A Tidings of Magpies

People Who Live Near the Hospital   by Tina Kelley Sick ones and survivors look down and see real life going on, presumably unscarred, the tricycle on the lawn, the garage door open, the truck on the highway going under the overpass, emerging on. From the solarium window the scene below looks fragile, cinematic and deaf, a model railroad, an oasis of health, the people there unknowingly blessed by the wishes of those who wait.

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.

Journey by Train by May Sarton Stretched across counties, countries, the train Rushes faster than memory through the rain. The rise of each hill is a musical phrase. Listen to the rhythm of space, how it lies, How it rolls, how it reaches, what unwinding relays Of wood and meadow where the red cows graze Come back again and again to closed eyes— That garden, that pink farm, that village steeple, And here and there the solitary people Who stand arrested when express trains pass, That stillness of an orchard in deep grass. Yet landscapes flow like this toward a place, A point in time and memory's own face. So when the clamor stops, we really climb Down to the earth, closing the curve of time, Meeting those we have left, to those we meet Bringing our whole life that has moved so fast, And now is gathered up and here at last, To unroll like a ribbon at their feet. HoneyedHaired Grrrl should be making her way back home tomorrow, air tr...

by Grace Paley On certain days I am not in love and my heart turns over crowding the lungs for air driving blood in and out of the skull improving my mind working muscles to the bone dashing resonance out of a roaring sea at my nerve endings Not much is needed air good sense power a noisy taking in and a loud giving back Then my heart like any properly turned motor takes off in sparks dragging all that machinery through the blazing day like grass which our lord knows I am

Apology by Richard Wilbur A word sticks in the wind's throat; A wind-launch drifts in the wells of rye; Sometimes, in broad silence, The hanging apples distil their darkness. You, in a green dress, calling, and with brown hair, Who come by the field-path now, whose name I say Softly, forgive me love if I also call you Wind's word, apple-heart, haven of grasses.

by Louis Jenkins January finally drags into February and one fumbles with numb fingers at the ordinary knots and hooks of life. People are irritable, difficult. Some days you want to stay in bed with the covers over your head and dream of paradise. A place where the warm sea washes the white sand. There are a few palm trees on the higher ground, many brightly colored fish in the lagoon, waves breaking on the reef farther out. No one in sight. Occasionally an incredibly large, split-second shark darkens the clear water. Sea birds ride the wind currents, albatross, kittiwake, ... and pass on. Day after day, sea wind and perfect sky .... You make a big heap of driftwood on the beach I've been down for the count with  all of some variation of the many influenza strains not covered by the 2013 flu vaccine. There's been much moaning and gnashing of teeth; usually the cat, as I've attempted to carry him with me from one unsatisfactory lay-about spot to anoth...

by Richard Blanco One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores, peeking over the Smokies, greeting the faces of the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth across the Great Plains, then charging across the Rockies. One light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a story told by our silent gestures moving behind windows. My face, your face, millions of faces in morning’s mirrors, each one yawning to life, crescendoing into our day: pencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights, fruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arrayed like rainbows begging our praise. Silver trucks heavy with oil or paper -- bricks or milk, teeming over highways alongside us, on our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save lives -- to teach geometry, or ring up groceries as my mother did for twenty years, so I could write this poem. All of us as vital as the one light we move through, the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day: equations to solve...

  By William Butler Yeats                              I went out to the hazel wood, Because a fire was in my head, And cut and peeled a hazel wand, And hooked a berry to a thread; And when white moths were on the wing, And moth-like stars were flickering out, I dropped the berry in a stream And caught a little silver trout. When I had laid it on the floor I went to blow the fire a-flame, But something rustled on the floor, And someone called me by my name: It had become a glimmering girl With apple blossom in her hair Who called me by my name and ran And faded through the brightening air. Though I am old with wandering Through hollow lands and hilly lands, I will find out where she has gone, And kiss her lips and take her hands; And walk among long dappled grass, And pluck till time and time...

                         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 ...

by Dara Wier                              I had been continuing to do the same thing while expecting different results. On most days the children learned how to do something. Time passed around us as something approaching a figure eight might move in order to let all else move or be moved by our large numbers of feelings exponentially on high alert once we let them register. It passed us around. It passed around us like a river around a boulder. Music consisted of light & light came on time. It was impossible for us not to anthropomorphize everything. And yes, watching ice skaters, the kind called figure skaters, the ones who aren't doing anything other than tracking again & again some figure of infinity marked out on ice for them, this never failed to quiet us down & take us some plac...

by Peg Lauber The grass here is strange paradise to northern feet. Stiff, it explodes into green when we aren't expecting it remembering it as greening up much later. All over town they turn the fountains on again. If there's one thing they've got enough of, it's water. Dig down a foot and you have it, even though brackish, and in the summer no cold water comes out of the tap no matter how long you run it. In every yard there's another explosion in January, camellias, pink, deep red, white, and we not a month past Christmas. But up north the frigid season crawls on, takes its time; even in April and May it's still snowing and sleeting, then comes hail as winter turns to summer in one day: 90 degrees. Here, however, people eat sack lunches on the dull green trolley with red touches still bearing Christmas garlands over the controls at each end. The riders open the windows to put their elbows out while they take the...

