A Tidings of Magpies

by Anne Higgins , Strong coffee smells like a current of warm southerly air in the climate of dawn. Strong coffee gets stronger when poured back through the grounds. Opaque, thick, hot, bitter for waking up, the caffeine pumps through your center, stains your mouth with morning, with going to work, surprises you with your own breath.

By Meredith Holmes At last I can be with you! The grinding hours since I left your side! The labor of being fully human, working my opposable thumb, talking, and walking upright. Now I have unclasped unzipped, stepped out of. Husked, soft, a be-er only, I do nothing, but point my bare feet into your clean smoothness feel your quiet strength the whole length of my body. I close my eyes, hear myself moan, so grateful to be held this way.

By Jane Kenyon There’s just no accounting for happiness, or the way it turns up like a prodigal who comes back to the dust at your feet having squandered a fortune far away. And how can you not forgive? You make a feast in honor of what was lost, and take from its place the finest garment, which you saved for an occasion you could not imagine, and you weep night and day to know that you were not abandoned, that happiness saved its most extreme form for you alone. No, happiness is the uncle you never knew about, who flies a single-engine plane onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes into town, and inquires at every door until he finds you asleep midafternoon. as you so often are during the unmerciful hours of your despair. It comes to the monk in his cell. It comes to the woman sweeping the street with a birch broom, to the child whose mother has passed out from drink. It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing a sock, to the pusher, to the bas...

by Margaret Widdemer The Poor Old Soul plods down the street,        Contented, and forgetting How Youth was wild, and Spring was wild        And how her life is setting. And you lean out to watch her there,       And pity, nor remember, That Youth is hard, and Life is hard,       And quiet is December.

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.

The Undeniable Pressure of Existence by Patricia Fargnoli I saw the fox running by the side of the road past the turned-away brick faces of the condominiums past the Citco gas station with its line of cars and trucks and he ran, limping, gaunt, matted dull haired past Jim's Pizza, past the Wash-O-Mat, past the Thai Garden, his sides heaving like bellows and he kept running to where the interstate crossed the state road and he reached it and he ran on under the underpass and beyond it past the perfect rows of split-levels, their identical driveways their brookless and forestless yards, and from my moving car, I watched him, helpless to do anything to help him, certain he was beyond any aid, any desire to save him, and he ran loping on, far out of his element, sick, panting, starving, his eyes fixed on some point ahead of him, some possible salvation in all this hopelessness, that only he could see.

We saw wreckage all along I-75 South on our way back home and stopped at a rest area particularly devastated. Should probably have thoughts of something profound about the power of nature and its randomness, but all I could think of was how much work it would take to clear this bit of land and how hot it would be. Since many out there still don't have electricity this might seem like a small matter; what to do with all the food in the refridgerator and freezer and how to find a hint of coolness becomes much more mind consuming. We're thankful that for once we're the ones with power though in this heat we're still going up to the neighborhood movie theater for 2 hrs of cooling relief. Moonlight Kingdom Saturday afternoon, The Intouchables on Sunday. Monday back to work. Heard this gentleman on WWOZ while we were driving through miles of farmland by Lake Erie. WWOZ is a New Orleans radio station and has an app so you can listen on your phone miles away. MissNew...

Well, Super Bowl has come and gone. We are a family who rarely watches football, but we do enjoy that last match-up, especially since we have no dog in the fight. We choose loyalties out of the air. Well, I take that back. She-Who-Was-Formerly-Known as CollegeGrrrl/Blondie, but who has now passed her State Board exams and dyed her hair brown and is now officially an RN(!!!!)(NewRNGrrrl??), does watch sports and generally has a  sports-related reason for supporting a team was rooting for the NY Giants. HoneyHaired Grrrrl liked the Giants because her dormmate is from New Jersey and thus was rooting for a hometown favorite. I liked the Giants because my TV boyfriend, Jon Stewart, likes them and Hubby changes his mind mid-game for whoknowswhat reasoning. He does like an underdog. I missed half the game as I worked a "Princess Shift"---3pm-7:30pm---and got home to see the tail end of Madonna. If she can prance around with those heels on...

The Coming of Light by Mark Strand Even this late it happens: the coming of love, the coming of light. You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves, stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows, sending up warm bouquets of air. Even this late the bones of the body shine and tomorrow's dust flares into breath. please note: photo by Romeo Ranoco / Reuters

by Jane Piirto the 3-year-old, wanting to know what day it is asks everyday what day it is we tell her Tuesday or Saturday etcetera then she asks what day it will be tomorrow and we go through the naming of tomorrows in order chanting the future like a litany tomorrow is when she wakes up in the morning and when we tell her we'll go shopping tomorrow she remembers yesterday and informs us that it is tomorrow that today is yesterday that therefore the time is always now to do what we plan to do tomorrow please note: photo by Donncha O Caoimh

kicking summer out on its treacherous ass as it always does one day sometime after the midpoint of September, it stays awhile like an old friend that you have missed. It settles in the way an old friend will settle into your favorite chair and take out his pipe and light it and then fill the afternoon with stories of places he has been and things he has done since last he saw you.” ― Stephen King, Salem's Lot

by Tony Hoagland Down near the bottom of the crossed-out list of things you have to do today, between "green thread" and "broccoli," you find that you have penciled "sunlight." Resting on the page, the word is beautiful. It touches you as if you had a friend and sunlight were a present he had sent from someplace distant as this morning—to cheer you up, and to remind you that, among your duties, pleasure is a thing that also needs accomplishing. Do you remember? that time and light are kinds of love, and love is no less practical than a coffee grinder or a safe spare tire? Tomorrow you may be utterly without a clue, but today you get a telegram from the heart in exile, proclaiming that the kingdom still exists, the king and queen alive, still speaking to their children, —to any one among them who can find the time to sit out in the sun and listen. please note: art by ...

