Little Nora and Grandpa Bill sit on swings in Grandma’s garden. A hummingbird arrives to sample the brilliant flowers at this buff… Grandpa Bill sees a teaching mome…

I like to watch master chefs on television do their thing. My favorite is Jacques Pépin when he has to chop an onion. No one chops an onion faster.

Deep into a warm winter the Japanese red maple keeps her crown of brilliant leaves as if to prove to the evergreens especially that big blue spruce

Some things can’t be fixed any other way says Bill in his bedroom on the third floor hoping to get some sleep

It’s just a flophouse but it’s all he can afford and now it’s come to this. If he buys food he can’t pay the rent

Anyone might have what you need if she’s choice in your eye. She can be big or small provided she has

After World War II before television, before women had tattoos before men wore earrings, I was a child in a world

Leaves on a Japanese Maple dance auburn in the wind remind me of that mother crossing Michigan Avenue before the light changes

No Supper for a Year My wife looks out the kitchen wind… and tells me the starlings are bac… the same big flock as yesterday strolling around our yard

World War II was over but still fresh in the minds of folks who li… in Bill’s hometown in the Ozarks. Independence Day was important. It called for a celebration.

Even as a child Charles couldn’t forgive other chi… not for something they had done but rather for who they were. They were inferior and couldn’t he…

Things are quiet here, a friend wr… in the first email of his long lif… Most mornings I drive to Gillson… sit and read beside the Lake. The waves are a symphony.

Sometimes she sits there and listens to him. Sometimes he sits there and listens to her. Sometimes they know

Oliver Jones, now gray and grizzl… cut the Miller’s lawn for years.… a victim of Agent Orange, Oliver’… almost as old as the Millers, his… Recently he’s left ridges and tuft…

An hour a day, sometimes more, I chipped away with mallet and chisel on a block of marble