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 ...

Dyslexic W. Maguire copyright@2018 In Bethlehem.... Pennsylvania... a woman crept up to a Nativity scene in the middle of the night and approached the statue of the baby Jesus.  Then she stole it. And a nervous young man, who spent his entire savings on a ring fell to his knees in Times Sq., about to ask a girl to end his loneliness. The ring slipped from his hands, rolled away and disappeared down a subway grate. At the same time a little girl in Mexico attached a letter to Santa to a balloon. The only way she could think of sending her silent prayer to the North Pole. The ring was recovered. She said yes.  And so the young man was saved from his loneliness.  The balloon never made it to the North Pole. But it was found by a widowed rancher in Arizona. He saw the letter and decided to answer that little girl's prayer. Jesus and the woman that needed saving so badly that she tried to steal it, are still missing.  Both will be recov...

Faithful Will Maguire copyright@2018 I was in Walmart today to return a small space heater I bought. Turns out I must be more cold hearted than I knew...need a bigger heater.   In front of me is a girl, maybe 21, army coat...gloves with holes. She's paying an installment on a layaway for some Xmas presents for her little girl. Counting dollar bills and change. The manager quietly tells her that someone came in earlier...asked to pay off all the pending December layaways for kids presents. He said this man had paid off her entire debt...and that she owed nothing. She starts crying of course, which was sweet. Very sweet...relief mixed with surprise and gratitude. The manager pulls out his phone and takes a pic because real selfless generousity is like Sasquatch. He needed proof I suppose. Some people in line behind me heard and asked if all Christmas layaways were cleared or just hers. He said all...they started crying too. I'm watching all this..and started hu...

Veterans Day Dear Dad, You lied about your age.. you were just 16...so you could enlist. You were shot in head and left for dead alone in a ditch in a winters woods of France. You prayed to the Blessed Mother for one year with that girl in NY. And somehow you survived and came home. Her family said stay away.. hes a crazy Irish man who was shot in the head. But she decided to listen to her heart instead of them. I'm pretty glad about that...otherwise I'd be some old whisper in the wind instead of the word chaser and bellower I've become. You were married for 66 years and would have been for another 66 if flesh was as strong as feeling. Anyway...proud to be your son. Hope your dna wins out over my hubris...i can feel it sometimes swirling way down deep in me. Your grateful son

A Hard Dog When I lived up in East Nash there was a pack of abandoned dogs that ran that part of town each night. My street dead ended against the highway and they would gather together and listen to the sound of tires on the asphalt and AM radios all trying to get someplace else. The guy that lived next door worked as a lineman for the electric company upgrading wires and boxes and repairing down cable when the wind blew hard. That spring the wind kept pulling it all down. He was the kind of guy that did his 8 and 40 and 365 then came home and tried to find some happiness and love in the overtime between shifts.  Then each dawn he would climb into his rusty truck and go out trying to repair whatever got torn down in the darkness.  That year he had met this girl, a kind of stray, and she eventually moved in.  I guess he was trying to save her or maybe just himself or both. He asked her a couple times to marry him. But she always said she neede...