A Tidings of Magpies

by William Shakespeare Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and caldron bubble. Fillet of a fenny snake, In the caldron boil and bake; Eye of newt and toe of frog, Wool of bat and tongue of dog, Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting, Lizard's leg and howlet's wing, For a charm of powerful trouble, Like a hell-broth boil and bubble. Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and caldron bubble. Cool it with a baboon's blood, Then the charm is firm and good. Much to be done today. My own little witch is having friends over for a birthday/Halloween get-together, so room needs to cleared for 5 not-so-little-anymore little girls to run around. And before that a birthday lunch with Grandma PP and Auntie DD. We are vacuuming and baking and moving piles of very important, yet unread, papers from one site to another. And the dog follows diligently behind me shedding more hair to make up for its loss in the carpet. Hope your Hallowed Eves is spooky and that you are handi...

a The Gospel of the Gospel by Michael Chitwood And the prophet said: "Let not your heart dwell in sadness, but be glad in the day." The word used for heart has two translations: One is as a door through which a blue sky over white-washed stone steps can be glimpsed and the other has to do with a kind of clearing in a forest of hemlock and white pine. Sadness references the turning-inward look of a shy child in a roomful of strangers. Glad has a connotation of the same weight and earthiness of certain flower bulbs that can lie dormant or be transported great distances in their dry drowse and then brought to blossom when replanted. The phrase "in the day" is a guess, but a good guess, given that time passed then as now.

All I can say is I rarely drink, and had two glasses of wine the minute I walked in the door... Merlot and Fritos=fruits and vegetables, yes?? A Blessing by Ken Hada After three days of hard fishing we lean against the truck untying boots, removing waders. We change in silence still feeling the rhythm of cold water lapping thankful for that last shoal of rainbows to sooth the disappointment of missing a trophy brown. We'll take with us the communion of rod and line and bead-head nymphs sore shoulders and wrinkled feet. A good tiredness claims us from slipping over rocks, pushing rapids – sunup to sundown – sneaking toward a target, eyes squinting casting into winter wind. We case the rods, load our bags and start to think about dinner. None of us wants to leave. None wants to say goodbye. Winter shadows touch the river cane. The cold is coming. We look up into a cobalt sky, and there, as if an emissary on assignment, a Bald Eagle floats overhead close enough to bless us then swift...

for my honeyhaired girl...

What a crappy weekend. The aggravating half of it was playing waitress to two floor patients without beds on the floor to transfer them to. Two patients who both need to be fed a total of six meals within eight hours. I didn't even feed my own kids that much. Mr. P. basically needed a bath after each meal cause he's a helper and wants to feed himself faster than the speed of light. Unfortunately his help ended up all over the bed, the floor, his gown, his hair... And the docs, knowing that these patients are floor borders in an ICU take full advantage of that, constantly spitting out STAT orders from some secret, undisclosed location, never talking with the nurses and each order contradicts the orders already written. I'm not even going to mention other bodily functions and the fact that each patient is well over 200 lbs., or the fact that their visitors did not understand the concept of a garbage can, or a call light, and are unable to grasp the technology of a remote cont...

"...I guess we're all one phone call from our knees."

by Ellen Bass to love life, to love it even when you have no stomach for it and everything you've held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands, your throat filled with the silt of it. When grief sits with you, its tropical heat thickening the air, heavy as water more fit for gills than lungs; when grief weights you like your own flesh only more of it, an obesity of grief, you think, How can a body withstand this? Then you hold life like a face between your palms, a plain face, no charming smile, no violet eyes, and you say, yes, I will take you I will love you, again. please note: photo by chloe_cheng

I have a few moments to collect my thoughts this afternoon before picking up Miss HoneyHaired, so thought I'd share. School seems to be going well. I'm pretty happy as a clam, though I wouldn't mind winning the lottery and taking one or two more classes each week and working one or two days less each week. Our class today was about occupational infectious diseases, including those spread by animals and animal contact. You know, it's a damn wonder mankind ever propagated and survived generation after generation given all the bugs and viruses afoot. Almost makes me fearful of the little squirrel family which has built a rather intricate nest on the outside sill of our kitchen window. They carry all kinds of bad bacteria and ticks and fleas. So we shall only wave to the little baby squirrel who likes to look in around dinnertime and raises his little paws. No air kisses. Yesterday's class was Occupational Health Workshop and involves actual research, meant to get the...

by Morton Marcus Wearing a silken silver gown, the little princess is staring at us from the foreground of the painting. As if on stage, she is brightly lit, surrounded by dwarfs, ladies-in-waiting, and a recumbent hound, and resembles a doll placed in the middle of her entourage. Behind her to her right, near a large canvas whose back is toward us, the painter, Velazquez, stands half in shadow, palette in one hand, brush in the other, while behind her to her left, a nun leans toward a courtier, about to speak. On the rear wall: paintings, large canvases, hang, almost obscured by darkness, and a mirror reflects the presence of the king and queen who must be observing the scene from the same place we do, as if they (or we) are an audience at a formal family event. But, no, the painter is standing in the wrong place to paint the scene. Do you see it now? It's the king and queen who are being painted, and the princess and her entourage are the audience watching mama and papa pose for ...

Is this what's meant by world weary...?

