A Tidings of Magpies

preface to Leaves of Grass by Walt Whiman This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.

by Sharon Olds I've said that he and I had been crazy for each other, but maybe my ex and I were not crazy for each other. Maybe we were sane for each other, as if our desire was almost not even personal— it was personal, but that hardly mattered, since there seemed to be no other woman or man in the world. Maybe it was an arranged marriage, air and water and earth had planned us for each other—and fire, a fire of pleasure like a violence of kindness. To enter those vaults together, like a solemn or laughing couple in formal step or writhing hair and cry, seemed to me like the earth's and moon's paths, inevitable, and even, in a way, shy—enclosed in a shyness together, equal in it. But maybe I was crazy about him—it is true that I saw that light around his head when I'd arrive second at a restaurant—oh for God's sake, I was besotted with him. Meanwhile the planets orbited each other, the morning and the evening c...

                         by John Daniel Among other wonders of our lives, we are alive with one another, we walk here in the light of this unlikely world that isn't ours for long. May we spend generously the time we are given. May we enact our responsibilities as thoroughly as we enjoy our pleasures. May we see with clarity, may we seek a vision that serves all beings, may we honor the mystery surpassing our sight, and may we hold in our hands the gift of good work and bear it forth whole, as we were borne forth by a power we praise to this one Earth, this homeland of all we love. There was a fire here by the university on New Year's morning. Five kids got out and two were carried out by firefighters and brought to the hospital. When I say "kids" I mean college students--20 year olds. Of the two at our place, the young man ...