A Tidings of Magpies

"Freddie experienced the sort of abysmal soul-sadness which afflicts one of Tolstoy's Russian peasants when, after putting in a heavy day's work strangling his father, beating his wife, and dropping the baby into the city's reservoir, he turns to the cupboards, only to find the vodka bottle empty." — P.G. Wodehouse please note: above photo, Hugh Laurie. 'nuf said. Carry on, Jeeves...

Cruising with the Beach Boys by Dana Gioia So strange to hear that song again tonight Travelling on business in a rented car Miles from anywhere I've been before. And now a tune I haven't heard for years Probably not since it last left the charts Back in L.A. in 1969. I can't believe I know the words by heart And can't think of a girl to blame them on. Every lovesick summer has its song, And this one I pretended to despise, But if I was alone when it came on, I turned it up full-blast to sing along – A primal scream in croaky baritone, The notes all flat, the lyrics mostly slurred. No wonder I spent so much time alone Making the rounds in Dad's old Thunderbird. Some nights I drove down to the beach to park And walk along the railings of the pier. The water down below was cold and dark, The waves monotonous against the shore. The darkness and the mist, the midnight sea, The flickering lights reflected from the city – A perfect setting for a boy like me, The Cecil B. ...

please note: photo by kyfirefighter on flickr Thanksgiving has come and gone and my refrigerator and I are stuffed to the gills. I went off the skids this year; tried new recipes for the turkey and stuffing--Maple Glazed and Bourbon/Bacon. Both turned out surprisingly to be quite good. Even after the effects of the bourbon tasting had worn off. CollegeGrrrrl was only able to be home--actually in the house she was raised in--for about 5 minutes after visiting her grandmother in Indiana because of the horrible driving conditions and multiple weathermen threatening us with snow and icy roads. That was very disappointing for all of us and we owe her a dinner. She was here long enough for me to pack up some stuffing and rolls for her, but the turkey had just come out of the oven and was way too hot to carve. Protein is way overrated, though, and we do love our carbs here in the Distracted household. Cleared the table, divided food into Gladware and, utilizing very precise equations of phys...

by Anne Porter Give praise with psalms that tell the trees to sing, Give praise with Gospel choirs in storefront churches, Mad with the joy of the Sabbath, Give praise with the babble of infants, who wake with the sun, Give praise with children chanting their skip-rope rhymes, A poetry not in books, a vagrant mischievous poetry living wild on the Streets through generations of children. Give praise with the sound of the milk-train far away With its mutter of wheels and long-drawn-out sweet whistle As it speeds through the fields of sleep at three in the morning, Give praise with the immense and peaceful sigh Of the wind in the pinewoods, At night give praise with starry silences. Give praise with the skirling of seagulls And the rattle and flap of sails And gongs of buoys rocked by the sea-swell Out in the shipping-lanes beyond the harbor. Give praise with the humpback whales, Huge in the ocean they sing to one another. Give praise with the rasp and sizzle of crickets, katydids and...

by Lawrence Raab After we saw what there was to see we went off to buy souvenirs, and my father waited by the car and smoked. He didn't need a lot of things to remind him where he'd been. Why do you want so much stuff? he might have asked us. "Oh, Ed," I can hear my mother saying, as if that took care of it. After she died I don't think he felt any reason to go back through all those postcards, not to mention the glossy booklets about the Singing Tower and the Alligator Farm, the painted ashtrays and lucite paperweights, everything we carried home and found a place for, then put away in boxes, then shoved far back in our closets. He'd always let my mother keep track of the past, and when she was gone—why should that change? Why did I want him to need what he'd never needed? I can see him leaning against our yellow Chrysler in some parking lot in Florida or Maine. It's a beautiful cloudless day. He glances at his watch, lights another cigarette, looks u...

