Mrs. Ryan keeps her cat inside at… but lets it out at dawn to go anyw… while she’s at work. Every day the… crosses the road to call on the Wi… Mrs. Ryan doesn’t know her cat ca…

We have one of those medical plans… my wife and I. The co-pays let us see a doctor, have a procedure, pay for medications. Can’t remembe… ever paying full price. Especially

Jim Daley and Joe McCarthy had something in common. They died at 80 going to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Walt O’Brien, their protege, found this out when he called the home...

If you arrive too early at the public library and stand on the steps with Mabel till the doors open

Mae mailed Christmas cards today, fewer again this year because death has made her address book a skeleton. She has a son in Russia

Better take his wife to lunch after what he said yesterday. A slip of the tongue. But where to take her? The Chinese buffet?

Despite the digital holocaust of computers and cell phones, Newberry Library remains the Vatican of books with the right sounds,

November’s lovely in the rain, she… from her rocker near the window to no one in particular although the butler’s waiting for her groce… having walked her Pekingese.

Some things you can’t undo. A remark, perhaps, you can retract or try to with an explanation. But a certain look can burn forever in the mind

You won’t find poetry anywhere unless you bring some of it with y… said Joseph Joubert, a French writer whose day job was working for Napoleon.

Bill’s a conservative upset that Meals on Wheels and Medicaid face possible cuts in America’s budget. He yells to colleagues

After Yeats and Heaney, you wonder when the new one will come galloping out of Dublin or perhaps from yet another farm

Been in trouble all my life childhood through old age. I took the alleys

Walking in the forest as morning comes I hear piccolos of wrens and robins offer hymns to God

Bug no bigger than a comma scales the wall next to my recliner. He’s climbing