A Tidings of Magpies

by Hal Sirowitz Now that I'm sick & have all this time to contemplate the meaning of the universe, Father said, I understand why I never did it before. Nothing looks good from a prone position. You have to walk around to appreciate things. Once I get better I don't intend to get sick for a while. But if I do I hope I get one of those diseases you can walk around with.

by Barbara Crooker Today, the sky's the soft blue of a work shirt washed a thousand times. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. On the interstate listening to NPR, I heard a Hubble scientist say, "The universe is not only stranger than we think, it's stranger than we can think." I think I've driven into spring, as the woods revive with a loud shout, redbud trees, their gaudy scarves flung over bark's bare limbs. Barely doing sixty, I pass a tractor trailer called Glory Bound, and aren't we just? Just yesterday, I read Li Po: "There is no end of things in the heart," but it seems like things are always ending—vacation or childhood, relationships, stores going out of business, like the one that sold jeans that really fit— And where do we fit in? How can we get up in the morning, knowing what we do? But we do, put one foot after the other, open the window, make coffee, watch the steam curl up and disappear. At night, the scent ...

by Jane Gentry ... I eat an artichoke in front of the Charles Street Laundromat and watch the clouds bloom into white flowers out of the building across the way. The bright air moves on my face like the touch of someone who loves me. Far overhead a dart-shaped plane softens through membranes of vacancy. A ship, riding the bright glissade of the Hudson, slips past the end of the street. Colette's vagabond says the sun belongs to the lizard that warms in its light. I own these moments when my skin like a drumhead stretches on the frame of my bones, then swells, a bellows filled with sacred breath seared by this flame, this happiness. please note: photo by Ariel D. Bravy

by Ann Stanford I wake with the rain. It has surprised me. First, delight, Then I think of outdoors: The shovels and rakes I left in the garden Rusting now in the mist, The splintering of handles. I think of car windows open Tricycles Canvas cots, trash cans The hay uncovered Mildew. Well, they are out. And the animals - The cat, he is gone The dog is the neighbor's The horses have a tin roof If they will stay under it. And the wild things are there - Birds, wet in the trees, Deer in the brush, rabbits in hiding. The leaves will all be washed The wild lilacs, the walnuts. I am sleepy and warm I dream of the great horned owl Snatching birds like plums out of trees.

It's raining today in CinCity. A continuous drizzle in a grey and chilly day, but I don't care. I've spent the last 6 days at the hospital, not all of it 12 hour shifts, but enough of it, and I am thrilled to be in my sweats with a hot cup of coffee, rain or shine. Inspector Clousseau, the loan appraiser, has come and gone and our loan for the lake property is being "processed." My 8 hour Neuro lecture is finished, as was my voice that evening and the next day. The new committee I'm now heading has brand new notebooks, pens, and color coded divider tabs. Bliss in a bag. The next four days are all mine, except for driving HoneyHaired around and volunteering Saturday afternoon at the church festival. Tonight, I'm planning on roasted chicken and red potatoes and using the leftovers for curried chicken salad. On second thought, I'd best roast two chickens. We do love the chicken salad. The consignment store down the street is having a "bin sale."...

by Hal Sirowitz "When you have blown your nose, you should not open your handkerchief and inspect it, as though pearls or rubies had dropped out of your skull." The Book of Manners (1958) After you have blown your nose, Father said, it's not polite to look inside your handkerchief to see what it looks like. You're not a doctor. What's more important is getting the handkerchief back into your pocket without staining your pants. There are some things it's better not to look at. It should be left to your imagination, but if you have a strong desire to look you can always find pictures of it in a medical book.

by Ellen Bass If this were the last day of my life, I wouldn't complain about the shower curtain rod in the wrong place, even though it's drilled into the tiles. Nor would I fret over water marks on the apricot satin finish paint, half sick that I should have used semigloss. No. I'd stand in the doorway watching sun glint off the chrome faucet, breathing in the silicone smell. I'd wonder at the plumber, as he adjusted the hot and cold water knobs. I'd stare at the creases behind his ears and the gray flecks in his stubble. I'd have to hold myself back from touching him. Or maybe I wouldn't. Maybe I'd stroke his cheek and study his eyes the amber of cellos, his rumpled brow, the tiny garnet threads of capillaries, his lips resting together, quiet as old friends— I'd gaze at him as though his were the first face I'd ever seen.

by Ted Kooser The porch swing hangs fixed in a morning sun that bleaches its gray slats, its flowered cushion whose flowers have faded, like those of summer, and a small brown spider has hung out her web on a line between porch post and chain so that no one may swing without breaking it. She is saying it's time that the swinging were done with, time that the creaking and pinging and popping that sang through the ceiling were past, time now for the soft vibrations of moths, the wasp tapping each board for an entrance, the cool dewdrops to brush from her work every morning, one world at a time.

