A Tidings of Magpies

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.