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

A mountain man is Fillmore but there are no mountains where Fillmore lives deep in a hollow. He’s never had a job

Two men tall, one from here and one from there, in raincoats at a bus stop,

After he died on a tree, he rose and told the twelve before he ascended he would return some day. The twelve told others and they

She lives by a lake. After a heavy snow she looks out the window and sees black swans in a long, straight line

Widow in a rocker pets her calico cat long strokes slowly. With the cat purring and the widow humming

The teacher tells the third grade the order of the seasons cannot be changed. Summer, fall, winter, spring arrive in order, then start over.

The others, of course, are more ra… but less apt to show it. Whenever I strike, I never romp o… I stand with the wrist that I’ve… from the lady locked in my teeth

She speaks the truth as she always has in 40 years of marriage especially when she’s lost in making dinner

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...

The guillotine dropped between you and a friend over coffee and small talk. The first time it dropped it was someone who said

Fifty years ago Jane got on a plane and flew away without saying good-bye. Her parents took her, I know.

Noon meal at the nursing home and everyone is there chowing down and talking. Before dessert is served there’s an announcement to be made

We’re upset when vandals desecrate a cemetery and disrespect the dead not so much when doctors vandalize the womb

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