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Old Maids

My aunt Eunice never married. I have not married either, and I think that perhaps we remained single for the same reason, though I may be wrong. Eunice never said why she hadn’t married, except in the joking way one replies to the curiosity of children.

Father’s Day

In The Name Of Compassion

A Lawyer Fights Assisted Suicide — An Interview With Wesley J. Smith

A proponent of assisted suicide could be Moses, and it wouldn’t make assisted suicide right. That said, I think the motives of those promoting this agenda are mixed. I think there is a difference between the true believers in assisted suicide, who view it in an almost quasi-religious way, and people who support it because they believe it is the compassionate thing to do. The latter are merely misguided, in my opinion.

A Day In The Life Of Ann

Ann is lying on her left side in the hospital bed in the living room. Joe has just gone to work. Before leaving, he helped me turn her and take off her impractical frilly nightgown. He wants her dressed normally, though she’s way beyond caring. Now I’m watching TV, waiting for the suppository I gave her to work.

They Leave You Here Alone In The Dark

When I was 4 years old they put me in the hospital / to remove my tonsils and adenoids. / The night after they operated / I could not sleep so I got up // and I wandered down the huge corridor, / nobody in sight, and I came to 2 big doors / so I went through them and that is when / I first heard the sound of real pain

Trudy Deere Goes To Heaven

I’ve been in the hospital four days when they put another woman in the room with me — an old farm wife from Beardstown, by the name of Trudy Deere. Trudy Deere has been in a car accident. She’s recuperating.

Foxglove Canyon

It rained last night, and this morning there’s a heavy mist hanging low over the Blue Ridge Mountains, like a Sunday dress over a grandmother’s sagging breasts. This is the last place I’ll work, the end of the trail, my final stop: Shady Rest Nursing Home.

How I Find Her

“Do you mean going out in the car and running errands, getting things done? Do you feel you should be doing that now?” I’m trying to find a brain wave I can ride to shore with her. She was always such a strong swimmer. I remember her arms especially, how they’d slice through the blue water at the pool when I was a kid.

Selected Poems

Crossing In Fog