A Tidings of Magpies

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.

By Louis Jenkins The time has come to say goodbye, our plates empty except for our greasy napkins. Comrades, you on my left, balding, middle-aged guy with a ponytail, and you, Lefty, there on my right, though we barely spoke I feel our kinship. You were steadfast in passing the ketchup, the salt and pepper, no man could ask for better companions. Lunch is over, the cheese- burger and fries, the Denver sandwich, the counter nearly empty. Now we must go our separate ways. Not a fond embrace, but perhaps a hearty handshake. No? Well then, farewell. It is unlikely I'll pass this way again. Unlikely we will all meet again on this earth, to sit together beneath the neon and fluorescent calmly sipping our coffee, like the sages sipping their tea underneath the willow, sitting quietly, saying nothing.  My daughter texted yesterday to tell me she and her fiance have lost a dear friend; a member of the small family of loved ones they have collected in New Orleans....

by Marianne Boruch I walked out, and the nest was already there by the step. Woven basket of a saint sent back to life as a bird who proceeded to make a mess of things. Wind right through it, and any eggs long vanished. But it my hand it was intricate pleasure, even the thorny reeds softened in the weave. And the fading leaf mold, hardly itself anymore, merely a trick of light, if light can be tricked. Deep in a life is another life. I walked out, the nest already by the step. please note: photo by DarlingBridget from Homespun Bliss Blog

by Paul Lisicky That silly retriever. He doesn't go to the two guys looking right at him, beaming him awake with concentrated joy. Not at all: he goes straight to the man with his head turned to the left, who could care less about doggy behavior and isn't the least bit stirred by the snout parked in the knee and the wagging hind parts. And that's it: the physics of the known world. Which is why the trees look better when they're left unwatered, and the birds actually prefer it when you don't sing back to them. And the holy man crossing the street with the black brim hat? He knows better than to pick up what he's dropped and lift his face to the mountains. Take it from him, friend. You probably wouldn't even want it if the light hit you in your head.

A Short Panegyric by Mark Strand                                    Now that the vegetarian nightmare is over and we are back to our diet of meat and deep in the sway of our dark and beauty- ful habits and able to speak with calm of having survived, let the breeze of the future touch and retouch our large and hun- gering bodies. Let us march to market to embrace the butcher and put the year of the carrot, the month of the onion behind us, let us worship the roast or the stew that takes its place once again at the sacred center of the dining room table. (Olivier's on Decatur Street, New Orleans. And, yes, I'm still thinking about their Creole Rabbit.)

The Dancers Inherit the Party by Ian Hamilton Finlay When I have talked for an hour I feel lousy— Not so when I have danced for an hour: The dancers inherit the party While the talkers wear themselves out and sit in corners alone, and glower.

We went to a wedding on New Year's Eve...the eldest son of my best friend from high school. My friend who recently died. The wedding was held in the same church as her funeral four months ago. Seems like yesterday. The wedding was beautiful, and joyful, perhaps more so because of the sorrow that each one of us felt at our loss of her. It's no secret that not all marriages end happily ever after and the priest talked about the courage that this couple had in making a commitment of marriage and in having hope for their future. He is correct. It does take courage and, of course, his words were meant to do more than seal the deal for this young couple. The priest was aware of all the broken hearts in that church on this cold winter evening and of the power of love to heal them. To believe that is a path of the brave. A Wedding Poem by Thomas R. Smith   Bright faces surround the woman in white, the man in black, the sweetness of their att...

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 I like to think of the world before some genius invented turkeys with pop-up plastic thermometers in their breasts idiot birds with no wildness left in them...

It was a dark and stormy night. In her attic bedroom Margaret Murry, wrapped in an old patchwork quilt, sat at the foot of her bed and watched the trees tossing in the frenzied lashing of the wind. Behind the trees clouds scudded frantically across the sky. Every few moments the moon ripped through them, creating wraith-like shadows that raced along the ground. The house shook. excerpt from A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle please note: photo by StrawberryFields1967

by Ben Jonson The owl is abroad, the bat, and the toad, And so is the cat-a-mountain, The ant and the mole sit both in a hole, And the frog peeps out o' the fountain; The dogs they do bay, and the timbrels play, The spindle is now a turning; The moon it is red, and the stars are fled, But all the sky is a-burning: The ditch is made, and our nails the spade, With pictures full, of wax and of wool; Their livers I stick, with needles quick; There lacks but the blood, to make up the flood. Quickly, Dame, then bring your part in, Spur, spur upon little Martin, Merrily, merrily, make him fail, A worm in his mouth, and a thorn in his tail, Fire above, and fire below, With a whip in your hand, to make him go. please note : photo by Gigi De Carlo

