A Tidings of Magpies

by May Sarton The time has come To stop allowing the clutter To clutter my mind Like dirty snow, Shove it off and find Clear time, clear water. Time for a change, Let silence in like a cat Who has sat at my door Neither wild nor strange Hoping for food from my store And shivering on the mat. Let silence in. She will rarely speak or mew, She will sleep on my bed And all I have ever been Either false or true Will live again in my head. For it is now or not As old age silts the stream, To shove away the clutter, To untie every knot, To take the time to dream, To come back to still water. please note: photo by by Carol J. Phipps

"One must say Yes to life, and embrace it wherever it is found - and it is found in terrible places... For nothing is fixed, forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out." James Baldwin

Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever. Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness, you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road. You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive. Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and ...

Does anyone know anything about or anyone in Fargo? HoneyHaired has an opportunity to work there for a co-op this winter quarter and my knowledge is only cinematic...and it's 19 degrees there...

by Peg Lauber The grass here is strange paradise to northern feet. Stiff, it explodes into green when we aren't expecting it remembering it as greening up much later. All over town they turn the fountains on again. If there's one thing they've got enough of, it's water. Dig down a foot and you have it, even though brackish, and in the summer no cold water comes out of the tap no matter how long you run it. In every yard there's another explosion in January, camellias, pink, deep red, white, and we not a month past Christmas. But up north the frigid season crawls on, takes its time; even in April and May it's still snowing and sleeting, then comes hail as winter turns to summer in one day: 90 degrees. Here, however, people eat sack lunches on the dull green trolley with red touches still bearing Christmas garlands over the controls at each end. The riders open the windows to put their elbows out while they take the...

Homecoming by Blas Falconer Rain against the roof sounds like a slow tire over gravel, as if a friend has come. The train rumbles through the dark, and my body, tuned to hear you cry before you cry, stirs. The lamp floats in the window, the only window lit at this late hour on the empty street. Your hands unfurl as you fall asleep. Small Clock of Needs, Law that I Abide, the leaves gloss and shine. Like this we rock and sink into the long night of our rocking.

(We saw a flock of birds looking very similiar to this--wild turkeys--after dinner at Grandma PatPat's) Turkeys by Mary Mackey One November a week before Thanksgiving the Ohio river froze and my great uncles put on their coats and drove the turkeys across the ice to Rosiclare where they sold them for enough to buy my grandmother a Christmas doll with blue china eyes I like to think of the sound of two hundred turkey feet running across to Illinois on their way to the platter the scrape of their nails and my great uncles in their homespun leggings calling out gee and haw and git to them as if they were mules I like to think of the Ohio at that moment the clear cold sky the green river sleeping under the ice before the land got stripped and the farm got sold and the water turned the color of whiskey and all the uncles lay down and never got up again please note: photo by Mark Hamilton

If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is "thank you," that would suffice. --Meister Eckhart

by Ursula Le Guin The holy land is everywhere. —Black Elk Watch where the branches of the willows bend See where the waters of the rivers tend Graves in the rock, cradles in the sand Every land is the holy land. Here was the battle to the bitter end Here's where the enemy killed the friend Blood on the rock, tears on the sand Every land is the holy land. Willow by the water bending in the wind Bent till it's broken and it cannot stand Listen to the word the messengers send Life from the living rock, death in the sand Every land is the holy land. please note: my own photo of the beautiful Ohio near Coney Island

Genius by George Bilgere It was nice being a genius worth nearly half-a-million dollars for the two or three minutes it took me to walk back to my house from the mailbox with the letter from the Foundation trembling in my hand. Frankly, for the first minute I was somewhat surprised at being a genius. I'd only published a few small things at that point. I didn't even have a book. I was just a part-time lecturer at a small mid-western college. But early into the second minute I had fully embraced the fact of my genius. I mean, these people know what they're doing, right? Who am I to tell the Foundation its business? And I was already practicing the kind of modest, Hey, it's no big deal tone of voice I'd be using on the phone for the rest of the day as I called all my friends, and especially my enemies, to treat them to the good news. But when I opened the letter and saw it was merely a request for me to re...

