A Tidings of Magpies

Fairbanks Under the Solstice by  John Haines Slowly, without sun, the day sinks toward the close of December. It is minus sixty degrees. Over the sleeping houses a dense fog rises—smoke from banked fires, and the snowy breath of an abyss through which the cold town is perceptibly falling. As if Death were a voice made visible, with the power of illumination... Now, in the white shadow of those streets, ghostly newsboys make their rounds, delivering to the homes of those who have died of the frost word of the resurrection of Silence. Honey-Haired Girl has moved to Alaska. The Land of the Midnight Sun. The Last Frontier. Hubby was up there for about two weeks to get her settled. I was just up there for Thanksgiving. She's doing well; thank you for asking. I believe the lowest temperatures were hovering at -18, and the sun is up for about 5 hrs. And, by "up," I mean it drifts along the horizon. It's dark by 4 pm. The roads are essentiall...

Every year when we watch the Oscar ceremonies we see the nominations for the short films and documentaries and say out loud, "WTH??  Who gets to see these films?" And then, the next day or even by the end of the program we've forgotten the whole matter. This year after a particularly cabin-fever inducing snow fall we booted our way up to the village to check out civilization and noticed a flyer on Sitwell's Coffee Shop window with a date and a theater location to watch the Oscar Shorts. Serendipity!! The Cincinnati World Cinema has been doing it for the last 14 years and we're nothing but clueless morons to have missed it all these years. I think you can also buy it on Amazon for instant viewing on your device. But again, techno idjits are we with the attention span of a moth. So short films work well with our distracted brains. The longest film was 39 minutes I believe. The shortest, 3 minutes, give or take a minute or so. Seven films the first day, or t...

Peter Frampton played with the CinCity Ballet yesterday, their last performance of the season. I remember Frampton as the pretty faced, curlied haired man-boy of my college days whose music played in the background on someones radio somewhere. Never bought his music, but I thought this would be an interesting way to spend a Saturday afternoon. It was more than interesting. It was phenomenal. Exuberant. Muscular and athletic. And beautiful. If I can ever find a rendition of Friendly Fire to post, I will post it here. The man knows his way around a broken heart. The dancing that accompanied it has come and gone, but is not forgotten. Like all good heartaches.  http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20130427/ENT07/304270071/Review-Frampton-ballet-mesh-art-forms

 I have not wanted to write much after my friend's death. Let me be honest, I have not wanted to think much. And I believe that's as it should be. Lord knows, the brain takes years to recover and heal and I imagine the soul does, too. But, I miss the magic I found in words. The unexpected placements and pairings. The rhythm of syllables. So, for me, 2013 will be a year of opening doors and telling the tales of what I find. Our squirrel's nest squirms and reassembles  beneath a winter's wind. ...Maybe...or  I could watch Big Bang Theory marathons...Bazinga! The Frogs After Dark by Robert Bly I am so much in love with mournful music That I don't bother to look for violinists. The aging peepers satisfy me for hours. The ant moves on his tiny Sephardic feet. The flute is always glad to repeat the same note. The ocean rejoices in its dusky mansion. Bears are often piled up close to each other. In caves of bears, it's just one ...

"One must say Yes to life, and embrace it wherever it is found - and it is found in terrible places... For nothing is fixed, forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out." James Baldwin

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.

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.

The Bedroom by Paula Bohince Sheets boiled with lavender, the hard bed. Handmade eye pillow filled with Great Northerns. Cactus to the ceiling, orange corsages. No embarrassment, a calm that is the opposite of ambition, I think. Mind like a diary unlocked on the dresser, pages lifting in breeze. Like those vivid flowers. Amethyst on a chain: external heart. Heirlooms in a shallow basket I can look at without regret, or regard and weep, kneeling, beside. A water glass, my eyeglasses, arms open in a waiting embrace. Sleeping on my husband's chest, his undershirt dryer-warm, arresting as a cloud in a black-and-white photograph.

Our first summer movie this year. Quite delish. "Lips red as blood. Hair black as night. Bring me your heart, my dear, dear Snow White."

All Dharmas Are Marked with Emptiness by Frank X. Gaspar I'm talking now about the destitute and the wild-eyed, I'm talking about the lady who made the head of the Virgin Mary out of cut up pieces of magazines and broken glass and a can of carpenter's glue—and then there's the girl I know who works in the supermarket, who printed an entire anthology of poems on a single eight-and-a-half-by-eleven sheet of Xerox paper and folded a hundred copies down to wallet size and passed them out to anyone who dared look her in the eye. You know what I mean: there are all those lonely, desperate, weird minds—yours among them for all I know—and the Dharma is everywhere, books and words and people thinking, beat-up notebooks from the dollar store, scribbling the world into them—a man has a mystery, a woman has an adventure, the kids are banging rhymes together like tin cans full of old nails. Where's it all going, this clatter, this wonder...

and could you please move your big head from in front of the monitor screen, Mr. Likes-To-Get-In-My-Way-While-I-Am-Trying-To-Work...?? The Cure by Ginger Andrews Lying around all day with some strange new deep blue weekend funk, I'm not really asleep when my sister calls to say she's just hung up from talking with Aunt Bertha who is 89 and ill but managing to take care of Uncle Frank who is completely bed ridden. Aunt Bert says it's snowing there in Arkansas, on Catfish Lane, and she hasn't been able to walk out to their mailbox. She's been suffering from a bad case of the mulleygrubs. The cure for the mulleygrubs, she tells my sister, is to get up and bake a cake. If that doesn't do it, put on a red dress.

