An investor in small start-up companies, I had given a guy named Dickie Ray Hoskins some front money for his new venture and arranged for him to meet with the Peoples bank of Paris, Texas, to get an operating loan. I had a good relationship with Tiffany, the loan manager, who had acquired her skills with a much larger bank in Chicago. She was in her early thirties, smart and attractive.

Jane was a "closet" anti-vaxxer---not the sort of attribute one might expect in a high profile CEO of a large conglomerate of hotels and restaurant chains.  She worked in downtown L.A. and lived in Pasadena where her twin girls went to a private school---which had just sent them home because of a large measles outbreak in California.

Vera shuffled into a strip mall bank branch which was flanked by a nail salon and a vitamin shop. The mall had drifted into premature uselessness, with half the stores selling vacancy signs. Vera wore a quilted robe with ample splashes of fur in floral patterns front and back plus on the cuffs, collar and hemline. On her feet were white cotton slippers with velcro straps undone. As she flowed up to a teller window, clumps of streaked grey hair tried to escape from underneath a fraying ball cap.

He wanted one poem to plop down in his lap,

Contented and revealing within the first draft;

It's phrases weaned...lines well proportioned,

.....a poem like that seldom walks in the door.

We need to talk. she said.

Odd timing, he said, I'm writing.

No, I mean it, she said.

O.K., just a minute,

    .. a wildflower steals under yon fence row,

     poignant, the shy hues of parting glances,

Is your heart in this? she asked.

Why are so many people talking about balls all of a sudden? I just don't understand it. Balls have been hanging around for a long time, but now there's all this fuss about how hard they're supposed to be! Did you hear they're even on TV deciding how much balls should weigh? Yes, really!

Here's this week's heap of haikus:

A cold wind will blow
o'er any innovation
'til it catches fire.

---

Twilight, cold and wet ...
To ease the chill in my bones,
a savory bisque!

---

"Yeah", said Ben,"this is basically a sports chair, I can lift it into the car easily and I'll pop a wheelie for you after I've had another bourbon."

Dutch had been driving to Chicago and stopped at Ben's house outside Tulsa. They had been fraternity brothers at Yale in the Sixties. Dutch was divorced and Ben's wife Ginger had died three years earlier.

"I admit that I'm shocked to see you in that chair", said Dutch, "how did it happen?"

Here's this week's heap of haikus:

Here's this week's heap of haikus:

Rain evaporates
The Autumn leaves decompose
Snow melts.  Life goes on.

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