"There is one day that is ours. Thanksgiving Day is the one day that is purely American."     --O Henry I love Thanksgiving. Full disclosure, I love the fall with the change in colors, the chill, and the slowdown to the quiet of winter. I love the annual dog show on television in the morning and the Macy's Parade which jabbers in the background while I read and reread recipes and mince, chop, and slice. I get tired of the kitchen that day, but I enjoy the cooking. It is the day that White Christmas may be dusted off, but I don't want to hear any Christmas music or movies before the day after Thanksgiving. It should be autumn music. A little Yo-Yo Ma, perhaps. Autumn should get it's time and we should take a moment to be grateful before the headlong rush into Commercialmas. IMHO. This year Hubby's working 12hrs, I'm off, HoneyHaired will come home and MissNewOrleans will be in New Orleans. HoneyHaired and I wi...

The Old Sea-dog at the Admiral Benbow SQUIRE TRELAWNEY, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen in the year of grace 17__ and go back to the time when my father kept the Admiral Benbow inn and the brown old seaman with the sabre cut first took up his lodging under our roof. I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the inn door, his sea-chest following behind him in a hand-barrow — a tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man, his tarry pigtail falling over the shoulder of his soiled blue coat, his hands ragged and scarred, with black, broken nails, and the sabre cut across one cheek, a dirty, livid white. I remember him looking round the cover and whistling to himself as he did so, and then breaking out in that old sea-son...

please note: pictured is the first album I ever bought Ode to the Vinyl Record by Thomas R. Smith The needle lowers into the groove and I'm home. It could be any record I've lived with and loved a long time: Springsteen or Rodrigo, Ray Charles or Emmylou Harris: Not only the music, but the whirlpool shimmering on the turntable funneling blackly down into the ocean of the ear—even the background pops and hisses a worn record wraps the music in, creaturely imperfections so hospitable to our own. Since those first Beatles and Stones LPs plopped down spindles on record players we opened like tiny suitcases at sweaty junior high parties while parents were out, how many nights I've pulled around my desires a vinyl record's cloak of flaws and found it a perfect fit, the crackling unclarity and turbulence of the country's lo-fi basement heart madly spinning, making its big dark sound

"The soldier above all others prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war." Douglas MacArthur

Not quite as "1 Fish 2 Fish Red Fish Blue Fish" as shown over and over again. please note: map demographic found on FaceBook by Cousin Cole

“People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway. If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway. For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway."   --attributed to Mother Teresa

   by Ken McCullough What he said was vast, given his limits. At some mojave of the soul, we stopped to gas up, and I was inclined to bolt— wrong look, wrong answer, might raise his demons, but what did I know, who was I to say? He tuned Tom Harmon on the radio, sneered and nodded like a slow woodpecker— "Would that they had broke the mold," he chuckled with sand in his pipes. The sun had stumbled. His eyes turned on me—"What'll it be, rook? Only one of us will walk away, son." He coughed, spat. ''Are you in or are you out? If you think you are fast enough, just once, you might have a blind salamander's chance."

The Fall Almost Nobody Sees by David Budbill Everybody's gone away. They think there's nothing left to see. The garish colors' flashy show is over. Now those of us who stay hunker down in sweet silence, blessed emptiness among red-orange shadblow purple-red blueberry copper-brown beech gold tamarack, a few remaining pale yellow popple leaves, sedge and fern in shades from beige to darkening red to brown to almost black, and all this in front of, below, among blue-green spruce and fir and white pine, all of it under gray skies, chill air, all of us waiting in the somber dank and rain, waiting here in quiet, chill November, waiting for the snow. Well, I don't know what the hell I've been doing for the past month or so. I obviously wasn't here. Biggest change other than the temperature is that we've gone completely to electronic/computerized charting at BigFatTeaching Hospital and I have prett...

Work is done and a most companionable moon followed me home from my shift at the human industrial plant  where I repair bad brains and injured lives. We drove as partners through the curving streets of the neighborhood, yellow-flamed windows beckoning as the dust of the day loosened and lifted, landing on a half opened car window before blowing back into the world. We passed the last dog walks of the evening. I raise a hand in greeting to all knowing how quickly their arcs too could be felled. The moon, my constant, I leave with the remains of the day for illumination. please note: photo by 5chw4r7z.blogspot.com

A Munsters' Breakfast by Jeanne Marie Beaumont Herman's big on corn, he likes to stuff his mouth with Kix and practice his diction. Grandpa and Eddie go for Trix, which pinks the milk as though it's tinged with blood. Only blond bland Marilyn will dare approach the Cheerios. They float in her bowl like small life-savers—enough she thinks to save all the passengers on the model Titanic Eddie is building for his school project down in the lab, complete with dry-ice berg and a looped tape of screams Lily has taken great pains to record for him. Lily sips only some root-bark tea. Her man prefers her wraithlike. Tonight's a full moon. She worries about Eddie's growth spurt; Herman crisply articulates what's on her mind: "You come home right after school, Eddie." The boy drains the last stained drop from his crock and wipes his moustache. "We'll work on the levers for tilting the decks," Grandp...