In the White Sky by William Stafford Many things in the world have already happened. You can go back and tell about them. They are part of what we own as we speed along through the white sky. But many things in the world haven't yet happened. You help them by thinking and writing and acting. Where they begin, you greet them or stop them. You come along and sustain the new things. Once, in the white sky there was a beginning, and I happened to notice and almost glimpsed what to do. But now I have come far to here, and it is away back there. Some days, I think about it. Hubby and I are sitting here this morning drinking our coffees and listening to WWOZ out of New Orleans on the computer and trying to decide what to do with our day off. If anything. It's cool and grey here. Good day to curl up and read or watch more episodes of Treme in our vigorous and studious attempt to learn about our daughter's new home. I...

Contentment by Michael Ryan Fragile, provisional, it comes unbidden as evening: the children on the block called in to dinner that for tonight is plentiful, as if it had cost nothing either in money or worry about money. Then evening deepens and the street turns silent. There may be disasters idling in driveways, and countless distresses sharpening, but all that matters most that must be done is done. please note: photo by Abu Emir

Parole by Alan Brownjohn (i.m. I. H.) The lately dead still arrive in the corner of your eye Past the restaurant window, preparing slow smiles of pride At achieving their return. They know that without them You can never be the same, so they cheat for a while. They keep trying to work a parole to the usual places, They won't be excluded from them if you are there. Their fingers have pressed the latch and the door nearly opens, But then their smile turns embarrassed because they find It behaves like a turnstile: they think they have admission, But this door is fixed to prevent them coming back in. And you just can't help, at all; if you went out to greet them They would not be there, no one in the street would have seen them. Then slowly the corner of your eye Forgets to look.

 Wild Geese by Charles Goodrich I'm picking beans when the geese fly over, Blue Lake pole beans I figure to blanch and freeze. Maybe pick some dilly beans. And there will be more beans to give to the neighbors, forcibly if necessary. The geese come over so low I can hear their wings creak, can see their tail feathers making fine adjustments. They slip-stream along so gracefully, riding on each other's wind, surfing the sky. Maybe after the harvest I'll head south. Somebody told me Puerto Vallarta is nice. I'd be happy with a cheap room. Rice and beans at every meal. Swim a little, lay on the beach. Who are you kidding, Charles? You don't like to leave home in the winter. Spring, fall, or summer either. True. But I do love to watch those wild geese fly over, feel these impertinent desires glide through me. Then get back to work.

The Bloody Mary by Susan Donnelly Sunday in late December calls for one, with a celery stalk and faint taste of Worcestershire, to be sipped while eating poached egg and corned beef hash, in a hotel dining room with someone you love. Touch the hairs at his wrist as the warmth endorses all bed-lingering, non-churchgoing. It's the solstice, remember, when your frugal father would hand around dollar bills so the day would last longer. Stir ice into the rich red and consider such Celtic rituals, as you watch, beyond the tall windows, pilgrims traveling the paths past snow-fringed trees in the park. please note: photography by Marc Piasecki

Many, many years ago when I was a young nurse we had a patient who was admitted frequently after being picked up by the police for sleeping in the park. His name, which we will agree on as James, could begin an avalanche of moaning and itching among the ICU staff as he almost always came in with lice and was definitely always very determined to get his own way. I loved James. I don't know why. But, I did and we got along. He made me laugh. It floored me that he would come in as the poster child for A Hot Damn Mess and we would work hard to clean him and patch him up only for him to leave AMA and refuse to leave until we gave him clothes. We had "stolen"his. The man still had moxie. I met his brother once, towards the end--a dentist from one of the suburbs where they had both grown up. James "had some kind of break" and left the circle of his family to become one of the faceless and homeless men who wander through our city. It was because of James that I met...

For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out. --James Baldwin     please note: art by Ana Juan, Reflections as New Yorker cover

Long Island Sound by Emma Lazarus I see it as it looked one afternoon In August,—by a fresh soft breeze o'erblown. The swiftness of the tide, the light thereon, A far-off sail, white as a crescent moon. The shining waters with pale currents strewn, The quiet fishing-smacks, the Eastern cove, The semi-circle of its dark, green grove. The luminous grasses, and the merry sun In the grave sky; the sparkle far and wide, Laughter of unseen children, cheerful chirp Of crickets, and low lisp of rippling tide, Light summer clouds fantastical as sleep Changing unnoted while I gazed thereon. All these fair sounds and sights I made my own.

Dinner turned out very well last night. Sharing the recipe in case anyone wants to try it. I used shrimp, and I did heat it up a little just because Miss HoneyHaired likes shrimp better that way. Add some french bread for the carb lovers among us...easy-breezy. Hubby loves the fresh smells when he walks in the door. Santa Fe Summer Pot with Avocado and Shrimp (From From The Splendid Table's How to Eat Supper: Recipes, Stories and Opinions from Public Radio's Award-Winning Food Show by Lynne Rossetto Kasper and Sally Swift (Clarkson Potter Publishers, 2008). Copyright © 2008 by American Public Media ) Serves 4 10 minutes prep time; no stove time This can wait, chilled, for 30 to 40 minutes •1/4 cup fresh lime juice •1/2 medium red onion, finely chopped •1 large garlic clove, minced •1/2 jalapeño, seeded and minced •1/2 teaspoon Crossover Spice Blend (recipe follows) or a blend of ground coriander, ground cumin, and freshly ground black pepper •1-1/2 ...