A Tidings of Magpies

Revival by Luci Shaw March. I am beginning to anticipate a thaw. Early mornings the earth, old unbeliever, is still crusted with frost where the moles have nosed up their cold castings, and the ground cover in shadow under the cedars hasn't softened for months, fogs layering their slow, complicated ice around foliage and stem night by night, but as the light lengthens, preacher of good news, evangelizing leaves and branches, his large gestures beckon green out of gray. Pinpricks of coral bursting from the cotoneasters. A single bee finding the white heather. Eager lemon-yellow aconites glowing, low to the ground like little uplifted faces. A crocus shooting up a purple hand here, there, as I stand on my doorstep, my own face drinking in heat and light like a bud welcoming resurrection, and my hand up, too, ready to sign on for conversion.

Happiness Paisley Rekdal I have been taught never to brag but now I cannot help it: I keep a beautiful garden, all abundance, indiscriminate, pulling itself from the stubborn earth. Does it offend you to watch me working in it, touching my hands to the greening tips or tearing the yellow stalks back, so wild the living and the dead both snap off in my hands? The neighbor with his stuttering fingers, the neighbor with his broken love: each comes up my drive to receive his pitying, accustomed consolations, watches me work in silence a while, rises in anger, walks back. Does it offend them to watch me not mourning with them but working fitfully, fruitlessly, working the way the bees work, which is to say by instinct alone, which looks like pleasure? I can stand for hours among the sweet narcissus, silent as a point of bone. I can wait longer than sadness. I can wait longer than your grief. It is such a small thing to be proud of, this garden. Today there were scrub jays, quail, a woodpeck...

by Andrea Carlisle Monday Figure out what to wear—white dress? Put hair in bun Bake gingerbread for Sue Peer out window at passersby Write poem Hide poem Tuesday White dress? Off-white dress? Feed cats Chat with Lavinia Work in garden Letter to T.W.H. Wednesday White dress or what? Eavesdrop on visitors from behind door Write poem Hide poem Thursday Try on new white dress Gardening—watch out for narrow fellows in grass! Gingerbread, cakes, treats Poems: Write and hide them Friday Embroider sash for white dress Write poetry Water flowers on windowsill Hide everything

by Ted Kooser In the alley behind the florist's shop, a huge white garbage truck was parked and idling. In a cloud of exhaust, two men in coveralls and stocking caps, their noses dripping, were picking through the florist's dumpster and each had selected a fistful of roses. As I walked past, they gave me a furtive, conspiratorial nod, perhaps sensing that I, too (though in my business suit and tie) am a devotee of garbage – an aficionado of the wilted, the shopworn, and the free— and that I had for days been searching beneath the heaps of worn-out, faded words to find this brief bouquet for you. please note: photo by piedmont fossil

Being in Love by Chungmi Kim Awakened from a dream, I curl up and turn. The roses on the dresser smile and your words bloom. The red roses for Valentine's Day. Like in a film thoughts of you unfold moment by moment. I vaguely hear the sound of your spoon scooping cereal the water stream in the shower the buzzing noise of your electric razor like a singing of cicada. Your footsteps in and out of the bedroom. Your lips touching my cheek lightly. And the sound of the door shutting. In your light I fall asleep again under the warm quilt happily like a child. Upon waking on the kitchen counter I find a half grapefruit carefully cut and sectioned. Such a loving touch is a milestone For my newly found happiness. please note: photo by Natalie Clayton