"The weight of the afternoon sun already falls more lightly on my back than it did a few weeks ago. The days seem not only shorter but also somehow thinner too, and every morning that dawns above freezing feels like a morning won back from the inevitable. Nothing is dry yet, of course, but the promise of eventual dryness is in the air. A day will come when every crown of seeds will rattle on the weeds in ditches and fields, when leaves will crunch obligingly underfoot again." please note: excerpt from The Rural Life, September , by Verlyn Klinkenborg & art by Van Gogh

by Nancy Fitzgerald There is a moment just before a dog vomits when its stomach heaves dry, pumping what's deep inside the belly to the mouth. If you are fast you can grab her by the collar and shove her out the door, avoid the slimy bile, hunks of half chewed food from landing on the floor. You must be quick, decisive, controlled, and if you miss the cue and the dog erupts en route, you must forgive her quickly and give yourself to scrubbing up the mess. Most of what I have learned in life leads back to this. please note: photo by Sheri Van Wert

by Laure-Anne Bosselaar I hate Mozart. Hate him with that healthy pleasure one feels when exasperation has crescendoed, when lungs, heart, throat, and voice explode at once: I hate that! — there's bliss in this, rapture. My shrink tried to disabuse me, convinced I use Amadeus as a prop: Think further, your father perhaps? I won't go back, think of the shrink with a powdered wig, pinched lips, mole: a transference, he'd say, a relapse: so be it. I hate broccoli, chain saws, patchouli, bra— clasps that draw dents in your back, roadblocks, men in black kneesocks, sandals and shorts— I love hating that. Loathe stickers on tomatoes, jerky, deconstruction, nazis, doilies. I delight in detesting. And love loving so much after that.

by Dana Gioia Now you hear what the house has to say. Pipes clanking, water running in the dark, the mortgaged walls shifting in discomfort, and voices mounting in an endless drone of small complaints like the sounds of a family that year by year you've learned how to ignore. But now you must listen to the things you own, all that you've worked for these past years, the murmur of property, of things in disrepair, the moving parts about to come undone, and twisting in the sheets remember all the faces you could not bring yourself to love. How many voices have escaped you until now, the venting furnace, the floorboards underfoot, the steady accusations of the clock numbering the minutes no one will mark. The terrible clarity this moment brings, the useless insight, the unbroken dark. please note: photo by Carol Sills And...Neuro lecture--8 hours--this Monday. Almost finished with working on it. Oh, happy day!

by Ted Kooser I like to watch an old man cutting a sandwich in half, maybe an ordinary cold roast beef on whole wheat bread, no pickles or onion, keeping his shaky hands steady by placing his forearms firm on the edge of the table and using both hands, the left to hold the sandwich in place, and the right to cut it surely, corner to corner, observing his progress through glasses that moments before he wiped with his napkin, and then to see him lift half onto the extra plate that he had asked the server to bring, and then to wait, offering the plate to his wife while she slowly unrolls her napkin and places her spoon, her knife and her fork in their proper places, then smoothes the starched white napkin over her knees and meets his eyes and holds out both old hands to him.

by Julie Kane They say two photons fired through a slit stay paired together to the end of time; if one is polarized to change its spin, the other does a U-turn on a dime, although they fly apart at speeds of light and never cross each other's paths again, like us, a couple in the seventies, divorced for almost thirty years since then. Tonight a Red Sox batter homered twice to beat the Yankees in their playoff match, and, sure as I was born in Boston, when that second ball deflected off the bat, I knew your thoughts were flying back to me, though your location was a mystery.

