I flew out to see a high school friend. from many years ago. He was poor back then and I was better off.

It’s your anniversary so you’re thinking steak but your wife wants ramen so you go to a nice place and order the fancy ramen

A student asks the old poet why he has spent so many years writing. The old poet says no one’s asked him that before. He needs a minute to answer.

I’m amazed at the difference between my friend and me. His response to life is so different from mine. I live deep in the city

“We had the other ones done there,… “Why not go there again? Everythi… No complications. Who cares about… Bunch of do-gooders with hidden ca… “I don’t care about the publicity,…

They got along fine lying down but sitting up or standing, well that was quite another thing. Talking made things worse. Lying down they found

So many of us feed the birds even though we know birds can make it on their own in any weather,

The weekday Mass at 6 a.m. brings old folks out from bungalows around the church. They move like caterpillars

You never know who’ll be there though folks are dying to get in. Then suddenly you’re at the door, hat in hand,

Around his navel this morning a halo, a red stipple Hopkins would love: “Glory be to God for dappled thin… It’s a gift from this woman

There are pockets of them everywhere, quiet and discreet. Usually they meet once a week

I have a friend, old and retired, who keeps busy helping the poor. Let’s call him Ted because he wants to remain anonymous. Some of his ideas, he says, wouldn’t make many of his neighbo...

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

First, we place the neck on the bl… and put the basket underneath the head and then make sure the bl… is sharp enough before we ask the… one more time just to be polite:

A boy, maybe 5, dancing in the candy aisle of a megastore at 6 a.m., a month before Hallowee… is overjoyed by the harvest on every shelf, his caramel skin