A Tidings of Magpies

by Kenneth Rexroth 3 AM, the night is absolutely still; Snow squeals beneath my skis, plumes on the turns. I stop at the canyon’s edge, stand looking out Over the Great Valley, over the millions — In bed, drunk, loving, tending mills, furnaces, Alone, wakeful, as the world rolls in chaos. The quarter moon rises in the black heavens — Over the sharp constellations of the cities The cold lies, crystalline and silent, Locked between the mountains. Please note: art by Nancy Boudreaux @ Offerings.  blog.nboudreaux.com

For Maia by Gary Johnson A little girl is singing for the faithful to come ye Joyful and triumphant, a song she loves, And also the partridge in a pear tree And the golden rings and the turtle doves. In the dark streets, red lights and green and blue Where the faithful live, some joyful, some troubled, Enduring the cold and also the flu, Taking the garbage out and keeping the sidewalk shoveled. Not much triumph going on here—and yet There is much we do not understand. And my hopes and fears are met In this small singer holding onto my hand.        Onward we go, faithfully, into the dark        And are there angels hovering overhead? Hark.

by Tom Hennen Inside the barn the sheep were standing, pushed close to one another. Some were dozing, some had eyes wide open listening in the dark. Some had no doubt heard of wolves. They looked weary with all the burdens they had to carry, like being thought of as stupid and cowardly, disliked by cowboys for the way they eat grass about an inch into the dirt, the silly look they have just after shearing, of being one of the symbols of the Christian religion. In the darkness of the barn their woolly backs were full of light gathered on summer pastures. Above them their white breath was suspended, while far off in the pine woods, night was deep in silence. The owl and rabbit were wondering, along with the trees, if the air would soon fill with snowflakes, but the power that moves through the world and makes our hair stand on end was keeping the answer to itself. please note: artwork by Robert Bateman

by Kevin Carey In grammar school I stuttered, felt the hot panic on my face when my turn to read crept up the row. Even when I counted the paragraphs and memorized the passage, I’d trip on the first or second word, and then it would be over, the awful hesitation, the word clinging to the lining of my throat rising only too late to avoid the laughter around me. I was never the smartest kid in the room, but I had answers I knew were right yet was afraid to say them. Years later it all came out, flowing sentences I practiced over and over, Shakespeare or Frost, my own tall tales in low-lit barrooms, scribbled in black-bound journals, rehearsing, anticipating my turn, my time, a way of finally getting it right.

by Anne Higgins , Strong coffee smells like a current of warm southerly air in the climate of dawn. Strong coffee gets stronger when poured back through the grounds. Opaque, thick, hot, bitter for waking up, the caffeine pumps through your center, stains your mouth with morning, with going to work, surprises you with your own breath.

by Howard Nemerov The people in the elevator all Face front, they all keep still, they all Look up with the rapt and stupid look of saints In paintings at the numbers that light up By turn and turn to tell them where they are. They are doing the dance, they are playing the game. To get here they have gone by avenue And street, by ordinate and abscissa, and now By this new coordinate, up. They are three- dimensional characters, taken from real life; They have their fates, whether to rise or fall, And when their numbers come up they get out. Please note: St James the Great, painting by  Guido Reni,  1621

"But by evening the comfortable gloom of December had returned. Nearly all the snow in the treetops had slipped away, and with it the illusion that daylight had somehow been trapped in the canopy above. The woods had reerected themselves. Sunset came and went, and all the color in the natural landscape drained away with it. Blue Christmas bulbs strung along the gables of an old farmhouse, or the orange glow of an incandescent lamp seen through a roadside window at twilight, made it plain how utterly the world had been reduced to black and white. The cold came on a little deeper that night, and in the morning the snow on the woodpile was spiked with frost." from The Rural Life by Verlyn Klinkenborg

