A Tidings of Magpies

When I was gone it sprouted. The same sun blustered on a different step. No one called through the airs. When I was gone, they were free of my face laughter. But it turns out he sat on an even different step, waiting for me, grass in my hair,a one-week farm woman. Then... he hugged me like the city. I have kept this poem since 1969-1970 and high school, but have since lost the author's name and details after dozens of moves. I'm sure I cut it out of a Seventeen magazine and taped it into a book of memories. And I'm sure I gave it, heartfelt, to my boyfriend at the time. I include it today because the theme of the week is Poem About an Aunt, and this poem reminds me of a week I spent on my aunt and uncle's farm in Londonderry, and the balm to my heart this poem gave me.

‘Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument. Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground’ (Mevlana Rumi Mathnawi, trans. by Coleman Barks)

of Gathering and Keeping Fruit by William Lawson "Although it be an easie matter, when God shall send it to gather and keep fruit, yet are there certain things worthy your regard: you must gather your fruit when it is ripe and not before, else it will wither and be tough and sour. All fruits generally are ripe when they begin to fall: for trees as all other bearers do, when their young ones are ripe, they will wain them. The dove her pidgeons, the coney her rabbits, and women their children." there are cycles to which are we are chained despite what our minds will us to do i need to clean, i actually want to clean. with one babe away at school and her sister three years to follow, i need to clear our surroundings of the remnants of their flurried growth. so fast it’s gone. before i could clear my eyes from the wonder of their sweet bald heads and feet no bigger than my palm, they are off and running in the time it takes to clear a throat and ask, “what do you think of this,” ...

won't you celebrate with me what i have shaped into a kind of life? i had no model. born in babylon both nonwhite and woman what did i see to be except myself? i made it up here on this bridge between starshine and clay, my one hand; come celebrate with me that everyday something has tried to kill me and has failed.

Forsythia. Buds. Babes playing ball in the park. Spring sprung into place. Yes, Mister Dickens. The Spirits really can do it all in one night.

There's a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted who disappeared into those shadows. I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don't be fooled, this isn't a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here, our country moving closer to its own truth and dread, its own way of making people disappear. I won't tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods meeting the unmarked strip of light- ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise: I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear. And I won't tell you where it is, so why do I tell you anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these to have you listen at all, it's necessary to talk about trees.

"My favorite poet was Aeschylus... He once wrote: 'Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.' " ...and, the peace sign turns 50. Peace be with you...