A Tidings of Magpies

"The difference between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi in terms of their actual policies may not be as great as has been advertised. Either way, we're going to be dealing with an Iranian regime that has historically been hostile to the United States, that has caused some trouble in the neighborhood and is pursuing nuclear weapons."--President Barack Obama To further quote from Jonathan Gurwitz's editorial(Sunday, June 28, 2009. San Antonio Express-News), "But what is taking place in Iran is about something fundamentally far greater than whether Mousavi is better than Ahmadinejad. It is about the Iranian people expressing a desire for freedom and truly democratic institutions. It is about the enduring conflict between those who use violence to retain power and the people who stand peacefully against that power. We have seen them in many lands in recent decades — in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, China, Ukraine and Lebanon. We've seen them in the United States, in S...

by Billy Collins Would anyone care to join me in flicking a few pebbles in the direction of teachers who are fond of asking the question: "What is the poet trying to say?" as if Thomas Hardy and Emily Dickinson had struggled but ultimately failed in their efforts— inarticulate wretches that they were, biting their pens and staring out the window for a clue. Yes, it seems that Whitman, Amy Lowell and the rest could only try and fail but we in Mrs. Parker's third-period English class here at Springfield High will succeed with the help of these study questions in saying what the poor poet could not, and we will get all this done before that orgy of egg salad and tuna fish known as lunch. Tonight, however, I am the one trying to say what it is this absence means, the two of us sleeping and waking under different roofs. The image of this vase of cut flowers, not from our garden, is no help. And the same goes for the single plate, the solitary lamp, and the weather that presses...

I have torn speech like a tattered robe and let words go; you who are still dressed in your clothes, sleep on. --Jalaluddin Rumi, Iranian poet, translated by Jack Marshall Support human rights in Iran . please note: photo from Boston.com

I'm starting a bit early. The green background is part of the support/awareness effort to add one more voice and ten more fingers, though I hunt and peck with two, to the support of human rights and freedom in Iran.

by William Stobb Run early get home coffee's automatically made eat fruit shower dress kiss wife leaving early hustle children through the kitchen and out to the sidewalk—love you be good get smart be nice love you love you bye. Now before I start writing this poem water new grass seed planted where dog piss brought up dirt. After hose hiss something walkie-talkie? in the alley stop listen notice eventually count at least six small birds hunting the interior of our ancient lilac. Mostly some kind of finch or sparrow but one woodpecker in there I see ripping bugs out of old wood. Birds live this way but trees die so I ring the chime to scare him off like I can stop the processes. Lovely pattern doesn't even look at me—red crown striking striking in decay I call landscaping. Again the walkie-talkie what the hell is going on I poke my nose across the fenceline. Between squad cars behind my garage two officers in riot gear flank a neighbor smoking a cigarette with his two cuffed ha...

I try not to talk much about work because, after all, isn't that why we blog?? To travel down another road less familiar than our own? However, the facts are that I work at a Big Fat Teaching Hospital which is full of unions. I worked there before the nurses had a union, was there as a student when the union was voted in and have been there while union strength has been gradually declining. There's a reason unions exist at this hospital and it's basically because there's not much respect by Administration for the nurses, or really any of us providing the hands-on labor. Most of us live with that and ignore it because we have other agendas for working there--new nurses come in for the experiences they garner and then move on to travel assignments or, more recently, back to school. Older nurses, the Baby-Boomers, products of our peace-flower power-power to the people generation came and stayed because we felt called to work with the indigent and provide good care to all....

