• ROAMING

    It is a sign of advancing ageor increasing love and passionthat I no longer imaginechucking it all and wanderingoff of some unplanned journey. Next flight out please, Idon’t care where it is going,so long as I have money leftfor food and some basic lodging,no baggage besides my carry on. Of course today that wouldland me…


  • DEAR PAVLOV

    We both know that havinga pet at our age is wisefor they provide a companionshipthat can be difficult to find.I’ve had both dogs and cats,but the decision this timewas reasonably simple,for dogs have an insatiableneed to walk their people,weather is no impedimentand my arthritis is no longerall that forgiving of damp and cold. So we…


  • GOING HOME

    They say you cannot go homeagain, although I have neverhad occasion to meet them. I’ve never been one to followthe dictates of them, unless theywere my parents or spouse, andin the case of my parents, oftennot even when they demanded it,so I went back to the homeof my childhood, a shockinglynew place as I remembered…


  • PARENT AGE

    I have two mothers, now both dead,I have three fathers, one unknown, one buriedoutside Washington and one lostin a corner of his shrinking mind.I am growing older, I have achesand clicks and pops and groans,which each remind me that Iam aware and alive and thatisn’t a bad way to start a new day.


  • THE FUTURE HOLDS

    It should be more of a surprise,on this day that you turn ninetybut the mirror, as you see it,has you looking as you did twentytwo years earlier, and twentybefore that, unchanging in anymeaningful way, yet thosearound you laugh when youtell them what you believe. Not a day over sixty-eightyou say, and time to go offand…


  • GOING DOWN

    Hell is a place where what you least desire becomes eternally yours, or so we were told as children, well not us, not the Jewish kids, for us Hell was our mothers’ finding that copy of Playboy we stole from our father’s stash our mother didn’t know about, and which he would deny, throwing us…