A Tidings of Magpies

Arc by Amy M. Clark My seatmate on the late-night flight could have been my father. I held a biography, but he wanted to talk. The pages closed around my finger on my spot, and as we inclined into the sky, we went backwards in his life, beginning with five hours before, the funeral for his only brother, a forgotten necktie in his haste to catch this plane the other way just yesterday, his wife at home caring for a yellow Lab she'd found along the road by the olive grove, and the pretty places we had visited— Ireland for me, Germany for him— a village where he served his draft during the Korean War, and would like to see again to show his wife how lucky he had been. He talked to me and so we held his only brother's death at bay. I turned off my reading light, remembering another veteran I met in a pine forest years ago who helped me put my tent up in the wind. What was I thinking camping there alone? I was grateful he kept watch across the way and served coffee in a blue tin cup...

Our Friends in Minnesota by Amy M. Clark A woman (I would be her) says to a man (he would be you), "Let's go stay with Ted and Jan." And what are Ted and Jan? Ted and Jan are our friends who live by the lake in Duluth. They have beautiful teenage daughters. Tanya, the older one, plays the cello. Shelly captains the Irish dance team. Ted and Jan have invited us up to sail with them anytime we want. Late June is good. In the evening, we play cards on their screened deck. Crickets. Cocktails. Tanya comes down and drapes over the back of Ted's chair, her arms around his shoulders. "Daddy, I see you're losing again," she teases. "Where's the love?" Ted says, and Jan flourishes another full house. Her cheeks are reddened from the day on the boat. Later, we listen to Ted strum the guitar, and we talk of food and people we know. When Shelly isn't in by eleven, we hear of the boy she's taken up with, the one who threw up in the lilac bushe...

by Richard Jones When I went home to visit my sister in the stone house by the river, I couldn't sleep, and so I rose early, before dawn, and entered the quiet temple of the living room to sit in simple meditation. Palms up, legs crossed, shoulders squared, I took a minute to relax my body, then began to count slow breaths, attentive to the task of emptying the merest thought from the mind, as if sweeping cobwebs from corners. Moment by moment my heart grew calm. The windows filled with light and birdsong announced the morning. Out of nothingness, light and birdsong. With eyelids almost closed, I imagined a peaceful sky free of drifting clouds— heaven's immaculate, eternal blue. As I sat, time passed, like the river quickened by wind. Sun-diamonds sparkled on wind-shirred water, and all around the house red azaleas blossomed, burning like a fiery moat as towering pines swayed high above. Perfectly still, quietly alert, I sat and I breathed—the mind balanced. Then I heard the ...

Some wadded up clump of denial has washed clear of my psyche and I am finally peaceful with the fact that my children are not ever going to use the set of encyclopedias, old Life magazines, multiple maps of the world, books about the presidents, How Things Work , and The Human Body that I thought they might someday need and use for a report. It is an internet world of information for this generation. So, I am tossing and bagging and schlepping, and otherwise clearing spaces for new adventures. What a fun ride it was with little ones in the house. It helps that some items can be moved up to our place on the lake. Treasure Quest, James Herriot's Treasury for Children , and Wind in the Willows . The Friends Trivia Game. What I may lack in denial I more than make up for in immaturity. Boy Blowing Bubbles By Deborah Pope They erupt with the suddenness and ease of his laughter, rising like the high, wobbly syllables of his singing. Shimmering, drifting, perfect in their roundness as...

The Secret of Life by Ellen Goldsmith I grabbed the streetcar from Fisherman's Wharf to the Ferry Building to save my feet for later. My dollar bill, wrinkled and worn, resisted disappearing into the slot. I stuffed the transfer in my pocket without looking. As the streetcar rounded the Embarcadero, I called my mother-in-law with mother's day wishes, imagined the conversation I'd have with mine, were she alive. On exiting, I asked the conductor how long the transfer would last. I gave you extra time, he said. Just show it. Hardly anyone looks. It's good until it's taken away. please note: photo by Chris Gulkey, Embarcadero Pier

D.H. Lawrence (1916) This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green, Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes, Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between Where the wood fumes up and the watery, flickering rushes. I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze Of growing, and sparks that puff in wild gyration, Faces of people streaming across my gaze. And I, what fountain of fire am I among This leaping combustion of spring? My spirit is tossed About like a shadow buffeted in the throng Of flames, a shadow that’s gone astray, and is lost.

HoneyHaired is out of school for the summer!! First Year Teacher to His Students by Gary J. Whitehead Go now into summer, into the backs of cars, into the black maws of your own changing, onto the boardwalks of a thousand splinters, onto the beaches of a hundred fond memories in wait, where the sea in all its indefatigability stammers at the invitation. Go to your vacation, to the late morning cool of your basement rooms, the honeysuckle evening of the first kiss, the first dip and pivot, swivel and twist. Go to where the clipper ships sail far upriver, where the salmon swim in the clean, cool pools just to spawn. Wake to what the spider unspools into a silver dawn dripping with light. Sleep in sleeping bags, sleep in sand, sleep at someone else's house in a land you've never been, where the dreamers dream in a language you only half understand. Slip beneath the sheets, slide toward the plate, swing beneath the bandstand where the secret things await. Be glad, or be sad if you...

by Stephen Orlen I hated breaking up and I hated Being left, finding myself in an apartment With an extra set of silverware and a ghost, Impatient to be gone. Then to summon up Who I was before the bed was full with woman. To shift the street-mind from getting to To slowing down and window shop. In the bar down the street, To let my eyes simplify again, and make no judgments, And breathe in the smoke that drifts Through one body then another, And find myself close enough To whisper into a woman's just-washed hair And inhale that ten thousand year old scent. To memorize a phone number. To learn to say goodnight at her door. To keep my hands in my pockets, like a boy.

