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...