Farrah Fawcett. A woman I don't believe reached her potential as an actor, but what the hell do I know?? She was gifted enough to be able to show strength and vulnerability coinciding in her characters. Below is a tiny snippet of a role she had in The Apostle with Robert Duvall. I think maybe her best role. And Charlie's Angels--what a lark that was given the hullaballoo of the seventies. In any event, rest well, Angel. Death could not dim your beauty.

by Liz Robbins The couple in the rooms above me smoke. The smell drifts down into their floor and through the cracks in my ceiling. When I pass by them in the hall, they nod, Hello, hello, smile, their arms bloomed with packages. He goes in daily to an office. She travels to Paris with the airlines. Once she came home with a sack overflowing with brie, Gauloises, red wine. She smiled, shy, sideways. Down came smoke, good silence, for days. I lie in the dark. Dried roses, sage, scentless in a vase. I inhale. The smell, the smell. The man below me smokes also. The smell ascends through his ceiling into the cracks in my floor. When I pass by, he cries, How are you? shows his teeth, leaves bowls of chicken stew outside my door. He never seems to leave, has money all his own, mysteriously. Once he painted his rooms a beautiful whorehouse red. Blonde men with long lashes come to his place to say the weekend. They play Moroccan music, sitars. Cook with cumin and garlic. Stars shine beyond the...

by Sylvia Plath Love set you going like a fat gold watch. The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry Took its place among the elements. Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue. In a drafty museum, your nakedness Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls. I'm no more your mother Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow Effacement at the wind's hand. All night your moth-breath Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen: A far sea moves in my ear. One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral In my Victorian nightgown. Your mouth opens clean as a cat's. The window square Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try Your handful of notes; The clear vowels rise like balloons. please note: photo by elsief1

A Blessing by James Wright Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota, Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass. And the eyes of those two Indian ponies Darken with kindness. They have come gladly out of the willows To welcome my friend and me. We step over the barbed wire into the pasture Where they have been grazing all day, alone. They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness That we have come. They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other. There is no loneliness like theirs. At home once more, They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness. I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms, For she has walked over to me And nuzzled my left hand. She is black and white, Her mane falls wild on her forehead, And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist. Suddenly I realize That if I stepped out of my body I would break Into blossom.

by Julie Cadwallader-Staub The air vibrated with the sound of cicadas on those hot Missouri nights after sundown when the grown-ups gathered on the wide back lawn, sank into their slung-back canvas chairs tall glasses of iced tea beading in the heat and we sisters chased fireflies reaching for them in the dark admiring their compact black bodies their orange stripes and seeking antennas as they crawled to our fingertips and clicked open into the night air. In all the days and years that have followed, I don't know that I've ever experienced that same utter certainty of the goodness of life that was as palpable as the sound of the cicadas on those nights: my sisters running around with me in the dark, the murmur of the grown-ups' voices, the way reverence mixes with amazement to see such a small body emit so much light. On another note, leaving for a visit with our CollegeGrrrrl and will be gone for a few days. Hope everyone enjoys their weekends and Happy Fathers' Day t...

Seems like there are a few who have suffered some losses during the past week or two. This is one of the songs performed by Kasey Chambers and Shane Nicholson at the Prairie Home Companion show last Friday night. It has stuck with me and thought it may help soothe some others. please note: song written by Kieran Kane. This has also been performed (and not shabbily, mind you) by Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, and Linda Ronstadt

by Leslie Monsour While women sip their daiquiries by the pool, and men blow smoke into the jacarandas, the radio plays "Fly Me to the Moon." A child nearby, on finding a dead bee, conducts its funeral in petunia beds, as ants are trying to amputate a wing. But even thought the bee is dead, it stings her fiercely on the palm, and dies again. She studies her small hand in disbelief. Some fathers offer ice cubes from their highballs, the station plays "Volare," and the bee swings up to heaven on its single wing.

Jackie: I don't like chatty. I don't do chatty. I like quiet. Quiet and mean. Those are my people. I've seen bits and pieces of this show, not sure I'm in love with it, although might not mind working at her hospital. Nurse Jackie has a heck of a lot more free time than I do. Maybe she's just more organized and gets her charting done faster. Considering all the oxycodone she takes, maybe she draws hieroglyphics and calls it a day. But her lines...?? Make. Me. Laugh. The Cure by Ginger Andrews Lying around all day with some strange new deep blue weekend funk, I'm not really asleep when my sister calls to say she's just hung up from talking with Aunt Bertha who is 89 and ill but managing to take care of Uncle Frank who is completely bed ridden. Aunt Bert says it's snowing there in Arkansas, on Catfish Lane, and she hasn't been able to walk out to their mailbox. She's been suffering from a bad case of the mulleygrubs. The cure for t...

