The Artful Trade

Higher Power Will Magui re Years ago, as a much younger man, I worked for a short time on a fishing boat off the Cape. The job was mainly hauling nets and pouring the catch into holds and cleaning the decks. But this was near the whale routes, so every once in a while, when the sea was quiet, I could feel something great and close — but always hidden beneath the surface. The waves would shudder slightly, and though I could never see it clearly, there was the feeling of a presence larger and closer than it should be. Powerful but hidden. Terrible and beautiful at once. Sometimes if I looked at just the right moment I could see its shadow. And every once in a great while the shadow would come crashing through the surface — visible for just an instant before being pulled back below. When I was growing up, my folks had a house near the transformer that was the main electrical line into town. It was a large steel tower draped with thick cables. Most of the tim

Protecting the Unprotectable copyright@2019 Will Maguire Many years ago, as a teenage boy, I fell in love with a girl... or perhaps better put, I thought it was love. It was really only the first hopeful version of it. All expectation...long the get and short on give. This was before I knew anything about the sacrifice or selflessness it always demands. Her mother had died young that year of cancer and her death cut a hole in the girl. Her father, a lawyer, believed his faith had been betrayed. So every night he tried to wash his grief away, usually with gin. The hole in the girl grew and then like a torn sweater, she began to unravel. I used to go by her house in the middle of the night, tap on her window and we would whisper thru the screen about how I was going to save her and how she was going to save me. I lived by the sea then and some nights she would sneak out and we would go to the beach. She would lie in my arms sobbing. I tried my best to save her, to protect

My Creed Will Maguire copyright@2019 I don't believe in peddle cars, or air bnbs or songs that sour like milk in a week. I don't believe in taking two parking spaces cause your mercedes wannabe still has no door dings. Air conditioning makes me choke...roll down your windows. You're not a rib eye steak waiting out the heat in some refrigerator aisle. I do believe in that first sip of Friday beer and the kind of song that makes you ache. Cause good and bad both burn. I believe in the kind of love you dont get to choose, the kind that leaves a bruise but sweeps down on you like the wind. Its more show than tell Can't be heard...too big for words The kind that makes my heart ring  like a cracked church bell.  I believe luck always looks a lot like sweat. And you havent lived until you learn to carry your regret. I don't believe in wearing American flag shirts or pants. But I believe in old men with bad knees, hands on hearts full of jagged memories. And I think t

The Ring W. Maguire  copyright@2019 "NEW YORK — Just before midnight, a man standing on a sidewalk in Times Square decided that the spot was right. He turned to his girlfriend, fell to a knee and nervously retrieved a diamond ring from his pocket. The girl said yes, the New York Police Department reported, but the man fumbled the ring. It bounced once then rolled eight feet before disappearing down a subway grate." The Ring There is a stretch of Broadway just north of 42 St. in Times Square where the traffic slows. The hacks surrender twisting the wheel and curse under their breath about the clot of tourists and the pain in their spines from too many potholes and too many stiffs. And tangled with its own crowds the speeding city limps for a few blocks. The tourists look up into the lights and the New Yorkers look down at the cracks.  The pick pockets and the three card monte dealers know the difference and, like sheep dogs, herd the tourists to th

Mercy Sometimes on a Friday in August all a working man wants is a long cool desert between each workday. The small mercy of a dark bar and a cold beer. The Want To of Monday and Tuesday becomes the God Help Me Get To of Wednesday and Thursday until by Friday it melts into a murmur and waits there unforgotten and howling. Unspoken and so unheard. Every day John Dalton drove to his job and did his work and collected his pay and watched the words of himself seem to disappear into the heat of late summer.  But Dalton still listened for the voice of that life he hoped for…. still listened late at night in the long moments before sleep…for that howl…something wild and fierce and please God deafening so that it might shout the August silence out of him. By Friday Dalton was full of the work and the week. He carried every hour of the 40 on his back until by Friday, like an animal it was dragging him.  Sometimes when the teeth and locked jaws of Get There by dawn and leave at 8 were sh