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HARD TIME
I was only in jail once,then for four hours, no chargesand my biggest fear was thatmy parents would find out,or the cops would determinethat I was only 17 and breakingthe park curfew was noteven a misdemeanor. They let me go, gave mea ride back to the park,told me not to go in butI wouldn’t at…
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BUDDHA AND HILLEL DINE TOGETHER
The meeting occurred by chance,two old men sitting in the same parkstaring at the same empty chess boardas the waves of the Stygian Sealapped against the break wall,the ferryman now at the helmof the great cargo ship.“So,” said Hillel, “you come here often?”Old, bent Buddha paused“as far as I know, I havealways been here, or…
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AROMA
What I want, no, need actually,is to remember the smells of youth.The images I can recall, but they areaged pictures, run repeatedly throughthe Photoshop of memory, andcannot be trusted only desired. The old, half ready to fall oak,in the Salt Lake City park hada faint pungency that lingeredeven as I departed my body asthe acid…
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HAIKU
The small house fly hasno arachnophobiaonly once in life. In the Norway Sprucepine cones threaten to descend.Squirrels sit waiting. In the sunlit parkthe small dog watches the mango fetch the thrown ball Maple leaves emergealmost certain that winteris now history A rain of petalscherry snow covers the groundwe await the fruit.
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LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER, NOT
My mother used to say, about most anything, “Stop, you’ve had your fill.” It was something she did by rote, dictated I was certain then, by some timer buried deep within her that brought forth the phrase like the beep of an oven timer to indicate whenever she was baking was certain to be just…
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FOR THE BIRDS
She wants to know why the oriole we sometimes see in the park never visits our backyard feeder. I remind her that she isn’t usually here, only visits occasionally, but she says that I would have told her if I saw one. She says I got excited when I saw the one in the park…
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GET A ROOM
In the park the ginkgoes, male and female, separated by the path, are putting on their leaves. Soon the squirrels, eternal voyeurs, will gather on their branches to watch them mating.
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CUBIC
In the center of every city there ought to be a park, an expanse of green, trees older than the first European to arrive, so old they need not feign indifference to the humans who have invaded and refused to leave despite the mother (nature)’s request that they do so immediately. Some cities comply, but…
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DISCONCERT
The crows are disconcerted this morning. It could be that the sun startled them or that they were simply present to protest the cold for clearly they despise it as much as we do.
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A TURN
He is never certain what to do on days like this one, when the winter takes a particularly nasty turn, the temperature hovers at utter emptiness, and the wind elects to try to enfold everything it can reach in a coat of frost, that bleaches life away. He walks each day, through the nearby park…
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an old writer and his words 