T'ain't nothing better for a weary soul than to be alongside the banks of the mighty Ohio on a misty summer's evening. It's a beautiful stretch of waterway out by Old Coney where the river bends its path through the hills of southern Ohio overlooking Kentucky. We went last night to see a group of our most favorite people--Garrison Keillor and his Prairie Home Companion show. Many jokes about flying pigs, beer, and our famous "Cincinnati Chili"--make mine a 4-way, please. Billy Collins was there on stage reading from his newest book of poetry, Ballistics , we heard the latest adventures of Guy Noir, private eye, and all the happenings in Lake Wobegon. We sang The Star Spangled Banner and Amazing Grace. We heard opera and harmonica solos and a couple of singer/songwriters from the deserts of Australia while the breeze brought to us smells of newly cut grass and honeysuckle. If you have a chance to hear the program on NPR today Hubby and I are the ones whooping a...

Hubby texted me the other day while I was at work to tell me that he'd just seen our neighbor's name in the newspaper's obituaries. I, of course, thought,"no," it had to be our neighbor and friend's's father . Our friend was too young and we'd just seen him in his yard on one of our dog walking expeditions. I was wrong. Let me backtrack for a moment. For those of you with kids, you know this. When your kids start school, you basically relive high school all over again for the next 12 years or so. When the school is connected to the neighborhood parish, Our Most Holy Name and Lady of Perpetual Cooking, it's all intensified because you're all together for more events. The same old cliques reassert themselves and women who thrive on running every committee come out of the woodwork. The jocks take over the volunteer coaching postions. You get the "cool" parents, the performers, and the nerdier ones who help out with computer/technical det...

by Kirsten Dierking It's summer, so the pink gingham shorts, the red mower, the neat rows of clean smelling grass unspooling behind the sweeping blades. A dragonfly, black body big as a finger, will not leave the mower alone, loving the sparkle of scarlet metal, seeing in even a rusting paint the shade of a flower. But I wave him off, conscious he is wasting his time, conscious I am filling my time with such small details, distracting colors, like pink checks, like this, then that, like a dragonfly wing in the sun reflecting the color of opals, like all the hours we leave behind, so ordinary, but not unloved. please note: pottery by Cathy Michelsen

by Anne Porter When I am brought before the Lord What can I say to him How plead for mercy? I'll say I loved My husband and the five Children we had together Though I was most unworthy I'll say I loved The summer mornings I loved the way the sun comes up And sets the dew on fire I loved the way The cobwebs shine On the tall grass When they are strung with dew I'll say I loved The way that little bird The titmouse flies I'll say I loved Its lightness Lilt And beauty.

Four Kinds of Lilacs by Leo Dangel "Why don't you turn at the next corner," she said, "and take another road home. Let's go past that farm with all the different colored lilacs." "That's seven miles out of the way," he said. "I wanted to plant the rest of the corn before evening. We can look at lilacs some other time." "It'll take only a few minutes" she said. "You know that lilacs aren't in bloom for long—if we don't go now, it will be too late." "We drove past there last year," he said. "They're like any other lilacs except for the different colors. The rest of the year, they're all just bushes." "They're lilac, purple, white, and pink," she said. "And today, with no breeze, the scent will hang in the air—no flowers smell as good as lilacs in the spring." "I thought of planting lilacs once," he said, "for a windbreak in the grove. The...

