She was looking at me with that big, sad eye
The Re-Con
Out of Time
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Gone: even fading friendships, the lapse of devotion, the failure of vows, and the mirage of ’til death do us part
The Re-Con
Books become you
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Why should I reread a book? To ache. To witness. To wonder. To delight. And to experience again others’ lives in order to enlarge our own. To make not just a living but a life worth living.
Essay
“Just papers; nothing important,” I told the clerk at the Post Office, knowing in fact that the box held the weight of dreams, a desire for redemption, and the wish to be remembered in another way
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When he came to my office two days before he took his life, his former elegance was in full display, even now as a thin, old man with a voice still attached to his younger self, a man wearing a handsome black coat, a crisp white shirt, and red suspenders
The Re-Con
Humpty, Frumpty, Plumpty, Chumpty, Rumpty, Dumbty, Duncey, Numpty, Scumty, Glumty, Grumpy Trumpty
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Ode to the bronzed sore loser barking lies
to chumps like a carnival clown; never one
to take the high road: may he find his way to the pen
The Re-Con
Perhaps: I whittle away. I trudge on. Gristle-coarse. I try. I am. As should we all as the world winds on.
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I am a dream lost in the laced light of dawn. I am memory and gratitude, the risk of November, a promise regretted.
The Re-Con
Randy Koch’s map across ‘the rutted sea” to promises of bounty in the furrowed black earth of the Minnesota prairie
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“How came we through the swells and troughs to rifle God’s pure grace?”
The Re-Con
The Long Way Home
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I’ll likely be back this way; returning, after all, a way to gauge how little or how much I’ve changed
Past Perfect
That well-respected gentleman, Mr. Fred Dickey Jr., had a laugh unchanged from the one the boy Freddy had, an explosion of gusto released from deep strata of humor
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By the age of enjoying grandchildren and enduring the indignities of old men’s malfunctioning bodies, Fred and I had both become almost as much wiser as we were older
The Re-Con
Do pepper spray, batons, bullet-proof vests, shields, armored vehicles, concussion grenades, tear gas, and rubber bullets make police feel invincible and superior?
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The words “police force” refer less to manpower than to the all-too-common methods of many officers