisfaction: too many hours of unneeded duress, a paucity of productive interaction, uncertain working conditions, and endless stress. Pay-wise, I'm undervalued and disenchanted: advancement's slow, the bonus is routine, my "on-call" overtime is taken for granted, and benefits are few and far between. This document, I'm hopeful, underscores my deep regret. I'm very truly yours....

by Ron Koertge Merely pretty, she made up for it with vim. And she got to say things like, "But, gosh, what if these plans should fall into the wrong hands?" and it was pretty clear she didn't mean plans for a party or a trip to the museum, but something involving espionage and a Nazi or two. In fact, the handsome exchange student turns out to be a Fascist sympathizer. When he snatches Nancy along with some blueprints, she knows he has something more sinister in mind than kissing her with his mouth open. Locked in the pantry of an abandoned farm house, Nancy makes a radio out of a shoelace and a muffin. Pretty soon the police show up, and everything's hunky dory. Nancy accepts their thanks, but she's subdued. It's not like her to fall for a cad. Even as she plans a short vacation to sort our her emotions she knows there will be a suspicious waiter, a woman in a green off the shoulder dress, and her very jittery husband. Very well. But no more handsome boys ...

by Mary Jo Salter That autumn we walked and walked around the lake as if around a clock whose hands swept time and again back to the hour we'd started from, that high noon in midsummer years before when I in white had marched straight to my place beside you and was married and your face held in it all the hours I hoped to live. Now, as we talked in circles, grim, accusing, we watched the green trees turning too and losing one by one every leaf, those bleeding hearts. And when they all had fallen, to be trod and crumbled underfoot, when flaming red had dulled again to dun, to ash, to air, when we had seen the other's hurts perfected and magnified like barren boughs reflected upside-down in water, then the clouds massed overhead and muffled us in snow, answered the rippling lake and stopped the O of its nightmare scream. The pantomime went on all winter, nights without a word or thoughts to fit one, days when all we heard was the ticking crunch of snowboots on the track around th...

...everything sounds better in a British accent. for a better read, click on the photo.

First Reader by Billy Collins I can see them standing politely on the wide pages that I was still learning to turn, Jane in a blue jumper, Dick with his crayon-brown hair, playing with a ball or exploring the cosmos of the backyard, unaware they are the first characters, the boy and the girl who begin fiction. Beyond the simple illustration of their neighborhood the other protagonists were waiting in a huddle: frightening Heathcliff, frightened Pip, Nick Adams carrying a fishing rod, Emma Bovary riding into Rouen. But I would read about the perfect boy and his sister even before I would read about Adam and Eve, garden and gate, and before I heard the name Gutenberg, the type of their simple talk was moving into my focusing eyes. It was always Saturday and he and she were always pointing at something and shouting “Look!” pointing at the dog, the bicycle, or at their father as he pushed a hand mower over the lawn, waving at aproned Mother framed in the kitchen doorway, pointing toward th...

have a great race... ...no, no. Please don't wait, I'm still carbo loading.

The past 48hrs have been spent mainly in the company of three families. Two of young men who, though they believe themselves to be Supermen, in fact are not faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive or able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. One boy was going to rehab and one was going home. My third family was comprised of the descendants of a 78yr old grandfather. A guy's guy who loved to play cards with his buddies and go fishing. He'd had to leave his own home recently and moved in with one of his grandsons, but "was always doing something. You'd never see Gramps sittin' still for too long. He liked to go." He was playing poker two afternoons ago when he developed some slurred speech and left sided weakness. He was diagnosed with an ischemic stroke of the right middle cerebral artery, given an injection of a powerful clot-busting drug without effect and sent to us. In the course of treatment for this gentleman he suffered what i...

by Tom Chandler And all of you so beautiful I want to bring you home with me to sit close on the couch. My invitation inserted in six billion bottles, corked with bark from the final forest and dropped in the ocean of my longing. We would speak the language of no words, pass the jug of our drunken joy at being babies growing into death. Sometimes, I know, life is stupid, pointless, beside the point, but here's the point — maybe we would fall in love, settle down together, share the wine, the bills, the last of the oxygen and the remote.

by Edward Hirsch It's that vague feeling of panic That sweeps over you Stepping out of the #7 train At dusk, thinking, This isn't me Crossing a platform with the other Commuters in the worried half-light Of evening, that must be Someone else with a newspaper Rolled tightly under his arm Crossing the stiff, iron tracks Behind the train, thinking, This Can't be me stepping over the tracks With the other commuters, slowly crossing The parking lot at the deepest Moment of the day, wishing That I were someone else, wishing I were anyone else but a man Looking out at himself as if From a great distance, Turning the key in his car, starting His car and swinging it out of the lot, Watching himself grinding uphill In a slow fog, climbing past the other Cars parked on the side of the road, The cars which seem ominously empty And strange, and suddenly thinking With a new wave of nausea This isn't me sitting in this car Feeling as if I were about to drown In the blue air...