Magpie Mind: poems of people, place, and change

By Eileen Berry

“My magpie mind collects pieces in a puzzle.”
— Eileen Berry,  p 10, Bye Bye Blackbird

“Magpies were always there in our English garden, pecking around and singling out particular objects. Beautiful black and white birds with loud calls to each other. That is the way this book was

• Language: English
• Publisher: Plain View Press, LLC
• Release date: Jun 20, 2018
• ISBN: 9781632100641

Book preview

Magpie Mind

My magpie mind collects pieces in a puzzle.

p 10, Bye Bye Blackbird

Eileen Berry

Magpie Mind

poems of people, place, and change

Eileen Berry

Plain View Press, LLC

1101 W 34th Street, STE 404

www.plainviewpress.net

Austin, TX 78705

Copyright © 2018 Eileen Berry Family Trust. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a data base or retrieval system, without written permission from the author. All rights, including electronic, are reserved by the author and publisher.

ISBN: 978-1-63210-027-6

ISBN: 978-1-63210-064-1 (e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017933620

Acknowledgements

Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following journals in which the named poems first appeared:

The Licking River Review for The Red Poem

Tar River Poetry for Singular

The Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry for Chance

Soundings East for Eclogue

Confluence for Red Straw Hat

Passager for Ms. Susan Lives Alone

Gulf Stream Magazine for Ars Poetica

Crossborder Literary Journal for Isolation

The poem Waiting for Something Terrible to Happen was published in a different form as The Doll in Riversedge.

Contents

Acknowledgements

People

Red Straw Hat

Ms Susan Lives Alone

A Smashing Good Time

The Feelings Are Whole

A Modern Woman

Some Women

Dignity

Understanding

Only Then

The Autocrat

The Immigrant

At the Boot Inn—1956

Just to Say (Warm Version)

Never

Economy

This Cold Morning

Waiting or Walking or On a Crowded Bus

The Shrimpers

Family

Places

Not on the Map

St. Cuthberts’ Church

Ancient Right of Way

Only the Wind There Once

Helvellyn

Before

Larch Street and the Recent Past

English Summer

Happened

Ecology

Eclogue

Last Train

Word Hoard

Orange Sun Sets on Ottoman Empire

Street Scenes

Change

Isolation

Transience

Wildness

October Comes Round Again

Waiting for Something Terrible to Happen

Chance

Singular

Reflections

Reality