by Linda Gregg When the men leave me, they leave me in a beautiful place. It is always late summer. When I think of them now, I think of the place. And being happy alone afterwards. This time it's Clinton, New York. I swim in the public pool at six when the other people have gone home. The sky is gray, the air is hot. I walk back across the mown lawn loving the smell and the houses so completely it leaves my heart empty. please note: photo by Meg Ojala

by Meg Kearney New Hampshire air curls my hair like a child's hand curls around a finger. "Children?" No, we tell the realtor, but maybe a dog or two. They'll bark at the mail car (Margaret's Chevy Supreme) and chase the occasional moose here in this place where doors are left unlocked and it's Code Green from sun-up, meaning go ahead and feel relieved— the terrorists are back where you left them on East 20th Street and Avenue C. In New York we stocked our emergency packs with whistles and duct tape. In New England, precautions take a milder hue: don't say "pig" on a lobster boat or paint the hull blue. Your friends in the city say they'll miss you but don't blame you—they still cringe each time a plane's overhead, one ear cocked for the other shoe.

Real Estate by Mark Perlberg How odd to look across the way and note the Hymans, neighbors for a generation, are gone. Strange not to see a glimmer of light in any window as I pass by, or Ida, bent and wiry, climbing her stoop with a bag of groceries, or tending the doctor, neatly dressed, asleep in his chair on the porch, his light dimmed by a succession of strokes. I was shocked when Ida called to say she sold the building: two stories high, smooth gray brick, solid as a bank. Then, one day, the big truck came, Thirty years gone. Just like that. Don't know whether it's appropriate or coincidence, but life has moved quickly here in the last week. We are in the midst of buying a house about 200 miles away from CinCity. A retreat of sorts. Make that a retreat with no furniture and a yard that needs mowing but, I've got lots of books and mismatched linens to fill up empty rooms. And, a telescope I believe will be much more functional away from the city glare. In fact, the ho...

by Denise Duhamel In the 5th century B.C. an Indian philosopher Gautama teaches "All is emptiness" and "There is no self." In the 20th century A.D. Barbie agrees, but wonders how a man with such a belly could pose, smiling, and without a shirt.

by Louise Glück In your extended absence, you permit me use of earth, anticipating some return on investment. I must report failure in my assignment, principally regarding the tomato plants. I think I should not be encouraged to grow tomatoes. Or, if I am, you should withhold the heavy rains, the cold nights that come so often here, while other regions get twelve weeks of summer. All this belongs to you: on the other hand, I planted the seeds, I watched the first shoots like wings tearing the soil, and it was my heart broken by the blight, the black spot so quickly multiplying in the rows. I doubt you have a heart, in our understanding of that term. You who do not discriminate between the dead and the living, who are, in consequence, immune to foreshadowing, you may not know how much terror we bear, the spotted leaf, the red leaves of the maple falling even in August, in early darkness: I am responsible for these vines. please note: art by Julius Guzy

by R. T. Smith I know, because Paul has told me a hundred times, that the deer gliding tonight through tangleweed and trashwood, then bounding across Mount Atlas Road, are after his pears. And who could blame them? On the threshold of autumn, the Asian imports, more amazing than any Seckle or indigenous apple, start to ripen. Then a passing crow will peck one open. That's when the whitetails who bed and gather beyond Matson's pasture will catch the scent and begin to stir. It's a dry time, and they go slowly mad for sweetness. No fence can stop them. The farmers like Paul will admit it starts in hunger, but how suddenly need goes to frenzy and sheer plunder. When the blush-gold windfalls are gone and the low boughs are stripped of anything resembling bounty, bucks will rise on their hind legs and clamber up the trunks. Last week Cecil Emore found one strangled in a fork, his twisted antlers tangled as if some hunter had hung him there to cure. We all remember what it's...

...kind of like Peter, Paul and Mary, but Irish, and cooler, and without Paul. MIND OF A MAGPIE Mary with castanets settles herself into the sand. her mind humming with letters And moments and songs. She watches the ocean move, Beats to the waves with her hands... The sky is so endless Along with her longing. Settle down, Let it move... Settle down, Let it soothe you.. Settle down, Ain't that the truth?.. Settle down, There's always tomorrow.... Yesterday her heart got broke But it won't keep her from love, She's got the soul of a sailor, The mind of a magpie. Perspective is hers for the taking, She only views life from above.. Her skin is like summer, She's always high.. She is content where she's at, She could watch the horizons forever. Salt stains her face But she's always smiling... Her tears are of wisdom and wit Are never of sadness or temper.. She is the crest of the wave We're all riding...... please note: art, Mary Magdalene by Anthony Fre...