The Elusive Something by Charles Simic Was it in the smell of freshly baked bread That came out to meet me in the street? The face of a girl carrying a white dress From the cleaners with her eyes half closed? The sight of a building blackened by fire Where once I went to look for work? The toothless old man passing out leaflets For a clothing store going out of business? Or was it the woman pushing a baby carriage About to turn the corner? I ran after, As if the little one lying in it was known to me, And found myself alone on a busy street I didn't recognize, feeling like someone Out for the first time after a long illness, Who sees the world with his heart, Then hurries home to forget how it felt. please note: art by Amanda Cass

A Light Left On by May Sarton In the evening we came back Into our yellow room, For a moment taken aback To find the light left on, Falling on silent flowers, Table, book, empty chair While we had gone elsewhere, Had been away for hours. When we came home together We found the inside weather. All of our love unended The quiet light demanded, And we gave, in a look At yellow walls and open book. The deepest world we share And do not talk about But have to have, was there, And by that light found out. Welcome home, gentlemen.

by Marcia Popp i broke a vase at my great-grandfather's house when i was five here come sit on my lap he said don't feel bad about that vase i didn't like it anyway you helped me get rid of it i knew better but let him comfort me while i felt secretly bad inside did you know that my own mother said i was her worst boy no i said that can't be true oh yes he said and she was right i made accidents happen all the time i didn't really mean to do bad things they just came upon me when i wasn't paying attention when i was five my brother and i chased the goose in the barnyard until it fell over dead we propped her up in the fence so she would appear to be interested in the grass on the other side what happened my father noticed that the goose did not move all day we got spanked should i get spanked too for the vase not in my house he said.

by Sabine Miller Tell me the one about the sick girl — not terminally ill, just years in bed with this mysterious fever — who hires a man to murder her — you know, so the family is spared the blight of a suicide — and the man comes in the night, a strong man, and nothing is spoken —he takes the pillow to her face — tell me how he is haunted the rest of his life — did he or didn't he do the right thing — tell me how he is forgiven, and marries, and has 2 daughters, and is happy — no, tell me she doesn't die, but is cured and gives her life to God, and becomes a hand-holder for men on death row — tell me the one where the man falls in love with the girl and can't do it, or the girl falls in love with a dog and calls the man to tell him not to come, or how each sees their pain mirrored in the other's eyes — tell me how everyone is already forgiven every story they ever told themselves about living or not living — tell me, oh tell me the one where love wins, again and again...

by Meg Kearney When I got my head stuck between the porch rails I didn't know enough yet to hate my body, but I knew a thing or two about smoking my father's cigars with Patrick Dunn under the pines behind his house, and puking while my brother rolled joints and stacked 45s on the record player in his room. My sister turned me on to Carole King and JT, swore her friends would die in Vietnam because her peace medallion was flammable. She tried to teach me to dance, but I was never graceful—it wasn't a surprise, me wedged in that railing. How did they get me out? Nixon was president; Martin Luther King was dead. The whole country was in a fix, my father said, though he never said a word about the cigars. His heart was a shooting star; I thought he could fix everything. My mother believed she could fix his failing heart with home- made tomato sauce and a Manhattan on the rocks. My mother rose with the fish; she was unable to cry; she put her hand to my father's cheek, the...

"It's all fun and games till someone gets their eye poked out with a stick. Then it's just fun." Just a quickie this morning and hopefully will be back to write later. Up at the crack of dawn to drive HoneyHaired to an SAT test. She's exhausted--Homecoming game was last night(they lost, like 34-14) and Homecoming dance is tonight. I'm exhausted from the past two days of heavy hauling and lifting Of Human Poundage. But, it's a beautiful weekend and I have plenty of Advil at home and pilates scheduled for tomorrow. Must read my assignments today--a study on decreasing violence in the ER, something about too much noise in the workplace. Say what?? And, firefighters and cardiovascular disease. One's good and one's bad, but I'm not going to spoil the ending for you. And somehow, despite the fact that Hubby and I worked the last two days and Honeyhaired was at school, there's two sinkfuls of dishes. I'm not naming names, but I have my suspi...

by Howard Nelson My father told me once that when he was about twenty he had a new girlfriend, and once they stopped by the house on the way to somewhere, just a quick stop to pick something up, and my grandfather, who wasn't well— it turned out he had TB and would die at fifty-two—was sitting in a chair in the small back yard, my father knew he was out there, and it crossed his mind that he should take his girlfriend out back to meet him, but he didn't, whether for embarrassment at the sick, fading man or just because he was in a hurry to be off on his date, he didn't say, but he told the little, uneventful story anyway, and said that he had always regretted not doing that simple, courteous thing, the sick man sitting in the sun in the back yard would have enjoyed meeting her, but instead he sat out there alone as they came and left, young lovers going on a date. He always regretted it, he said.

by Steve Kowit The California tuna fisherman who bought my van in Puntarenas had a son who'd been killed in the war. I remember sitting in the heat & listening. He was a bald guy with a bulbous nose, & a talker. He made his wife bring in Mike's photo. Then he started in on the Chinese, how they were going to take over the world. "William, don't... please... no one's interested..." The coffee cup rattled in her fingers. Afterwards we bussed back along the coast road, a thick fog rolling in off the Pacific like a Sung scroll: small boats disappearing into the mist.

October by Robert Frost O hushed October morning mild, Thy leaves have ripened to the fall; To-morrow's wind, if it be wild, Should waste them all. The crows above the forest call; To-morrow they may form and go. O hushed October morning mild, Begin the hours of this day slow, Make the day seem to us less brief. Hearts not averse to being beguiled, Beguile us in the way you know; Release one leaf at break of day; At noon release another leaf; One from our trees, one far away; Retard the sun with gentle mist; Enchant the land with amethyst. Slow, slow! For the grapes' sake, if they were all, Whose leaves already are burnt with frost, Whose clustered fruit must else be lost— For the grapes' sake along the wall.