A Tidings of Magpies

by Joyce Sutphen It was one of those days when the sun poured gold into the air, and flecks of light floated in shafts that fell through the branches of yellow leaf and green. We’d had dinner at a place on the edge of a lake, and now we were going back to town. There was a simple way to get there, but she didn’t take it. Instead, we drove the country roads with the corn rows flicking by, each one visible for a half second, then gone. “Hello, hello, hello,” they said, then “Good-bye, bye, bye, bye.” The soybeans, we agreed, had turned burgundy overnight, but it was the cornfields we watched, as if we were waiting for the waters to open, as if we might cross over Jordan.

By Frances Cornford The spirits of children are remote and wise, They must go free Like fishes in the sea Or starlings in the skies, Whilst you remain The shore where casually they come again. But when there falls the stalking shade of fear, You must be suddenly near, You, the unstable, must become a tree In whose unending heights of flowering green Hangs every fruit that grows, with silver bells; Where heart-distracting magic birds are seen And all the things a fairy-story tells; Though still you should possess Roots that go deep in ordinary earth, And strong consoling bark To love and to caress. Last, when at dark Safe on the pillow lies an up-gazing head And drinking holy eyes Are fixed on you, When, from behind them, questions come to birth Insistently, On all the things that you have ever said Of suns and snakes and parallelograms and flies, And whether these are true, Then for a while you'll need to be no more That sheltering shore Or le...

Well, MissNewOrleans Grrrrl is unpacked in her new apartment and sent us a pic of the orange tree outside her kitchen window. That seems a good omen to me for a sweet home.  Live Oaks, New Orleans by Jennifer Maier They square off along Napoleon avenue, opposing armies of dark women, leaning out so far their branches meet at the top, like hands grabbing fistfuls of tangled hair; and some of them are old, with the thick, scarred trunks of Storyville madams, and roots so strong their suck heaves up the sidewalk like so many broken saltines. And some are young, with the straightbacked bodies of girls who dream of horses and the brown arms of the neighbor boys, but underground the red roots grow together, fuse in a living circuitry spun deep and stronger than the whims of emperors, as if they've known all along that earth's the right place for love, as though, planted in battle lines, they incline toward the circle, and hold it open...

Giselle ... "...cause sometimes it lasts in love, but sometimes it hurts instead." Poor Giselle, if only she'd had an IPod to listen to the wisdom of Adele or read some poetry. Sometimes, I Am Startled Out of Myself by Barbara Crooker like this morning, when the wild geese came squawking, flapping their rusty hinges, and something about their trek across the sky made me think about my life, the places of brokenness, the places of sorrow, the places where grief has strung me out to dry. And then the geese come calling, the leader falling back when tired, another taking her place. Hope is borne on wings. Look at the trees. They turn to gold for a brief while, then lose it all each November. Through the cold months, they stand, take the worst weather has to offer. And still, they put out shy green leaves come April, come May. The geese glide over the cornfields, land on the pond with its sedges and reeds. You do not have to be wise. Eve...

Herbert Morris I am wearing a pale silk lounging robe the color of lake water glimpsed at dusk, relic, it may be, of a life before this of which no recollection, none whatever, has survived, the sash once girdling the waist confiscated the day I entered (laces, ropes, belts: potential self-inflicted weapons), wandering the corridors of The Home, medallions of a previous campaign, few but sterling, fastened to a lapel. Outside, some trees bear the indignities of the years of a long life—weather burn, sun scald, leaf canker, trunk scars, root mold, rot— with a degree of patience and composure utterly moving, wholly to be envied. Visitors, in winter, are few, if any. The drive takes long, lies far; most of the maps, whether by inadvertence or design, have routes misplaced, or landscapes rearranged, or roads which should lead somewhere leading nowhere, turning back on themselves, ending in woods, thwarted at that point a road should begin, a chaos of unspeakable proportions...

Enough by Jeffrey Harrison It's a gift, this cloudless November morning warm enough for you to walk without a jacket along your favorite path. The rhythmic shushing of your feet through fallen leaves should be enough to quiet the mind, so it surprises you when you catch yourself telling off your boss for a decade of accumulated injustices, all the things you've never said circling inside you. It's the rising wind that pulls you out of it, and you look up to see a cloud of leaves swirling in sunlight, flickering against the blue and rising above the treetops, as if the whole day were sighing, Let it go, let it go, for this moment at least, let it all go.