The bog above Bob Gordon’s bog is where they found the body of an older man floating like a canoe among the lily pads. He was covered with crustaceans.

One, a nun, has her transfer in her hand. She’s silently praying. Another, a hooker, has her income in her purse.

It was her birthday. She was only five the dawn we went out to look at roses in Grandma’s garden

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

July in the streets of Mexico City: One of the women one never would marry. One of the women one sees

Bill would come every Sunday to his mother’s house after a tough divorce. He’d bring his laundry for his mother to do and then he’d devour the roast beef dinner she always made for him....

As autumn turns colder there’s only one moth fluttering at midnight around the porch light. He’s the last of the flock

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

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

You can learn a lot, both true and false, in a dingy all-night diner where old men gather at a table in back

I wish he had never come out from behind the stove, that spider I stepped on at 4 a.m. He was a big one bothering no one.

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

Some day soon Wall Street giants will walk on their hands never sit or sleep. They will eat

They never held hands when they were a couple young and newly married as much in love as they were planning a wonderful life.