Cardinals bicker and knock seed from the feeder. Doves parade below. Donal Mahoney

He wants to do certain things he should have done before old age and illness reaped their harve… The doctor gives him days perhaps a week to breathe

Phone rings. Wilbur answers it. “This is Grace. Is Thelma there?… “No,” says Wilbur. “She’s out won… “You mean wandering about?” ‘No, she used to wander about. No…

I was out of control, spinning on the whirligig of youth, giddy to be caught in what Kerouac called “the whole mad swirl

If you’re a reprobate in recovery you have to be careful what you do… You’re no different than an alcoho… always in danger of falling again. At least an alcoholic has a diseas…

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

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

I lived in the attic back then, and late those evenings I had to s… and couldn’t afford to go drinking I’d run down to the deli and buy bagels and smoked lox.

This Monarch butterfly dances from petal to petal red, yellow and orange sits for a while on each and then

You see things at the rest home you don’t expect to see. New veteran in his Korea cap is whipping everyone else in pool. He never has to bend over

There’s a force that makes a boulder hard to push up a hill. And there’s always a boulder and always a hill when it comes to helping the poor find something

It’s Ramadan and late one evening I walk by a mosque and hear little girls laughing on the sidewalk,

Ten years ago, when they were tykes just in their 70s, Melvin used to tell Emma eat your Wheaties

You drive down the same country road every day at dawn and see through plumes of dust