Mary, Mary by Dodie Meeks Outside the window of my room Big creamy plates of bloom Are spilling smoky seeds. The bees are slurping out there Dazed in hundred proof magnolia. Leathery petals slide Into a jungle rot Alive, alive-oh. Up and down the block The neighbors' pyracantha Is clipped formica neat But my garden That they can hardly stand Is all elbows and knees. Salvia slavering down the walk Ivy shinnying up the stalks Of three kinds of anemone Gone berserk As anemone can Each stem Erupting into ten. That hospital gift gardenia We brought home To give a decent burial Is pop-corned over with bloom Enough for a funeral or two Crowding a candelabra of lilies Budded so aching tight It hurts to look. Those roses that you sent Are, believe me, thorny healthy Clawing through whatever this is Veined with tattered blue On international orange. And I know I never Put in this goofy stand of garlic. That sad young wandering priest We let sleep on the sofa Was a fussy eater. These might be...

Another weekend in Big Fat Teaching Hospital amongst damaged and healing brains. There's also the patients to care for...ha! insert drum roll here, please. Two more days, and two more days after that, then a summer vacation. Glorious words... summer vacation. We won't be able to take the holiday that we planned. HoneyHaired's new job involves a Grand Opening of her store dab smack on the day we were set to leave. Our new plans now involve driving down to horse country and visiting with CollegeGrrrl. She has an apartment and sights she wants to show us and I'm sure we can find plenty of ways to spend time and money there. Until then, life goes on in Neurodramaville. So, hope you all are enjoying your weekends. It looks lovely outside. Perfect June days here. Go on, bask in the warmth of the early summer sun. And as Mr. Dylan, the poet laureate of a generation, once said, "...My real message? Keep a good head and always carry a lightbulb." hhhhhmmmmmmmm...well...

by Gary Short From behind the screen door I watch the cat in the bunchgrass stalking at dusk. With the pure attention of religion, he waits for the skitter of a field mouse, a shiver in an owl's dream. The cat delivers his limp prey to the chipped gray paint of the porch. I step outside, not knowing if I will punish the cat or accept the mouse. At the edge of the porch I kneel and see the map of red capillaries in the delicate mouse ear. I lift it by the tail to toss, but in the blink of a smug cat's eye I feel a tug—an escape back into life. In the African journals, Livingston tells of the charging lion that knocked him down. When he was held in the lion's mouth, the human body's trance-like response was to go limp in an ecstatic giving up that saved. To assume death to stay alive. A Confederate soldier at Antietam played dead when his battalion was overrun. for a moment he thought he was safe, but to make sure, the Union infantryman drove a bayonet into each body on t...

Touch Me by Stanley Kunitz Summer is late, my heart. Words plucked out of the air some forty years ago when I was wild with love and torn almost in two scatter like leaves this night of whistling wind and rain. It is my heart that's late, it is my song that's flown. Outdoors all afternoon under a gunmetal sky staking my garden down, I kneeled to the crickets trilling underfoot as if about to burst from their crusty shells; and like a child again marveled to hear so clear and brave a music pour from such a small machine. What makes the engine go? Desire, desire, desire. The longing for the dance stirs in the buried life. One season only, and it's done. So let the battered old willow thrash against the windowpanes and the house timbers creak. Darling, do you remember the man you married? Touch me, remind me who I am. please note: photo by Henri Cartier-Bresson

Sweet, sweet, sweet. Just saw the new Pixar movie, Up , Monday evening and had dinner at a favorite restaurant overlooking the river. Back away from your computer right now--PJ's on? Middle of the night? Already at work? Whatever--leave it all behind and go see this movie. It's darling. Lots to enjoy for all the age groups in this family. The music is perfection. We did not see the 3-D version, but think we shall return for a "do-over" sometime this summer.

by Mary Oliver After rain after many days without rain, it stays cool, private and cleansed, under the trees, and the dampness there, married now to gravity, falls branch to branch, leaf to leaf, down to the ground where it will disappear--but not, of course, vanish except to our eyes. The roots of the oaks will have their share, and the white threads of the grasses, and the cushion of moss; a few drops, round as pearls, will enter the mole's tunnel; and soon so many small stones, buried for a thousand years, will feel themselves being touched. please note: art by Jill Sutton