Friday, July 17, 2015



 Voyage Into The Golden Screen






In the golden garden bird of peace
Stands the silver girl the Wild Jewels niece
Paints and pretty colors Children's drawings on the wall
Look of doubt I cast you out be gone your ragged call






In the forest thick a trick of light
Makes an image magnet to my sight
Gown of purple velvet enchanted glazed eye
The sound of wings and sparkling rings behold a crimson sky






Tread so light so not to touch the grass
Breathe the air so slowly as you pass
Silent sudden dewdrop lies unseen until
Eyes to fall to hidden call the power of Love and Will

Symphonies of seaweed dance and swoon
God's celestial shore beneath the moon
See the dark and mighty peaks pierce the cumulus
Violet and mauve they sit power you can sus'






Tread so light so not to touch the grass

Breathe the air so slowly as you pass
Elvin fingers clutch a deep black cloak of fine damask
Aged rock in Mexico reveal a bejeweled cask






In the golden garden bird of peace
Stands the silver girl the Wild Jewels niece
Paints and pretty colors Children's drawings on the wall
Look of doubt I cast you out be gone your ragged call




Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!



Ooooooh, I love Onions! (or: Go Get a Book Deal)


Child’s Description Of Heaven During Near-Death Experience Specifically Mentions Book Deal




NEWS IN BRIEFJuly 17, 2015

VOL 51 ISSUE 28 Local · Death · Books · Kids


NEW YORK—Speaking for the first time since waking from a medically induced coma following a devastating car accident, 8-year-old Aiden Miller recounted an extremely vivid near-death experience Friday that reportedly contained detailed descriptions of heaven, angels, and a six-figure book deal. “I was walking up in the clouds and met friends, and strangers, and all these famous people who talked with me about all kinds of things and brought up the possibility of selling the rights to my story to a big-name publisher,” said the second-grader, who attested that during the five-minute period in which his heart had stopped on the operating table, he ascended to a shining, golden paradise where he says he met with the archangel Gabriel and a literary agent who has helped a number of authors secure multi-book deals with lucrative worldwide book tours. “Jesus was sitting at the right hand of God and my grandfather was right there, and they looked at me and smiled at each other and said I should ask for an $80,000 advance with 10 percent of back-end profits.” Miller added that he felt a profound sense of peace and well-being when Jesus told him to go forth and seek a blockbuster deal for the movie rights.

(And The Onion is always right, folks. This kid must have the same agent as Harper Lee.)


Hot town: screams in the night





It was one of them-thar hot, HOT summers in Chatham, in the heel of Southwestern Ontario, when it felt like someone was holding something to your nose and mouth so you could not breathe. Sweat accumulted in layers on your skin, but if it evaporated at all, it provided no relief from the relentless, doggy heat.

We didn't take showers then, because you just didn't - women washed their hair in the sink and wrapped a towel around their head, turban-style (God knows why, or how they ever dried it). If you were so hot you were turning into melted rubber, you lay in a bath tub full of tepid water, drained it, and felt more moist and clammy than ever. As far as I know, people didn't bathe every day, nor were clothes washed as often, but perhaps the predominance of natural fibres kept us from keeling over from each other's stench.





The humidity devil did not let up often. But on certain nights the sky suddenly cracked open, and floods of lukewarm rain caused some of us (mostly kids, or a few heat-crazed adults) to strip down to our bare essentials and go out in it, dancing around, hair streaming, mouth open. The cracks of livid electricity almost made my hair stand on end, and sometimes I felt it zip up my arms as if it wanted me for some awful unknown purpose.

But the buckets of rain did not help. Soon everything was just steaming, the air more choked with water than before.




Cicadas buzzed their long, almost sexual-sounding arches of sound on those summer afternoons in which time seemed to hang suspended. We didn't like finding the adults - "June bugs", they were usually called, big fat things with wings - but the cast-off shells of the nymphs were magical. They appeared all over the bark of the elm trees that would all-too-soon be felled due to disease, never to be seen again.

But at night, there was this - this sound! A night bird, one that I called "the Skeezix bird" because that's what it sounded like. On damp, hollow, star-filled Chatham nights, the Skeezix would begin to swoop in the sky, the sound swinging near and far so that you couldn't tell exactly where it was. I don't think I ever saw one.  It had to be some kind of hawk or falcon. But nobody ever referred to it or talked about it. It was just there, like the sexy drawn-out tambourine-hiss of the cicadas. All part of summer in the city.




But when I heard the Skeezix bird, every so often I also heard the strangest sound, halfway between a burp and a groan. Short, hollow, and - stupid really, because obviously it had nothing to do with the bird, yet there it was, persistent. I even asked other people about it once, and no one had ever heard it. It seemed like nobody really wanted to talk about it. At least they looked at me strangely, though I suppose by then I should have been used to that.

Then one time, my older brother said, "You know that booming noise? It's sound waves from the hawk bouncing off buildings."




It wasn't. In fact, until this very moment I didn't know what the hell it was or how it could be related to the Skeezix bird.

Then came this answer, this beautiful, golden Answer. Simply laid out. Not even any video, just a clear audio explanation with pictures. There WAS a Skeezix bird, even if it was called something else. If it was creating that groany boom out in nature, obviously it had nothing to do with sound waves and buildings.




The real explanation is exotic and a little far-fetched, but it must be true. It just took me fifty years to find it. Play the video above, and be enlightened.




Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!


Just like the heat, it'll be all right