In your mind you hear words snarling all day long but no poem arrives. The words are locked

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

If I hadn’t died, I’d still be bouncing along in that Greyhound bus through the mountains swigging a Coke.

Fred must explain Halloween to Op… when he gets home from the poker g… He just had another bad Halloween… He thinks Opal doesn’t know but E… from across the street called Opal

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

We write the stories of our lives between the bookends of birth and death They stay on the shelf

Sixty years ago, the two of us rode tricycles up a little hill behind our school. Nothing stopped us till

His cardiologist says Fred’s doing well for a man of 80. It won’t be his heart that kills him.

Does he remember? Jenny, how could he forget? Thirty years ago you roared into his office and raged about your cousin’s

Like that broad in an apricot bra hanging over the sill of her tenement window, the sun is over me now, its nectar laughing and falling.

So many of us feed the birds even though we know birds can make it on their own in any weather,

You’re standing on a window ledge on the 50th floor of your building… It’s Valentine’s Day in Manhatta… clouds cruising, sun everywhere, a nice breeze tossing your hair,

Dad, happy to see you’re taking a nap. I’m down at the pier so give me a shout when you wake up

Walking very slowly, ancient Wall… right behind his ancient Molly who… stepping down the garden path, her first time out in weeks, wobbly still on her new knee.

This senior citizen whose face is Rushmore still squats with pigeons on the steps of the Rogers Park Masonic Templ… She wears a shawl this snowy day