A Tidings of Magpies

by Kevin Carey In grammar school I stuttered, felt the hot panic on my face when my turn to read crept up the row. Even when I counted the paragraphs and memorized the passage, I’d trip on the first or second word, and then it would be over, the awful hesitation, the word clinging to the lining of my throat rising only too late to avoid the laughter around me. I was never the smartest kid in the room, but I had answers I knew were right yet was afraid to say them. Years later it all came out, flowing sentences I practiced over and over, Shakespeare or Frost, my own tall tales in low-lit barrooms, scribbled in black-bound journals, rehearsing, anticipating my turn, my time, a way of finally getting it right.

Thanks by WS Merwin, 1927 Listen with the night falling we are saying thank you we are stopping on the bridges to bow for the railings we are running out of the glass rooms with our mouths full of food to look at the sky and say thank you we are standing by the water looking out in different directions. back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging after funerals we are saying thank you after the news of the dead whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you looking up from tables we are saying thank you in a culture up to its chin in shame living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you over telephones we are saying thank you in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators remembering wars and the police at the back door and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you in the banks that use us we are saying thank you with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you wi...