An old friend lost an old friend the other day. Jim said they were both getting up in years and he just happened to outlast Herman. Jim was black and Herman was white but that had never...

After the poetry reading the lights go on and a lady under a big hat rises behind dark sunglasses and asks the poet why

Some things can’t be fixed any other way says Bill in his bedroom on the third floor hoping to get some sleep

The alarm clock screams at 5 a.m. and I get up to attend a funeral 50 miles away, a long drive back to a corner of Chicago once rife with corned beef and cabbage but

An article in the paper reports something one doesn’t see happen in America very often. Eighty billionaires, millionaires and others close to that level

When Bernie wakes at 6 a.m. there’s a piano on his chest and Erroll Garner’s playing “Mist… Sinatra’s on the headboard improvising lyrics

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

When I was in grammar school I knew it was Wednesday when I looked out the window and saw across the street three trash cans at the curb

All that hair trapped in a braid silver to the waist Opal this morning nude in the mirror

My parents were far from preachy. They went to church separately and I went to the children’s service

For years leprechauns lived under Pop’s fedora. They danced jigs on his head when he wore it and hid in his ears

Dive under any skirt that floats your way, Amish or otherwise, metaphorically speaking.

A homeless man hangs himself from a tree at night in the city to close out the year. At dawn a passerby uses

How are things, Adolph? This is Brian, from NBC. Thanks for the interview. It will air in September if the network brings me back.

Seeing is believing smart people often tell me but no one ever told me believing is seeing