Homecoming by Blas Falconer Rain against the roof sounds like a slow tire over gravel, as if a friend has come. The train rumbles through the dark, and my body, tuned to hear you cry before you cry, stirs. The lamp floats in the window, the only window lit at this late hour on the empty street. Your hands unfurl as you fall asleep. Small Clock of Needs, Law that I Abide, the leaves gloss and shine. Like this we rock and sink into the long night of our rocking.

by Jim Harrison After days of darkness I didn't understand a second of yellow sunlight here and gone through a hole in clouds as quickly as a flashbulb, an immense memory of a moment of grace withdrawn. It is said that we are here but seconds in cosmic time, twelve and a half billion years, but who is saying this and why? In the Salt Lake City airport eight out of ten were fiddling relentlessly with cell phones. The world is too grand to reshape with babble. Outside the hot sun beat down on clumsy metal birds and an actual ten-million-year-old crow flew by squawking in bemusement. We're doubtless as old as our mothers, thousands of generations waiting for the sunlight.

by Marilyn Kallet In the dry summer field at nightfall, fireflies rise like sparks. Imagine the presence of ghosts flickering, the ghosts of young friends, your father nearest in the distance. This time they carry no sorrow, no remorse, their presence is so light. Childhood comes to you, memories of your street in lamplight, holding those last moments before bed, capturing lightning-bugs, with a blossom of the hand letting them go. Lightness returns, an airy motion over the ground you remember from Ring Around the Rosie. If you stay, the fireflies become fireflies again, not part of your stories, as unaware of you as sleep, being beautiful and quiet all around you.

by May Swenson The sun is hot, the ocean cool. The waves throw down their snowy heads. I run under their hiss and boom, mine their wild breath. Running the ledge where pipers prod their awls into sand-crab holes, my barefoot tracks their little prints cross on wet slate. Circles of romping water swipe and drag away our evidence. Running and gone, running and gone, the casts of our feet. My twin, my sprinting shadow on yellow shag, wand of summer over my head, it seems that we could run forever while the strong waves crash. But sun takes its belly under. Flashing above magnetic peaks of the ocean's purple heave, the gannet climbs, and turning, turns to a black sword that drops, hilt-down, to the deep. please note: photo from Chariots of Fire  with a wink and a nod to Mr. Bean

Let The Day Go by Grace Paley who needs it I had another day in mind something like this one sunny green the earth just right having suffered the assault of what is called torrential rain the pepper the basil sitting upright in their little boxes waiting I suppose for me also the cosmos the zinnias nearly blooming a year too late forget it let the day go the sweet green day let it take care of itself

by Ingrid Wendt Out of the bunch grass out of the cheat grass a bunch of grass waddles my way. Quill-tips bleached by winter four inches down: crown of glory dark at the roots: a halo catching the sun's final song: No way could such steady oblivion possibly live up to legend, whatever fear I might have had is gone, but still I stop Short on my after-dinner walk, no collision course if I can help it, thinking at first it's the wind, nudging a path out of the field Or one of a covey of tumbleweed lost like those today on the freeway, racing ahead of my car that whole long drive here to the banks of the Snake, to friends so close they know when to leave me alone. As though I were nowhere around, the porcupine shuffles the edge of the road, in five minutes crosses a distance I could have covered in less than one And disappears at last into cattails and rushes, sunset, a vespers of waterbirds, leavin...

by Joyce Sutphen That is not the country for poetry. It has no mountains, its flowers are plain and never poisonous, its gardens are packed into blue mason jars. There are no hedges bordering the roads, the sky flies up from the ditches, loose in every direction. Yet I knew it to be passionate, even in its low rolling hills, where a red tractor pushed through the oat field, cutting down gold straw and beating a stream of grain into the wagon trailing behind in the stubble, I knew it to be melodious in its birch woods, leaves shadowing a stone-strewn river, the path along the bank softened with pine needles, sunlight woven in and out of branches, the many colors of green, solid as a pipe organ's opening chord, I knew it would haunt the memory with its single elm, where a herd of cows found shade in the July heat, their bony tails swinging the tufted bristle left and right over the high ledge of a hip bone, while at the hori...

by John Koethe . . . humming in the summer haze. Diane christened it the Bean House, Since everything in it came straight from an L.L. Bean Home catalog. It looks out upon two Meadows separated by a stand of trees, and at night, When the heat begins to dissipate and the stars Become visible in the uncontaminated sky, I like to sit here on the deck, listening to the music Wafting from the inside through the sliding patio doors, Listening to the music in my head. It's what I do: The days go by, the days remain the same, dwindling Down to a precious few as I try to write my name In the book of passing days, the book of water. Some Days I go fishing, usually unsuccessfully, casting Gently across a small stream that flows along beneath Some overhanging trees or through a field of cows. Call it late bucolic: this morning I awoke to rain And a late spring chill, with water dripping from the Eaves, the apple trees, the pergola down the hill. ...

Tree Marriage by William Meredith In Chota Nagpur and Bengal the betrothed are tied with threads to mango trees, they marry the trees as well as one another, and the two trees marry each other. Could we do that some time with oaks or beeches? This gossamer we hold each other with, this web of love and habit is not enough. In mistrust of heavier ties, I would like tree-siblings for us, standing together somewhere, two trees married with us, lightly, their fingers barely touching in sleep, our threads invisible but holding.