  In Praise of the Great Bull Walrus by Alden Nowlan I wouldn't like to be one of the walrus people for the rest of my life but I wish I could spend one sunny afternoon lying on the rocks with them. I suspect it would be similar to drinking beer in a tavern that caters to longshoremen and won't admit women. We'd exchange no cosmic secrets. I'd merely say, "How yuh doin' you big old walrus?" and the nearest of the walrus people would answer, "Me? I'm doin' great. How yuh doin' yourself, you big old human being, you?" How good it is to share the earth with such creatures and how unthinkable it would have been to have missed all this by not being born: a happy thought, that, for not being born is the only tragedy that we can imagine but need never fear.

A Lover by Amy Lowell If I could catch the green lantern of the firefly I could see to write you a letter.

It was a grrrl's weekend at the lake. Pizza, beer, thrift store shopping, farmers' markets and girltalk. A nice break for all of us and a new way to reconfigure ourselves with 2 girls growing up, up, and away. CollegeGrrrl shadowed at BigFatTeaching Hospital, first in the Burns unit, then with me. That was fun to have her there and explain some of the details about nursing that can't be learned till you're in the thick of it and equipment that makes much more sense in person than in a lecture. HoneyHaired--our new collegegrrrl--made up for lost sleep. You'd think there was a magical sleeping potion in the backseat of the car. But, they're off and running again. Hubby is off working at winterizing the place before the season passes. I'm here on a day off with the remaining animal boys who could also sleep all day and night and then some. Must pull myself away quickly. I'm convinced they release some pherome that entices all humans around them to nap...

by Anne Porter Our poems Are like the wart-hogs In the zoo It's hard to say Why there should be such creatures But once our life gets into them As sometimes happens Our poems Turn into living things And there's no arguing With living things They are The way they are Our poems May be rough Or delicate Little Or great But always They have inside them A confluence of cries And secret languages And always They are improvident And free They keep A kind of Sabbath They play On sooty fire escapes And window ledges They wander in and out Of jails and gardens They sparkle In the deep mines They sing In breaking waves And rock like wooden cradles.

...Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy. --Max Ehrmann   please note: photo by my CollegeGrrrl from Eastern StandardTime Hospital

by David Shumate He is a hard one to write a poem about. Like Napolean. Hannibal. Genghis Khan. Already so large in history. To do it right, I have to sit down with him. At a place of his own choosing. Probably a steakhouse. We take a table in a corner. But people still recognize him, come up and slap him on the back, say how much they enjoyed studying about him in school and ask for his autograph. After he eats, he leans back and lights up a cigar and asks me what I want to know. Notebook in hand, I suggest that we start with the Little Big Horn and work our way back. But I realize I have offended him. That he would rather take it the other way around. So he rants on about the Civil War, the way west, the loyalty of good soldiers and now and then twists his long yellow hair with his fingers. But when he gets to the part about Sitting Bull, about Crazy Horse, he develops a twitch above his right eye, raises his finger for the waiter, excuses himself ...

by Lou Lipsitz Have a nice day. Have a memorable day. Have (however unlikely) a life-changing day. Have a day of soaking rain and lightning. Have a confused day thinking about fate. Have a day of wholes. Have a day of poorly marked, unrecognizable wholes you cannot fathom. Have a ferocious day, a bleak unbearable day. Have a riotously unproductive day; a grim jaw-clenched, Clint Eastwood vengeful law enforcement day. Have a day of raging, hair-yanking jealousy and meanness. Have a day of almost grasping how whole you are; a finely tuned, empty day. Have a nice day of walking and circling; a day of stalking and hunting, of planting strange seeds and wandering in the woods. Have a day of endearing nonsense, of hopelessly combing your hair, a day of yielding, of swallowing hard, breathing more deeply, a day of fondness for beetles and macabre spectacles, or irreverence about anything you want, of just sitting and wondering. ...

  by Pablo Neruda   ...I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where, I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I don't know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.

Air by Ruth Stone Through the open window, a confusion of gasoline fumes, lilacs, the green esters of grass. Edward Waite rides the lawn mower. Each summer his voice is more stifled. His emphysema is worse. "Three packs a day," he says, still proud of the fact. Before he got sick, he drove semis across the country. Every two weeks he drives his small truck up the mountain. He mows in long rows fitting swath to cut swath, overlapping the width. To please me he saves the wild paintbrush along the edge. Stripped to the waist, I see he has hung his blue shirt on my clothesline to dry out the sweat. The shirt, with its arms upraised, filled with the body of air, is deeply inhaling, exhaling its doppelgänger breath.