A Tidings of Magpies

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

From Our House to Your House By Jack Ridl It is 1959. It is the cusp of the coming revolution. We still like Ike. We are still afraid of Sputnik. We read  Life  magazine and  Sports Illustrated where the athletes grow up shooting hoops in the driveway, playing catch in the backyard. We sit on our sectional sofa. My mother loves Danish modern. Our pants have cuffs. Our hair is short. We are smiling and we mean it. I am a guard. My father is my coach. I am sitting next to him on the bench. I am ready to go in. My sister will cheer. My mother will make the pre-game meal from  The Joy of Cooking . Buster is a good dog. We are all at an angle. We are a family at an angle. Our clothes are pressed. We look into the eye of the camera. “Look ‘em in the eye,” my father teaches us. All we see ahead are wins, good grades, Christmas. We believe in being happy. We believe in mowing the lawn, a two-car garage, a freezer, and what the teach...

by Marjorie Saiser I ride along in the backseat; the aunt who can drive picks up each sister at her door, keeps the Pontiac chugging in each driveway while one or the other slips into her overshoes and steps out, closing her door with a click, the wind lifting the fringe of her white cotton scarf as she comes down the sidewalk, still pulling on her new polyester Christmas-stocking mittens. We have no business to be out in such a storm, she says, no business at all. The wind takes her voice and swirls it like snow across the windshield. We're on to the next house, the next aunt, the heater blowing to beat the band. At the last house, we play canasta, the deuces wild even as they were in childhood, the wind blowing through the empty apple trees, through the shadows of bumper crops. The cards line up under my aunts' finger bones; eights and nines and aces straggle and fall into place like well-behaved children. My aunts shuffle and meld; they laugh li...

                   "Outside, it is cold, silvery, and suffused with a delicate milky haze. Gray hushed days follow each other, calling us to inner activity. Sitting by the fire or hurrying through the streets, our power of thinking grows. Filled with new ideas, we feel creative and courageous. Legend says, "words spoken in winter go unheard until next summer." This is the message from Janus, the old Etruscan god of the doorway, after whom January was named. Janus stands between past and future, new and old. He has two faces. One looks back, the other forward. His third face is invisible. This is the face of eternity, the present moment: NOW. Warmth settles around our hearts. Summoned to great deeds of right action and selfless love, Janus bids us pass through his gate." -- Christopher Bamford please note: photo is from Cincinnati Daily Photo. Apparently there was a once-in-a-lifetime, pheno...

(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

It just makes me laugh...

Hubby and I saw the documentary, Marley, a few days ago and I was really surprised. Didn't know much about the man at all and, I admit, thought the whole movement was about smoking dope. I know, a little judgey. However, a good movie, great music, and I suspect inside Bob Marley was a little Jewish grandmother telling us all how to be better people...so Happy Mothers' Day weekend and get out there and  spread the love.

Lenten Dissent by Cherie Lashway There once was a logger, named Paddy O'Connell, Who at lunch during Lent, found himself at McDonalds, And had just settled down to his Big Mac and fries, When along came his priest, much to both their surprise. The priest said to Paddy, "Just what are you eating? In this season of Lent, I sure hope you're not cheating." Paddy said to the Father, "I'll tell you no lies. I'm enjoying a Big Mac, along with some fries." The priest said to Paddy, "I see no repentance. Because of this sin, you will have to do penance. "By Friday or sooner, I say that you should, For our fireplace, deliver a cord of chopped wood." Now our timberman, Paddy, an overworked man, Did think to himself, "I don't think that I can." But early on Friday, our priest, he heard shoveling, And looked out the window at Paddy not groveling. And saw with confusion, disma...

VIII by Robert Hass Chester found a dozen copies of his first novel in a used book- store and took them to the counter. The owner said, "You can't have them all," so Chester kept five. The owner said, "That'll be a hundred and twelve dollars." Chester said, "What?" and the guy said, "They're first editions, mac, twenty bucks apiece." And so Chester said, "Why are you charging me a hundred and twelve dollars?" The guy said, "Three of them are autographed." Chester said, "Look, I wrote this book." The guy said, "All Right, a hundred. I won't charge you for the autographs."

