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.

leaving behind a trail of jelly beans and flip-flops and toothbrushes in his wake. He knows us well. CollegeGrrrrl was able to come home and the grrrls here spent two days doing not much of anything except yakkadoodeling. We did watch The Good Shepherd, an older movie out on DVD now--Matt Damon, Robert DeNiro, Angelina Jolie. Made us think twice about our burning desires to be CIA agents/spies. Didn't look fabulously fun. Could be a thinly veiled ploy of misinformation to encourage us not to be spies however. You just never damn know in the spy biz. We had Easter lunch with The Grandmas coordinated with the same effort and logistics of a G20 summit. All was well, no demonstrations or protest signs. At least not public demonstrations. I don't know why at the age of 83 my mother feels the need to compete and feel superior by making the rest of us inferior, but there it is. We simply acknowledge our deficits early in the meal and move on. Yes, Mother, we are truly that shallow an...

by Erin Davis She Cradled the frozen bulb in her mouth Swaddled it in the velvet of her tongue Awakened it with the warmth of her breath Then Braced herself for the birth Thrust the shoot through the gap in her teeth And watched the bloom part her rounded lips Please note: photo by John C. Finlayson & poem from freckled writer , thanks for letting me share it here

"When the snow went away--in a rush, just as it came--it left behind the lawn, the garden, the pastures, the barnyard. It also left behind locust pods, fallen branches, last falls's leaves, snowplow scrapings, mire, and muck--the debris of a disordered season. The snow's erasure has itself been erased. Everything is matted to the earth or anchored in the mud except the ridges an eastern mole has made while tunneling round and round. The early buds seem desperate just now. Nothing else catches the hint of spring from them."------Verlyn Klinkenborg, The Rural Life

in Just- by E. E. Cummings in Just- spring when the world is mud- luscious the little lame balloonman whistles far and wee and eddieandbill come running from marbles and piracies and it's spring when the world is puddle-wonderful the queer old balloonman whistles far and wee and bettyandisbel come dancing from hop-scotch and jump-rope and it's spring and the goat-footed balloonMan whistles far and wee please note: photo by hoveringdog