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 Amanda Strand The wedding ring I took off myself, his wife wasn’t up to it. I brought the nurse into the room in case he jumped or anything. “Can we turn his head? He looks so uncomfortable.” She looked straight at me, patiently waiting for it to sink in. The snow fell. His truck in the barn, his boots by the door, flagpoles empty. It took a long time for the taxi to come. “Where to?” he said. “My father just died,” I said. As if it were a destination.

by Howard Nemerov Prig offered Pig the first chance at dessert, So Pig reached out and speared the bigger part. "Now that," cried Prig, "is extremely rude of you!" Pig, with his mouth full, said, "Wha, wha' wou' 'ou do?" "I would have taken the littler bit," said Prig. "Stop kvetching, then it's what you've got," said Pig. So virtue is its own reward, you see. And that is all it's ever going to be.

by Jane Gentry ... I eat an artichoke in front of the Charles Street Laundromat and watch the clouds bloom into white flowers out of the building across the way. The bright air moves on my face like the touch of someone who loves me. Far overhead a dart-shaped plane softens through membranes of vacancy. A ship, riding the bright glissade of the Hudson, slips past the end of the street. Colette's vagabond says the sun belongs to the lizard that warms in its light. I own these moments when my skin like a drumhead stretches on the frame of my bones, then swells, a bellows filled with sacred breath seared by this flame, this happiness. please note: photo by Ariel D. Bravy

by Mary Oliver What is so utterly invisible as tomorrow? Not love, not the wind, not the inside of stone. Not anything. And yet, how often I'm fooled- I'm wading along in the sunlight- and I'm sure I can see the fields and the ponds shining days ahead- I can see the light spilling like a shower of meteors into next week's trees, and I plan to be there soon- and, so far, I am just that lucky, my legs splashing over the edge of darkness, my heart on fire. I don't know where such certainty comes from- the brave flesh or the theater of the mind- but if I had to guess I would say that only what the soul is supposed to be could send us forth with such cheer as even the leaf must wear as it unfurls its fragrant body, and shines against the hard possibility of stoppage- which, day after day, before such brisk, corpuscular belief, shudders, and gives way. please note: photo by eyewonder.spaces.live.com/

Jackie: I don't like chatty. I don't do chatty. I like quiet. Quiet and mean. Those are my people. I've seen bits and pieces of this show, not sure I'm in love with it, although might not mind working at her hospital. Nurse Jackie has a heck of a lot more free time than I do. Maybe she's just more organized and gets her charting done faster. Considering all the oxycodone she takes, maybe she draws hieroglyphics and calls it a day. But her lines...?? Make. Me. Laugh. 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 t...

by Mary Oliver After rain after many days without rain, it stays cool, private and cleansed, under the trees, and the dampness there, married now to gravity, falls branch to branch, leaf to leaf, down to the ground where it will disappear--but not, of course, vanish except to our eyes. The roots of the oaks will have their share, and the white threads of the grasses, and the cushion of moss; a few drops, round as pearls, will enter the mole's tunnel; and soon so many small stones, buried for a thousand years, will feel themselves being touched. please note: art by Jill Sutton

First Reader by Billy Collins I can see them standing politely on the wide pages that I was still learning to turn, Jane in a blue jumper, Dick with his crayon-brown hair, playing with a ball or exploring the cosmos of the backyard, unaware they are the first characters, the boy and the girl who begin fiction. Beyond the simple illustration of their neighborhood the other protagonists were waiting in a huddle: frightening Heathcliff, frightened Pip, Nick Adams carrying a fishing rod, Emma Bovary riding into Rouen. But I would read about the perfect boy and his sister even before I would read about Adam and Eve, garden and gate, and before I heard the name Gutenberg, the type of their simple talk was moving into my focusing eyes. It was always Saturday and he and she were always pointing at something and shouting “Look!” pointing at the dog, the bicycle, or at their father as he pushed a hand mower over the lawn, waving at aproned Mother framed in the kitchen doorway, pointing toward th...