A Tidings of Magpies

by David Budbill I'm glad to see our friends come: talk, laughter, food, wine. I'm glad to see our friends go: solitude, emptiness, gardens, autumn wind. please note: art by Claude Monet

kicking summer out on its treacherous ass as it always does one day sometime after the midpoint of September, it stays awhile like an old friend that you have missed. It settles in the way an old friend will settle into your favorite chair and take out his pipe and light it and then fill the afternoon with stories of places he has been and things he has done since last he saw you.” ― Stephen King, Salem's Lot

by Linda Pastan When I taught you at eight to ride a bicycle, loping along beside you as you wobbled away on two round wheels, my own mouth rounding in surprise when you pulled ahead down the curved path of the park, I kept waiting for the thud of your crash as I sprinted to catch up, while you grew smaller, more breakable with distance, pumping, pumping for your life, screaming with laughter, the hair flapping behind you like a handkerchief waving goodbye.

Lotsa rain, compliments of Lee. Work tomorrow. Plans for more canning this weekend. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

At Summer's End by John Engels Early August, and the young butternut is already dropping its leaves, the nuts thud and ring on the tin roof, the squirrels are everywhere. Such richness! It means something to them that this tree should seem so eager to finish its business. The voice softens, and word becomes air the moment it is spoken. You finger the limp leaves. Precisely to the degree that you have loved something: a house, a woman, a bird, this tree, anything at all, you are punished by time. Like the tree, I take myself by surprise.

Summer Kitchen by Donald Hall In June's high light she stood at the sink With a glass of wine, And listened for the bobolink, And crushed garlic in late sunshine. I watched her cooking, from my chair. She pressed her lips Together, reached for kitchenware, And tasted sauce from her fingertips. "It's ready now. Come on," she said. "You light the candle." We ate, and talked, and went to bed, And slept. It was a miracle. please note: art by Neil Wyrick

We spent the first three days of this week driving up and back to the lake. Drank beer with our neighbors, bought a wasp catcher, rode bikes around Kelly's Island, got sunburnt, ate fish, worked jigsaw puzzles, and HoneyHaired and I watched That Touch of Mink . Hubby fell asleep probably at the first scene. The muffler did not fall off my car, though I worry that will happen any day now before we can get it to the dealer, so while you can hear us coming up the street, you don't actually feel it in your bones. Yet. Passed many a church and bank along the way up I-75 and in front of one of them was a sign reading, "Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.--Helen Keller." I imagine there were many inspiring messages we passed, but this one resonated with me and kept me centered my last two days at work. Thank you all for your warm thoughts and comments in my last posting. I called this morning around 5am and my patient's h...

by Wendell Berry IV The summer ends, and it is time To face another way. Our theme Reversed, we harvest the last row To store against the cold, undo The garden that will be undone. We grieve under the weakened sun To see all earth's green fountains dried, And fallen all the works of light. You do not speak, and I regret This downfall of the good we sought As though the fault were mine. I bring The plow to turn the shattering Leaves and bent stems into the dark, From which they may return. At work, I see you leaving our bright land, The last cut flowers in your hand. please note: photo by Maurits Van Wyk

by Dorothea Tanning On one of those birthdays of which I've had so many I was walking home through the park from a party, pleased that I'd resisted mentioning the birthday— why hear congratulations for doing nothing but live? The birthday was my secret with myself and gave me, walking under all those trees, such a strong feeling of satisfaction that everything else fell away: party sounds, the hostess who stared and as suddenly disappeared on seeing her husband walk in with a young(er ) friend; another guest examining garment labels in the room where I went to leave my jacket; one of two waiters balancing a trayful of foot-high champagne glasses; a bee-like buzz of voices I ought to have enjoyed but heard as foreign babble, so remote it was from a birthday, so empty of import nothing would remain. I got my jacket, waved from the hall, pressed Down. In summer the park, for an hour or so before night, is at its greenest, a whole implicit proposition of green leaves, a triumph of ...

School began again here in CinCity on Tuesday. I continued to deny it for a couple of days because I was working, but today I have driving duty and my September-May routine slid automatically back into its groove. I'll have to pay closer attention this year since one of these morning drives will be my last. I won't know it though until weeks or months later. HoneyHaired has her temps. She's working on her driving hours. Once she gets her license some crazy work schedule conflict will arise which will just make it simpler for her to drive to school and that will be that. I remember many days of driving CollegeGrrrl back and forth, up and down and round and round, but I had no inkling that it would end so suddenly and so completely. Even as I write this I know I won't realize it this year either for that is the nature of baby birds leaving the nest. So, I will strive to follow the words of wise men and yogis far and wide to BE PRESENT, and to pay attention, because, you...

by Linda Gregg When the men leave me, they leave me in a beautiful place. It is always late summer. When I think of them now, I think of the place. And being happy alone afterwards. This time it's Clinton, New York. I swim in the public pool at six when the other people have gone home. The sky is gray, the air is hot. I walk back across the mown lawn loving the smell and the houses so completely it leaves my heart empty. please note: photo by Meg Ojala

When we sold the tent we threw in the Grand Canyon with its shawl of pines, lap full of cones and chipmunks and crooked seams of river. We let them have the parched white moonscapes of Utah, and Colorado's magnificat of flowers sunbursting hill after hill. Long gentle stretches of Wyoming, rain outside some sad Idaho town where the children, giddy with strange places, clowned all night. Eyes like small veiled moons circling our single light, sleek shadows with pawprints, all went with the outfit; and youth, a river of campfires.