Linda’s an animal person who puts her money where her mouth is, owns a ranch outside the city and takes in kittens, puppies, birds that

Black flag on the lawn falls in pieces from the sky. Starlings in command. Donal Mahoney

He tried so hard to be everybody’s friend, agreed with everything we said. Some of us liked him, others were indifferent,

Redbud and dogwood have blossomed above the tulips and jonquils wher… Alice’s house used to be. A possum and raccoon nose around where the garage was before the to…

I will no longer feed the birds on the front porch as I do daily autumn through winter when I go out at dawn to get the paper on the lawn and spread seed on

I get an email every day from a man I don’t know and doesn’t know me. Many people receive blind copies of his emails.

The two weeks I spent in that small town on assignment, I saw no blacks except for two older women regal in every way,

Let’s stop the crying, Millie. It’s true our friends are dying. They’re old like you and me. Why not celebrate instead that 80 years ago you and I

You take care now, Harold, and don’t slip on the ice looking for a good bookstore on the streets of Chicago. Print is dead, Harold,

If he were in high school they’d call him a bully and take him to the principal’s office for counseling.

The call comes in to the police station. It’s a small town and the voice at the library says “He’s at it again.”

Things reach a certain age, an age at which things don’t work the way they once did. The battery in your car,

Months roar by like weeks and weeks disappear like days, two coots in a bar admit on New Year’s Eve, reminiscing over a beer

Forget the fall equinox. Fall arrives when all the moths that dance on summer nights around the porch light disappear when the first cold dawn appears.

I don’t see her often since she died but when I do it’s eerie over there at dawn or dusk.