by Carl Dennis Don't be ashamed that your parents Didn't happen to meet at an art exhibit Or at a protest against a foreign policy Based on fear of negotiation, But in an aisle of a discount drugstore, Near the antihistamine section, Seeking relief from the common cold. You ought to be proud that even there, Amid coughs and sneezes, They were able to peer beneath The veil of pointless happenstance. Here is someone, each thought, Able to laugh at the indignities That flesh is heir to. Here Is a person one might care about. Not love at first sight, but the will To be ready to endorse the feeling Should it arise. Had they waited For settings more promising, You wouldn't be here, Wishing things were different. Why not delight at how young they were When they made the most of their chances, How young still, a little later, When they bought a double plot At the cemetery. Look at you, Twice as old now as they were When th...

Aurelio Zen. Masterpiece Mystery.

by Charles Douthat Still, there is hope this fading year that next year will be our year for a winter hike to the island quarry. After the holidays, I'd propose. In January, when dormant hardwoods clatter in the wind and only a stray spruce or cardinal lives for color. At such times the quarry sleeps ice-locked beneath sifting skins of snow. If it's safe and thick enough, I'll take you out across the ice to that spot we swam those summers ago. We'll walk again on water, solid now beneath our feet. And I'll scrape clean a snow-window for staring down the frozen mirror of the deep. Maybe only sealed off fissures. Or rising bubbles captured in blue. At least we'll see two bundled faces looking back. And even so close to longest night, surely some remnant sun will flash above the trees and find us there— parchment-lit, in the open—and stir us in a winter way we've never known. Then le...

Hangover (Or Migraine) By Billy Collins If I were crowned emperor this morning, every child who is playing Marco Polo in the swimming pool of this motel, shouting the name Marco Polo back and forth Marco Polo Marco Polo would be required to read a biography of Marco Polo-a long one with fine print- as well as a history of China and of Venice, the birthplace of the venerated explorer Marco Polo Marco Polo after which each child would be quizzed by me then executed by drowning regardless how much they managed to retain about the glorious life and times of Marco Polo Marco Polo

by D.H.Lawrence This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green, Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes, Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between Where the wood fumes up, and the flickering, watery rushes. I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze Of growing, these sparks that puff in wild gyration, Faces of people streaming across my gaze. And I, what fountain of fire am I among This leaping combustion of spring? My spirit is tossed About like a shadow buffeted in the throng Of flames, a shadow that's gone astray, and is lost. please note: art, Curvy Branches in Spring by Susanna Katherine Spring? It's 50 degress and raining. Feels like November and some mornings I wake up thinking we're gonna need to batten down for another round of winter. Difficult to summon forth the heart for it until I remember we shouldn't have to. I. Hope. Coming into the las...

by Linda Pastan In the middle seat of an airplane, between an overweight woman whose arm takes over the armrest and a man immersed in his computer game, I am reading the inflight magazine about three perfect days somewhere: Kyoto this time, but it could be anywhere— Madagascar or one of the Virgin Islands. There is always the perfect hotel where at breakfast the waiter smiles as he serves an egg as perfectly coddled as a Spanish Infanta. There are walks over perfect bridges—their spans defying physics—and visits to zoos where rain is forbidden, and no small child is ever bored or crying. I would settle now for just one perfect day anywhere at all, a day without mosquitoes, or traffic, or newspapers with their headlines. A day without any kind of turbulence— certainly not this kind, as the pilot tells us to fasten our seatbelts, and even the flight attendants look nervous.

Just wanted to mention I'm still here buzzing around. Worked the weekend. The usual--an undocumented Hispanic worker with traumatic brain injury from head vs baseball bat and a found down X 24hrs with an intracerebral hemorrhage and heroin abuse. Had an early meeting this morning with one of the fire chiefs of a neighboring township to go over survey questions for a study on "near-misses" and I'm trying to read up tonight for a get-together tomorrow with members of a potential research project I might work with--heat stress in fire fighters. I may be able to get funding to go full-time in the spring, but I still need to work my 36hrs/week and I carry the medical insurance, so I like to wake up at 3 or 4 o'clock in the mornings and see if I can make the puzzle pieces fall into place. So far they have not. I don't have to go full time, though it would be very, very nice to have tuition paid for. I'm trying to rationalize 15 credit hours as working overtime. ...

What a crappy weekend. The aggravating half of it was playing waitress to two floor patients without beds on the floor to transfer them to. Two patients who both need to be fed a total of six meals within eight hours. I didn't even feed my own kids that much. Mr. P. basically needed a bath after each meal cause he's a helper and wants to feed himself faster than the speed of light. Unfortunately his help ended up all over the bed, the floor, his gown, his hair... And the docs, knowing that these patients are floor borders in an ICU take full advantage of that, constantly spitting out STAT orders from some secret, undisclosed location, never talking with the nurses and each order contradicts the orders already written. I'm not even going to mention other bodily functions and the fact that each patient is well over 200 lbs., or the fact that their visitors did not understand the concept of a garbage can, or a call light, and are unable to grasp the technology of a remote cont...