A Tidings of Magpies

From Blossoms by Li-Young Lee From blossoms comes this brown paper bag of peaches we bought from the boy at the bend in the road where we turned toward    signs painted  Peaches . From laden boughs, from hands, from sweet fellowship in the bins, comes nectar at the roadside, succulent peaches we devour, dusty skin and all, comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat. O, to take what we love inside, to carry within us an orchard, to eat not only the skin, but the shade, not only the sugar, but the days, to hold the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into    the round jubilance of peach. There are days we live as if death were nowhere in the background; from joy to joy to joy, from wing to wing, from blossom to blossom to impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom. There's a cool breeze coming in through the window. The cicadas are singing. I'm 5 minutes away from going for a morn...

We saw wreckage all along I-75 South on our way back home and stopped at a rest area particularly devastated. Should probably have thoughts of something profound about the power of nature and its randomness, but all I could think of was how much work it would take to clear this bit of land and how hot it would be. Since many out there still don't have electricity this might seem like a small matter; what to do with all the food in the refridgerator and freezer and how to find a hint of coolness becomes much more mind consuming. We're thankful that for once we're the ones with power though in this heat we're still going up to the neighborhood movie theater for 2 hrs of cooling relief. Moonlight Kingdom Saturday afternoon, The Intouchables on Sunday. Monday back to work. Heard this gentleman on WWOZ while we were driving through miles of farmland by Lake Erie. WWOZ is a New Orleans radio station and has an app so you can listen on your phone miles away. MissNew...

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...

Learning the Bicycle by Wyatt Prunty for Heather The older children pedal past Stable as little gyros, spinning hard To supper, bath, and bed, until at last We also quit, silent and tired Beside the darkening yard where trees Now shadow up instead of down. Their predictable lengths can only tease Her as, head lowered, she walks her bike alone Somewhere between her wanting to ride And her certainty she will always fall. Tomorrow, though I will run behind, Arms out to catch her, she'll tilt then balance wide Of my reach, till distance makes her small, Smaller, beyond the place I stop and know That to teach her I had to follow And when she learned I had to let her go.

It's been a rough summer for a lot of people, myself included. We've got three very damaged patients in our unit; their rooms all in a row; men in their 50's who have fallen from fixing their roof, from cutting limbs off a tree, and from working on his plane. Two of my best friends' husbands have left their marriages with more unsaid than said, and don't get me wrong, these are nice guys. Good husbands and dads and friends. Friends' parents are falling ill and their children getting injured. My neighbor, mother of a 7yr old girl, was diagnosed with cancer. As I passed through the Mexican section at Krogers a few weeks ago I noticed the display of religious candles, so I brought an Our Lady of Guadelupe to help turn things around. Now I'm up to four Our Ladies for more firepower. Burn it up, girls. Acrobat's Song by Liam Rector Who is it for whom we now perform, Cavorting on wire: For whom does the boy Climbing the ladder Balance an...

by Peter Makuck My first time on the night train I couldn't sleep With expectation, the lucky Shapes of houses wrapped in dream— Trees slowed, then creaked to a stop. 4:00 a.m. under country stars. Lower the window: new air, A deserted dirt road and A peasant pedaling away, A wand-like loaf in his hand, Tail-light growing weak Red in the dark, as if his work Was to bring fresh light To woods and fields. He did, Keeping me there at that Balanced blue hour even later In the Sainte Chappelle, The blur of the Louvre and after. please note: photo art by M. A. Andrew

by Louis Jenkins Temperature in the upper seventies, a bit of a breeze. Great cumulus clouds pass slowly through the summer sky like parade floats. And the slender grasses gather round you, pressing forward, with exaggerated deference, whispering, eager to catch a glimpse. It's your party after all. And it couldn't be more perfect. Yet there's a nagging thought: you don't really deserve all this attention, and that come October, there will be a price to pay. please note: photo by me. Lake Erie sky in July

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...

by Elaine Terranova In the heat, in the high grass their knees touched as they sat crosslegged facing each other, a lightness and a brittleness in their bodies. They touched like shells. How odd that I should watch them say goodbye. What did it have to do with me? There was my own stillness and the wasps and the tiny flies for a long time taking stitches in the surrounding air and a comfort I felt, as the wind tore through, to find the trees miraculously regaining their balance.

