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Small Animals

A few times a year, especially in spring, one of my cats clambers through the flap in the door carrying some fresh dilemma for me.

To Make It Through

Some of us have faced devastating losses of jobs or homes or family members, and some of us have more time to take up hobbies and house projects. Some of us pop our trunks open, and some of us fill them.

Sunbeams

Laws, it is said, are for protection of the people. It’s unfortunate that there are no statistics on the number of lives that are clobbered yearly as a result of laws: outmoded laws; laws that found their way onto the books as a result of ignorance, hysteria, or political haymaking; antilife laws; biased laws; laws that pretend that reality is fixed and nature is definable. . . . A survey such as that could keep a dozen dull sociologists out of mischief for months.

Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

At The Arraignment

Which of us has never broken a law? / I died for you — a desperate extravagance, even for me. / If you can’t be merciful, at least be bold.

Penance For Nico

I first met Nico at a gathering of country-club types. We two misfits clearly didn’t belong at such a party, where the other guests had doused themselves in so much cologne that we were forced to escape our host’s home to catch our breath on the freshly cut grass.

The Practice Of Touch

I imagine my own daughter in Danny’s situation. She is a toddler, so I would be allowed to stay with her if she got COVID. But if she were older, what would I do? What rules would I break to sit beside her?

My Country

Claiming a heritage, becoming a citizen, landing in a foreign jail