Well, I celebrated another birthday this week. In a little over a year I've lost some things: memory, a kidney stone I was apparently quite fond of, multiple phone chargers. One daughter has moved to the Big Easy and another to her first student apartment, neighbors have moved for various job transfers, and a best friend is gone, though the pain of her death has lessened a little. I've gained. My cholesterol numbers should be my bowling score. Or, my IQ. Lots more aches in the mornings, but I'm going to blame the Lipitor and not my new Zumba class. More shoes. Two rooms on the attic floor to remodel. More time with my hubby. We walk a lot more. We argue a lot less. A birthday around this time of year makes it easy to want to start a "new year" since autumn still feels like a time of beginnings with fresh pens and notebooks. My husband likes to announce that "this is the last roof we're ever going to replace" or "this is the last winter c...

by Jim Harrison After days of darkness I didn't understand a second of yellow sunlight here and gone through a hole in clouds as quickly as a flashbulb, an immense memory of a moment of grace withdrawn. It is said that we are here but seconds in cosmic time, twelve and a half billion years, but who is saying this and why? In the Salt Lake City airport eight out of ten were fiddling relentlessly with cell phones. The world is too grand to reshape with babble. Outside the hot sun beat down on clumsy metal birds and an actual ten-million-year-old crow flew by squawking in bemusement. We're doubtless as old as our mothers, thousands of generations waiting for the sunlight.

It just makes me laugh...

by Marilyn Kallet In the dry summer field at nightfall, fireflies rise like sparks. Imagine the presence of ghosts flickering, the ghosts of young friends, your father nearest in the distance. This time they carry no sorrow, no remorse, their presence is so light. Childhood comes to you, memories of your street in lamplight, holding those last moments before bed, capturing lightning-bugs, with a blossom of the hand letting them go. Lightness returns, an airy motion over the ground you remember from Ring Around the Rosie. If you stay, the fireflies become fireflies again, not part of your stories, as unaware of you as sleep, being beautiful and quiet all around you.

by May Swenson The sun is hot, the ocean cool. The waves throw down their snowy heads. I run under their hiss and boom, mine their wild breath. Running the ledge where pipers prod their awls into sand-crab holes, my barefoot tracks their little prints cross on wet slate. Circles of romping water swipe and drag away our evidence. Running and gone, running and gone, the casts of our feet. My twin, my sprinting shadow on yellow shag, wand of summer over my head, it seems that we could run forever while the strong waves crash. But sun takes its belly under. Flashing above magnetic peaks of the ocean's purple heave, the gannet climbs, and turning, turns to a black sword that drops, hilt-down, to the deep. please note: photo from Chariots of Fire  with a wink and a nod to Mr. Bean

Let The Day Go by Grace Paley who needs it I had another day in mind something like this one sunny green the earth just right having suffered the assault of what is called torrential rain the pepper the basil sitting upright in their little boxes waiting I suppose for me also the cosmos the zinnias nearly blooming a year too late forget it let the day go the sweet green day let it take care of itself

by Ingrid Wendt Out of the bunch grass out of the cheat grass a bunch of grass waddles my way. Quill-tips bleached by winter four inches down: crown of glory dark at the roots: a halo catching the sun's final song: No way could such steady oblivion possibly live up to legend, whatever fear I might have had is gone, but still I stop Short on my after-dinner walk, no collision course if I can help it, thinking at first it's the wind, nudging a path out of the field Or one of a covey of tumbleweed lost like those today on the freeway, racing ahead of my car that whole long drive here to the banks of the Snake, to friends so close they know when to leave me alone. As though I were nowhere around, the porcupine shuffles the edge of the road, in five minutes crosses a distance I could have covered in less than one And disappears at last into cattails and rushes, sunset, a vespers of waterbirds, leavin...

