If Only I Moved by Instinct Life has been a grand migrationto where you are today!— well-known wisdom I didn’t know! Otherwise,when those raggedy squadronsclamored overhead last evening— three V’s disarrayedlike frayed arrow feathers, their leaders insistent as clownswith braying horns, honkingfor plane geometry— I would have taxied, sprinted,lifted arthriticlyfrom water’s edge (granted more dodo…

  Death Still Walks In ‘In the old days news of it traveled by foot.’— Billy Collins, ‘Death’ Here’s how to miss the deathof a friend whose houseyou glide by every day: To start, be sure to catchthe first prognosis, then someof the subsequent progress, till her remission gets you brieflyoff the hook, lets you…

Rite of Passage In Bali, it’s the filing of the caninesto limit boys’ wild adolescence.Among Cameroon’s Baka Pygmiesit’s the Spirit of the Forest killing boys to be reborn as men. And in ruralIllinois, 1964, the May grass green,resilient as Astro Turf, it’s initiationinto the fraternity of boys-who-mow. My turn now to untangle the Craftsmanfrom the…

    Photo by Quino Al on Unsplash          Rec Rugby, 195 Years Later*   — for Maggie   Current version of the original — (plump ovoid freshly plucked from perfectly uneven mud and barely tucked under an arm bruised and translucent, impatience betraying a stone-cold determination amidst the Saturday spectacle of leashed dogs,…