Illustrated Guide to Familiar American Trees by Charlie Smith I don't get it about the natural world. Like, greenery, without people in it, is supposed to do what? City sunlight, I say, how can you beat it— the walk to the pool after work, shine caught in the shopkeeper's visor, bursts. I see myself moving around New York, snapping my fingers, eating fries. My ex-wife's out in California. I wish she was over on Bank Street, up on the second floor, and I was on the way there to call to her from the sidewalk. There's a cypress on that block, two honey locusts and an oak. I love those trees like my own brothers.

It's really, really, really warm. Brutally. Hot. Memories of the heat wave of 1995 kind of hot. I can't live 24/7 in an air conditioned bedroom. I have a busy, full life with things to do, places to go and people to see. Dishes to wash. And..., our TV is in the living room, not the bedroom, so you can see my difficulty here. I am desperately seeking distraction. I signed up to work an extra 8 hours today simply to be out of this oven of a house for a little while. That, my friends, is desperation. Ocean's Twelve is on the Oxygen channel with some of my favorite bad boys of summer, which, with some well placed fans and a carton of Madison's Lemon Basil sorbet, is distracting enough for an afternoon. HoneyHaired and I are leaving later tonight for Spring Grove Cemetery and their annual Moonlight Tour. We're hoping for some spookiness with a touch of chills. Oh, bring it on. Big gusts of chills. A Summer Night by Kate Barnes A summer night. The moon's face, alm...

by June Robertson Beisch The parade began and the Bryant Jr. High School band marched through the streets of Minneapolis wearing white shirts, blue trousers, playing John Philip Sousa Lance, Jack, Sharon and myself on drums, strapped to our knees so we could play, arms akimbo, drumsticks held high, drum rolls, paradiddles, rim shots, flams while the trumpets groaned and the bystanders cheered us on in the rain-drenched streets. The Girl Scouts strutted ahead of us wearing their green uniforms, berets and badges waving the Girl Scout flag, and smiling, We could do anything after this, we felt, twirling our drumsticks between our fingers Such joy seems unimaginable until I conjure it Not even Wordsworth's memory of a field of daffodils comes close to it The picnic later at the Minnehaha Falls Park, then walking home much later in the dark still filled with the sounds of it. To march at thirteen...

by Charles Bukowski sometimes I think the gods deliberately keep pushing me into the fire just to hear me yelp a few good lines. they just aren't going to let me retire silk scarf about neck giving lectures at Yale. the gods need me to entertain them. they must be terribly bored with all the others and I am too. and now my cigarette lighter has gone dry. I sit here hopelessly flicking it. this kind of fire they can't give me. please note: art by Fabian Perez

Back Yard by Carl Sandburg Shine on, O moon of summer. Shine to the leaves of grass, catalpa and oak, All silver under your rain to-night. An Italian boy is sending songs to you to-night from an accordion. A Polish boy is out with his best girl; they marry next month; to-night they are throwing you kisses. An old man next door is dreaming over a sheen that sits in a cherry tree in his back yard. The clocks say I must go—I stay here sitting on the back porch drinking white thoughts you rain down. Shine on, O moon, Shake out more and more silver changes. please note: photo by Wallace Billingham

by William Carlos Williams Wanderer moon smiling a faintly ironical smile at this brilliant, dew-moistened summer morning,— a detached sleepily indifferent smile, a wanderer's smile,— if I should buy a shirt your color and put on a necktie sky-blue where would they carry me? please note: art by Dale Hueppchen