by Joyce Sutphen That is not the country for poetry. It has no mountains, its flowers are plain and never poisonous, its gardens are packed into blue mason jars. There are no hedges bordering the roads, the sky flies up from the ditches, loose in every direction. Yet I knew it to be passionate, even in its low rolling hills, where a red tractor pushed through the oat field, cutting down gold straw and beating a stream of grain into the wagon trailing behind in the stubble, I knew it to be melodious in its birch woods, leaves shadowing a stone-strewn river, the path along the bank softened with pine needles, sunlight woven in and out of branches, the many colors of green, solid as a pipe organ's opening chord, I knew it would haunt the memory with its single elm, where a herd of cows found shade in the July heat, their bony tails swinging the tufted bristle left and right over the high ledge of a hip bone, while at the hori...

by John Koethe . . . humming in the summer haze. Diane christened it the Bean House, Since everything in it came straight from an L.L. Bean Home catalog. It looks out upon two Meadows separated by a stand of trees, and at night, When the heat begins to dissipate and the stars Become visible in the uncontaminated sky, I like to sit here on the deck, listening to the music Wafting from the inside through the sliding patio doors, Listening to the music in my head. It's what I do: The days go by, the days remain the same, dwindling Down to a precious few as I try to write my name In the book of passing days, the book of water. Some Days I go fishing, usually unsuccessfully, casting Gently across a small stream that flows along beneath Some overhanging trees or through a field of cows. Call it late bucolic: this morning I awoke to rain And a late spring chill, with water dripping from the Eaves, the apple trees, the pergola down the hill. ...

Tree Marriage by William Meredith In Chota Nagpur and Bengal the betrothed are tied with threads to mango trees, they marry the trees as well as one another, and the two trees marry each other. Could we do that some time with oaks or beeches? This gossamer we hold each other with, this web of love and habit is not enough. In mistrust of heavier ties, I would like tree-siblings for us, standing together somewhere, two trees married with us, lightly, their fingers barely touching in sleep, our threads invisible but holding.

Just to give a brief summary, I did go to New Orleans to see my baby girl and had a great time. It's truly a beautiful city, the food is so unbelievable and there's music on just about every street corner.Trying to coordinate all our days off around September/October and find cheap flights so Hubby can go with next time. The WWII Museum is there. Bestowed upon the lovely city due to the importance of the Higgin boats--the landing crafts at Normandy--designed and built by Andrew Higgins of New Orleans and originally conceived to traverse the waterways and bayous for the oil companies. Truth be told, MissNewOrleans and I were searching in the corners for crumbs of food  got a little hungry around the D-Day invasion and saw the rest of the war fairly quickly. Could certainly go through the museum a time or two more. Came home for a day and left for the lake. Better planning than I realized since my luggage had lingered in North Carolina. Hot and humid eve...

We saw wreckage all along I-75 South on our way back home and stopped at a rest area particularly devastated. Should probably have thoughts of something profound about the power of nature and its randomness, but all I could think of was how much work it would take to clear this bit of land and how hot it would be. Since many out there still don't have electricity this might seem like a small matter; what to do with all the food in the refridgerator and freezer and how to find a hint of coolness becomes much more mind consuming. We're thankful that for once we're the ones with power though in this heat we're still going up to the neighborhood movie theater for 2 hrs of cooling relief. Moonlight Kingdom Saturday afternoon, The Intouchables on Sunday. Monday back to work. Heard this gentleman on WWOZ while we were driving through miles of farmland by Lake Erie. WWOZ is a New Orleans radio station and has an app so you can listen on your phone miles away. MissNew...

The Bedroom by Paula Bohince Sheets boiled with lavender, the hard bed. Handmade eye pillow filled with Great Northerns. Cactus to the ceiling, orange corsages. No embarrassment, a calm that is the opposite of ambition, I think. Mind like a diary unlocked on the dresser, pages lifting in breeze. Like those vivid flowers. Amethyst on a chain: external heart. Heirlooms in a shallow basket I can look at without regret, or regard and weep, kneeling, beside. A water glass, my eyeglasses, arms open in a waiting embrace. Sleeping on my husband's chest, his undershirt dryer-warm, arresting as a cloud in a black-and-white photograph.

from one shore to another... Back in ten days, but until then please try to put your fat feet on the ground...:) (a cappella group singing "Mustang Sally" on Toulouse Street in New Orleans. A great time was had and MissNewOrleans is doing great.)

