Fred visits Bill every month at the facility he’s been in for year… Age and booze brought Bill there. He’s still strapped to his bed so he can’t go wandering again

It’s just a flophouse but it’s all he can afford and now it’s come to this. If he buys food he can’t pay the rent

A row of lilacs covered with a summer snow. Ten white butterflies. Donal Mahoney

I turn the porch light on at 4 a.m… to see if a miracle’s occurred and the paper’s landed somewhere in the snow blanketing our lawn. Instead I see a clump on the mat

The man in the ER, sutured and bandaged, told the nurse there wasn’t anyone she could call to give him a lift home.

There are poems everywhere but you have to find them, a teacher told my class long ago. I was a kid sitting at a desk, cowlicks sprouting from my scalp,

It’s time to stop the killing by order of the courts. Time to stop the injections

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

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

The last visitor before I sleep is always the old priest puffing up the stairs to my door, a wine cask under each arm, a loaf of pumpernickel in his teet…

A spindly young fawn wanders away from its doe. Coyotes must eat. Donal Mahoney

Memories never go away. They’re visitors from yesterday arriving unannounced often to a mixed reception. Faces aren’t clear but

She was just an old lady who lived next door. I’d wave and smile and give a nice hello but nothing more.

We do our best to avoid the Zika Virus. We smack mosquitoes and avoid tanned folks just back from two weeks in the tropics.

River rafting in Montana is a fine way to spend your vacation but it’s not the same as river rafting in Zimbabwe.