Parents Night Emma used to do real good in school her mother tells her new teacher. It’s Parents Night at Ryland Elementary. Mostly mothers in attendance. What’s the problem, her mother asks. Fifth grade shouldn’t be hard for her. Emma’s never had a grade lower than a B, her mother says. Teacher says Emma doesn’t do her homework and talks a lot in class. Her mother can’t believe it. Says her […]
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An Act of the Will If love’s real, not the puppy kind, it’s not just a feeling but an act of the will a constant giving whether one feels like it or not. After many years you don’t know why you’re doing it or why It must be done. Two begin as grapes purple with passion unaware you’ll be raisins wrinkling at the end.
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Old Stag Giddy Elmer’s an old stag now shedding antlers snorting among the trees but sometimes Martha after her shower is a doe beckoning and he becomes giddy and heads for the salt lick happy in the breeze
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Willie in his 80s now hadn’t made sense in years. His wife understood his grunts from the recliner where she propped him up till bedtime where snoring was music in the night. His grandson told neighbors Gramps had Old-Timer’s Disease, an excellent diagnosis with which doctors agreed. It was time to move Gramps to a home so his wife began […]
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An hour a day, sometimes more, I chipped away with mallet and chisel on a block of marble I found in Carrara and shipped to New York on the deck of a trawler. I offered the marble to a famous sculptor who told me he works in granite only so I grabbed his beret and one of his smocks […]
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Cold Water Raining between Them Annie has a nice washing machine now but she remembers the one her mother had with the wringer, the old-fashioned kind. Her mother took in washing and when the washing machine would break Annie would become half the wringer. Mother would hold the waist of wet pants and Annie would grip the cuffs and they’d […]
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Bears Starving in the Woods Long article in the paper this morning stops Tim from gobbling his bacon and eggs. Bears are starving in the woods. Too many cubs, too little food. There’s a plan to feed them. But no plan yet to feed people in the city nearby waving signs about working for food.
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Daily Paper on the Lawn An hour before dawn the paper is out on the lawn white in the moonlight a trumpet dozing after a long night in a jazz bar tired from playing but willing to play a last set for me not knowing I read only sports and the obits two riffs in the paper anyone can believe Author Bio: Donal Mahoney lives […]
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Donald Trump and Mother Teresa Time’s a jet plane when you’re young. You go to school get a good job marry someone nice and have a family if that’s your calling. Then the kids grow up and move out and things start falling apart even if you have a pension and many now won’t. Poor health sneaks in like a submarine and in […]
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I bring a milkshake every other week to an old man in a nursing home, a refugee from Germany who paid me 50 cents to cut his grass when I was a kid in Chicago after WWII. I couldn’t understand him then and I can’t understand him now but 50 cents was big money in 1950, 10 candy bars, 10 […]
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