Talking to Ourselves by Philip Schultz A woman in my doctor's office last week couldn't stop talking about Niagara Falls, the difference between dog and deer ticks, how her oldest boy, killed in Iraq, would lie with her at night in the summer grass, singing Puccini. Her eyes looked at me but saw only the saffron swirls of the quivering heavens. Yesterday, Mr. Miller, our tidy neighbor, stopped under our lopsided maple to explain how his wife of sixty years died last month of Alzheimer's. I stood there, listening to his longing reach across the darkness with each bruised breath of his eloquent singing. This morning my five-year-old asked himself why he'd come into the kitchen. I understood he was thinking out loud, personifying himself, but the intimacy of his small voice was surprising. When my father's vending business was failing, he'd talk to himself while driving, his lips silently moving, his black eyes deliquescent. He didn't care that I was there, lis...

With kids in school the month of May becomes hectic with end of year details and deadlines. And exams. And dance productions. So, while it is a glorious day(and I do not use that word lightly, although I am a bit loose with "fabulous")with sun and soft breezes and no humidity, HoneyHaired and I will be inside a studio or at the dining room table with papers galore. She'll be the one sticking her head out the car window like a young Golden Retriever while we drive up and down Central Parkway. I will vigorously attempt to restrain myself. Her shows are next Friday and Saturday after a week of exams, fittings and rehearsals. I have a gazillion page evaluation to be filled out by this Sunday which is difficult to start for many reasons, one being "clustershag" is not BigFatTeaching Hospital approved terminology. Such is life. I'd like to think that you all are hiking around some beautiful nature trail enjoying this May Day, but I suspect many of you are in exac...

by Louis Jenkins All those things that have gone from your life, moon boots, TV trays and the Soviet Union, that seem to have vanished, are really only changed. Dinosaurs did not disappear from the earth but evolved into birds and crock pots became bread makers and then the bread makers all went to rummage sales along with the exercise bikes. Everything changes. It seems at times (only for a moment) that your wife, the woman you love, might actually be your first wife in another form. It's a thought not to be pursued….Nothing is the same as it used to be. Except you, of course, you haven't changed…well, slowed down a bit, perhaps. It's more difficult nowadays to deal with the speed of change, disturbing to suddenly find yourself brushing your teeth with what appears to be a flashlight. But essentially you are the same as ever, constant in your instability.

"Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do." --Rob Siltanen of Chiat Day (Nightingale's diagram of deaths incurred in Crimean War, those in blue thought by her to be preventable.) Then, and now... The Real Florence Nightingale

by Louis Jenkins The speaker points out that we don't really have much of a grasp of things, not only the big things, the important questions, but the small everyday things. "How many steps up to your back yard? What is the name of your district representative? What did you have for breakfast? What is your wife's shoe size? Can you tell me the color of your sweetheart's eyes? Do you remember where you parked the car?" The evidence is overwhelming. Most of us never truly experience life. "We drift through life in daydream, missing the true richness and joy that life has to offer." When the speaker has finished we gather around to sing a few inspirational songs. You and I stand at the back of the group and hum along since we have forgotten most of the words.

Family Garden by Hank Hudepohl Tell me again about your garden Tell me how you planted, in the small flat of mountain land, corn seed and bean seed, how your finger poked the soil then you dropped in three dark bean seeds for every yellow seed of corn. Trees and mountains collared your land, but the fenced garden opened freely to sun and warm summer rains. Your potato rows bulged in July. You ached from digging them up, your hands down in dirt, the cool lump of a tuber, brown-spotted, just recovered, a greeting, like shaking hands. Baskets full of bumpy brown potatoes filled your basement until fall, until you gave away what you could, throwing out the rest. You gave away honey from the white hive too, that box of bees beside the garden, honey stored in Mason jars, a clearest honey ...

The Speaker by Louis Jenkins The speaker points out that we don't really have much of a grasp of things, not only the big things, the important questions, but the small everyday things. "How many steps up to your back yard? What is the name of your district representative? What did you have for breakfast? What is your wife's shoe size? Can you tell me the color of your sweetheart's eyes? Do you remember where you parked the car?" The evidence is overwhelming. Most of us never truly experience life. "We drift through life in daydream, missing the true richness and joy that life has to offer." When the speaker has finished we gather around to sing a few inspirational songs. You and I stand at the back of the group and hum along since we have forgotten most of the words. please note: art by Ricardo Valbueno-- Figures Walking, Light Fog

Blackbirds by Julie Cadwallader Staub I am 52 years old, and have spent truly the better part of my life out-of-doors but yesterday I heard a new sound above my head a rustling, ruffling quietness in the spring air and when I turned my face upward I saw a flock of blackbirds rounding a curve I didn't know was there and the sound was simply all those wings just feathers against air, against gravity and such a beautiful winning the whole flock taking a long, wide turn as if of one body and one mind. How do they do that? Oh if we lived only in human society with its cruelty and fear its apathy and exhaustion what a puny existence that would be but instead we live and move and have our being here, in this curving and soaring world so that when, every now and then, mercy and tenderness triumph in our lives and when, even more rarely, we manage to unite and move together toward a common good, and can think to ourselves: ah yes, this is how it's meant to be. please note: photo by St...