This book finally! arrived in the mail and is now in my kitchen, the source of my new project for the summer  (let's be serious) the year. Chapter One: Soup, the Staff of Life and the first recipe--Potage Picard au Pois (split pea soup). The peas are soaking even as we speak. Not a fan of peas other than the frozen ones in the bag I put on an aching back now and again, but journeys begin with a single step and Hubby seems to like just about anything I cook, so split peas it is. We're on Season 2 of Treme, though a bit scatter-rhompussed. Season 2 comes from the library in four different DVD's containing the eleven episodes and what has come in so far from the far reaches of the CinCity library requesting system are episodes 4, 5, & 6 as well as 10 & 11. What I know so far is that crime has returned to the Crescent City harder than before and people I've never seen before are somehow involved in this and the food and music are s...

Our first summer movie this year. Quite delish. "Lips red as blood. Hair black as night. Bring me your heart, my dear, dear Snow White."

Happiness by Joyce Sutphen This was when my daughters were just children playing on the rocky shore of the lake, their hair in braids, their bright-colored jackets tied around their waists. It was afternoon, the shadows falling away, their faces glowing with light. Whatever we said then (and it must have been happy; it must have been hopeful) is lost as I am now lost from that life I lived. This was when nothing that I wanted mattered, though all I wanted was happiness, pure happiness, simple as strawberries and cream in a saucer, as curtains floating from a window sill, as small pairs of shoes arranged in a row.

Bought my tickets for New Orleans... watch out, the gator's got your granny...

  Excerpts from "How to be Perfect" by Ron Padgett Get some sleep. Eat an orange every morning. Be friendly. It will help make you happy. Hope for everything. Expect nothing. Take care of things close to home first. Straighten up your room before you save the world. Then save the world. Be nice to people before they have a chance to behave badly. Don't stay angry about anything for more than a week, but don't forget what made you angry. Hold your anger out at arm's length and look at it, as if it were a glass ball. Then add it to your glass ball collection. Wear comfortable shoes. Do not spend too much time with large groups of people. Plan your day so you never have to rush. Show your appreciation to people who do things for you, even if you have paid them, even if they do favors you don't want. After dinner, wash the dishes. Calm down. Don't expect your children to love you, so they c...

A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim by Walt Whitman A sight in camp in the daybreak gray and dim, As from my tent I emerge so early sleepless, As slow I walk in the cool fresh air the path near by the hospital tent, Three forms I see on stretchers lying, brought out there untended lying, Over each the blanket spread, ample brownish woolen blanket, Gray and heavy blanket, folding, covering all. Curious I halt and silent stand, Then with light fingers I from the face of the nearest the first just lift the blanket; Who are you elderly man so gaunt and grim, with well-gray'd hair, and flesh all sunken about the eyes? Who are you my dear comrade? Then to the second I step--and who are you my child and darling? Who are you sweet boy with cheeks yet blooming? Then to the third--a face nor child nor old, very calm, as of beautiful yellow-white ivory; Young man I think I know you--I think this face is the face of the Christ himself, Dea...

All Dharmas Are Marked with Emptiness by Frank X. Gaspar I'm talking now about the destitute and the wild-eyed, I'm talking about the lady who made the head of the Virgin Mary out of cut up pieces of magazines and broken glass and a can of carpenter's glue—and then there's the girl I know who works in the supermarket, who printed an entire anthology of poems on a single eight-and-a-half-by-eleven sheet of Xerox paper and folded a hundred copies down to wallet size and passed them out to anyone who dared look her in the eye. You know what I mean: there are all those lonely, desperate, weird minds—yours among them for all I know—and the Dharma is everywhere, books and words and people thinking, beat-up notebooks from the dollar store, scribbling the world into them—a man has a mystery, a woman has an adventure, the kids are banging rhymes together like tin cans full of old nails. Where's it all going, this clatter, this wonder...

Our desire to live as a one car family has come to an end and so early Saturday morning Hubby and I set out to eastern Virginia to pick up the 2003 Toyota he bought online with the lure of a 6hr road trip (one way). I finally looked at a map Thursday night after work...that ain't no 6 hour drive. Ten hours per Google and more like 12 hours (one way) with a dog and a sick-of-being-in-this-car wife. He now has heard my promise and declaration to never, never drive through West Virginia again, which he has interpreted as "unsedated." Still and all, an adventure was had. After picking up our newest addition to the family fleet we became addled when looking for the no-tell motel and ended up driving back and forth past Quantico Marine Base maybe four or seventeen times. I'm hoping for expecting a knock on the door from NCIS' Jethro and Ducky for questioning any day now. Lessons learned: Waffle Houses are fantabulous country-wide,...