It’s Sunday Morning in Early November by Philip Schultz and there are a lot of leaves already. I could rake and get a head start. The boy's summer toys need to be put in the basement. I could clean it out or fix the broken storm window. When Eli gets home from Sunday school, I could take him fishing. I don't fish but I could learn to. I could show him how much fun it is. We don't do as much as we used to do. And my wife, there's so much I haven't told her lately, about how quickly my soul is aging, how it feels like a basement I keep filling with everything I'm tired of surviving. I could take a walk with my wife and try to explain the ghosts I can't stop speaking to. Or I could read all those books piling up about the beginning of the end of understanding... Meanwhile, it's such a beautiful morning, the changing colors, the hypnotic light. I could sit by the window watching the leaves, which seem to know exactly how to fall from one moment to the next. ...

Make Each Day Count by Michael Chitwood On the way to the memorial service it started to snow, blanking our view of the moon's afternoon ghost, cold clock so white it was blue. The speakers' voices caught. They had to pause to continue. Beneath the lauds, the talk of deep friendship and a life well-lived, we heard the rasp of the maintenance crew's shovels, having had to come in on a Saturday. please note: art by Dan Bush

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, you know what I'm saying...a tasty Friday night treat.

Just wanted to mention I'm still here buzzing around. Worked the weekend. The usual--an undocumented Hispanic worker with traumatic brain injury from head vs baseball bat and a found down X 24hrs with an intracerebral hemorrhage and heroin abuse. Had an early meeting this morning with one of the fire chiefs of a neighboring township to go over survey questions for a study on "near-misses" and I'm trying to read up tonight for a get-together tomorrow with members of a potential research project I might work with--heat stress in fire fighters. I may be able to get funding to go full-time in the spring, but I still need to work my 36hrs/week and I carry the medical insurance, so I like to wake up at 3 or 4 o'clock in the mornings and see if I can make the puzzle pieces fall into place. So far they have not. I don't have to go full time, though it would be very, very nice to have tuition paid for. I'm trying to rationalize 15 credit hours as working overtime. ...

by Patricia Fargnoli Should the Fox Come Again to My Cabin in the Snow Then, the winter will have fallen all in white and the hill will be rising to the north, the night also rising and leaving, dawn light just coming in, the fire out. Down the hill running will come that flame among the dancing skeletons of the ash trees. I will leave the door open for him. please note: art by kjhayler

November, 1967 by Joyce Sutphen Dr. Zhivago was playing at the Paramount Theater in St. Cloud. That afternoon, we went into Russia, and when we came out, the snow was falling—the same snow that fell in Moscow. The sky had turned black velvet. We'd been through the Revolution and the frozen winters. In the Chevy, we waited for the heater to melt ice on the windshield, clapping our hands to keep warm. On the highway, these two things: a song from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and that semi-truck careening by. Now I travel through the dark without you and sometimes I turn up the radio, hopeful the way you were, no matter what.

Assignment #1: Write a Poem about Baseball and God by Philip E. Burnham, Jr And on the ninth day, God In His infinite playfulness Grass green grass, sky blue sky, Separated the infield from the outfield, Formed a skin of clay, Assigned bases of safety On cardinal points of the compass Circling the mountain of deliverance, Fashioned a wandering moon From a horse, a string and a gum tree, Tempered weapons of ash, Made gloves from the golden skin of sacrificial bulls, Set stars alight in the Milky Way, Divided the descendants of Cain and Abel into contenders, Declared time out, time in, stepped back, And thundered over all of creation: "Play ball!"

Enough by Jeffrey Harrison It's a gift, this cloudless November morning warm enough for you to walk without a jacket along your favorite path. The rhythmic shushing of your feet through fallen leaves should be enough to quiet the mind, so it surprises you when you catch yourself telling off your boss for a decade of accumulated injustices, all the things you've never said circling inside you. It's the rising wind that pulls you out of it, and you look up to see a cloud of leaves swirling in sunlight, flickering against the blue and rising above the treetops, as if the whole day were sighing, Let it go, let it go, for this moment at least, let it all go.

by Cindy Gregg On this first day of November it is cold as a cave, the sky the color of neutral third parties. I am cutting carrots for the chicken soup. Knife against carrot again and again sends a plop of pennies into the pan. These cents, when held to the gray light, hold no noble president, only stills of some kaleidoscope caught being pensive... and beautiful, in the eye of this beholder, who did not expect this moment of marvel while making an early supper for the hungry children. please note: art by John Atkinson Grimshaw