Left Tuesday afternoon after a mandatory 2 hour staff meeting-on my day off-for a short visit to the lake. I would tell you the details of the meeting if it weren't Top Secret and I'd been paying a wee bit more attention, but alas, we'll all figure it out at the same time. A day late and dollar short perhaps. It's as hot in northern Ohio as it is throughout the rest of the country. There is a big lake there to take your mind away from it, however. And a breeze. And we weren't at home with a list of chores staring balefully at us and wilting in the humid air. Home now in my sinfully hot kitchen. Hubby's outside grilling up some eggplant and red pepper and boiling a pot of pasta while I chop the tomatoes, basil and garlic we bought at a farmstand on the way home. Home Sweat Home. Cherry Tomatoes by Anne Higgins Suddenly it is August again, so hot, breathless heat. I sit on the ground in the garden of Carmel, picking ripe cherry tomatoes ...

happy weekend!

Even the Smallest Paradise by CJ Evans The women in pencil skirts spill from towers and let down all their disarming hair. They hold caramel glasses of whiskey with sweet vermouth as men with undone cuffs speak something secretive into the felt- lined boxes of their ears. The thunder of planes is ignored, and the four o'clock flowers are fully open. Their laughter is a siren, echoing among the buildings. And they don't look as the white parachutes drift down to them like dandelion seeds.  

Rest. by Richard Jones It's so late I could cut my lights and drive the next fifty miles of empty interstate by starlight, flying along in a dream, countryside alive with shapes and shadows, but exit ramps lined with eighteen wheelers and truckers sleeping in their cabs make me consider pulling into a rest stop and closing my eyes. I've done it before, parking next to a family sleeping in a Chevy, mom and dad up front, three kids in the back, the windows slightly misted by the sleepers' breath. But instead of resting, I'd smoke a cigarette, play the radio low, and keep watch over the wayfarers in the car next to me, a strange paternal concern and compassion for their well being rising up inside me. This was before I had children of my own, and had felt the sharp edge of love and anxiety whenever I tiptoed into darkened rooms of sleep to study the small, peaceful faces of my beloved darlings. Now, the fatherly...

please note: photo by Eric Langlay

Gonna get Hubby out of town today. And by out of town, I mean not inside a hospital. We might even be talking Waffle House. Daily Life by Susan Wood A parrot of irritation sits on my shoulder, pecks at my head, ruffling his feathers in my ear. He repeats everything I say, like a child trying to irritate the parent. Too much to do today: the dracena that's outgrown its pot, a mountain of bills to pay and nothing in the house to eat. Too many clothes need washing and the dog needs his shots. It just goes on and on, I say to myself, no one around, and catch myself saying it, a ball hit so straight to your glove you'd have to be blind not to catch it. And of course I hope it does go on and on forever, the little pain, the little pleasure, the sun a blood orange in the sky, the sky parrot blue and the day unfolding like a bird slowly spreading its wings, though I know, saying it, that it won't

Yeah, it's kinda like that...Hubby and I went to BigFatTeaching Hospital yesterday bright and early at 6:30am to begin the registration and pre-op preparations. It's very busy and chatty there in the morning as all the events scheduled and unscheduled unwind themselves into the day. Interesting to watch for once  from the sidelines. Made it into the OR at 8:30 and didn't get much of a look at the lithotripsy machine since my glasses were already off, and to be honest, I'd already had a little sedation while I was rolled into the room.             All I really remember was I felt compelled to share with the nurses next to me was that everyone should go see the movie, Bridesmaids . I still stand by that opinion. Discovered the anesthesiologist was the husband of one of my favorite neuro residents upstairs. That was a lovely and comforting surprise. I think he was surprised I knew he had bee...

Scary Movies by Kim Addonizio Today the cloud shapes are terrifying, and I keep expecting some enormous black-and-white B-movie Cyclops to appear at the edge of the horizon, to come striding over the ocean and drag me from my kitchen to the deep cave that flickered into my young brain one Saturday at the Baronet Theater where I sat helpless between my older brothers, pumped up on candy and horror—that cave, the litter of human bones gnawed on and flung toward the entrance, I can smell their stench as clearly as the bacon fat from breakfast. This is how it feels to lose it— not sanity, I mean, but whatever it is that helps you get up in the morning and actually leave the house on those days when it seems like death in his brown uniform is cruising his panel truck of packages through your neighborhood. I think of a friend's voice on her answering machine— Hi, I'm not here— the morning of her funeral, the calls filling up the tape and the ma...