For those of you who do not know, and why would you--I've been away from this blog for some time--I have two daughters, one in New Orleans and the younger newly moved to Alaska for a job. Hubby went up in October with her to settle her into her apartment, meet the roommate, get a car, insurance, find a grocery store. I had scheduled a week off in November,  a desperate attempt to not be a stressed maniac while cooking,  the week of Thanksgiving which gave me time to fly up there.  Trust me. You need a week. The flight there from the Midwest is a commitment. Passed over this lovely bit of scenery. Believe it's the Canadian Cascade Mountain Range. The temps were in the negative numbers. They've had snow for some time now and the roads are packed ice. You get used to it. The prettiest place for me was Creamer's Field, a migratory bird sanctuary 10 minutes from town. Quiet and still. Pizza is a poor show there. Anyone with a good recipe could make...

The Philosophy of Waiting Catch the moon in a jar. Be befuzzled.  The jay carries in its feather sky, a cloud, and deepest space. It is a tiger. Children cartwheel in the street. Old women shuffle behind their tiny dogs. Top-heavy hydrangeas thirst for light,  writhing Medusas among stones. They cannot decide what color to be,  so they alternate. We can learn from them. Can you recall the scent of herbs in winter? Life is interstitial. Don’t stub your toe. ---by Second Story Window's blog author

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.

by Joyce Sutphen It was one of those days when the sun poured gold into the air, and flecks of light floated in shafts that fell through the branches of yellow leaf and green. We’d had dinner at a place on the edge of a lake, and now we were going back to town. There was a simple way to get there, but she didn’t take it. Instead, we drove the country roads with the corn rows flicking by, each one visible for a half second, then gone. “Hello, hello, hello,” they said, then “Good-bye, bye, bye, bye.” The soybeans, we agreed, had turned burgundy overnight, but it was the cornfields we watched, as if we were waiting for the waters to open, as if we might cross over Jordan.

Fairbanks Under the Solstice by  John Haines Slowly, without sun, the day sinks toward the close of December. It is minus sixty degrees. Over the sleeping houses a dense fog rises—smoke from banked fires, and the snowy breath of an abyss through which the cold town is perceptibly falling. As if Death were a voice made visible, with the power of illumination... Now, in the white shadow of those streets, ghostly newsboys make their rounds, delivering to the homes of those who have died of the frost word of the resurrection of Silence. Honey-Haired Girl has moved to Alaska. The Land of the Midnight Sun. The Last Frontier. Hubby was up there for about two weeks to get her settled. I was just up there for Thanksgiving. She's doing well; thank you for asking. I believe the lowest temperatures were hovering at -18, and the sun is up for about 5 hrs. And, by "up," I mean it drifts along the horizon. It's dark by 4 pm. The roads are essentiall...

Thanks by WS Merwin, 1927 Listen with the night falling we are saying thank you we are stopping on the bridges to bow for the railings we are running out of the glass rooms with our mouths full of food to look at the sky and say thank you we are standing by the water looking out in different directions. back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging after funerals we are saying thank you after the news of the dead whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you looking up from tables we are saying thank you in a culture up to its chin in shame living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you over telephones we are saying thank you in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators remembering wars and the police at the back door and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you in the banks that use us we are saying thank you with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you wi...

Remnants still visible           by  Marge Piercy Robins migrate, all schoolchildren learn but here on the Cape, every winter a flock forms and stays, long frigid months after their compatriots have flown south. They live deep in the woods on hips and berries wizened by cold. Sometimes they appear here among the feeder birds, one or two almost outcasts. Off Alaska when humpback whales leave in fall as the waters freeze and the world turns white, heading for mating grounds off Hawaii and Mexico, certain whales remain. What makes a creature stay when almost all of its kind have moved on? In burned-out areas of Detroit, you’ll notice one house still wears curtains, a bike locked to the porch. Sometimes in the suburbs among tract houses with carpets of grass one farmhouse lurks, maybe even with a barn. I imagine its owner grey and stubborn, still growing the best tomatoes for miles, refusing to plant inedible gr...