Today's Magpie Tale

          Magpie Tales--every Tuesday---has a photo or drawing to inspire you. Write a poem or a vignette. Tess Kincaid makes every Tuesday special. Below is mine.



                                                                        That photo,

the one from our trip

through the woods

to find Flat Creek...

it was crammed at the bottom

of a drawer.

Almost forgotten...

I pulled it out yesterday,

(the coldest day

my heart's ever seen)

and absently began to dig a line

into the slick surface.

The more I dug,

the more I thought:

Some change has to come.

With markers and white out,

I made the tree branches reappear

and allowed the arrow to surface,

ghost-like,

hovering over where we once stood.

If only real life was that easy---

having a giant sign in the sky,

pointing the way...



       Usually I look--hopefully--at my followers every time I post, to see if I have a new follower.  Imagine my surprise when my vigilance lapsed, and I then found not one but four new followers!

        Kim Sloggett and Lynn Obermoeller have just joined as followers.  Thank you.  Lynn, if you have a blog, please let me know and I'll slip in a link.   From the blogs she follows, I presume Lynn is a writer.  Thanks for checking out my blog.

       Kim is a fellow blogger, a writer, a teacher and is into pets big-time. Check out herblog about pets and her blog about teaching.  She's a writer, and after reading several of her posts (about the importance of getting to know your students, rewarding kids, and a humorous take on the mistakes we make), I can say that most teachers would enjoy her blog. Thanks again for becoming a follower, Kim. 

       Cathy C. Hall is a writer with countless publishing credits to her name. She recently included a link to a magazine story of hers. For those who still have their Christmas decorations up, or for those who are looking for a way to streamline their after-the-holiday routine next year, read her piece in Modern Senior Living. (She has a link, so you can read the piece--in the January edition, on page 6, without having to buy the magazine.) It's sharp and funny. Her blog is chocked full of links to contests and stories.  (If you click on her "Finding My Fame and Fortune" button, you can read a funny piece on smoking.) Cathy--thanks for following.

      Pearl writes about riding the bus, she writes about her holiday parties. (Which resulted in me preparing the best appetizer I've had in a long time and blogging about it. Check out my post on January 2 for the recipe and photos of this delicious bit of heaven.) Most of her posts are hilarious, but her warm, intropsective ones are just as good. (We laughed. We cried.)  When she falls flat on her face as a blogger, she is going to launch a new business--Pearl's Pap and Pedi (make sure you empty your bladder before you read that post so there is no "leakage" as you're reading it).  Seriously, she has almost 800 followers, so when you wonder why you don't have as many as you'd like, it's because Pearl is a blog-hog. Thanks, Pearl, for following...

       And if you're one of the 13 bloggers in the country who are not following Pearl's blog yet, peruse her posts. She takes the ordinary, makes it twistedly extraordinary.