Donal Mahoney
Kaleidoscope and HarpsichordAs I've told my wife too many times,
the meaning of any poem hides in the marriage of cadence and sound. Vowels on a carousel, consonants on a calliope, whistles and bells, we need them all tickling our ears. Otherwise, the lines are gristle and fat, no meat. Is it any wonder, then, my wife has a problem with any poem I give her to read for a second opinion, especially when the poem has no message and I'm simply trying to hear what I'm saying and don't care if I understand it. The other night in bed I gave her another poem to read and afterward she said this poem was no different than the others. She had hoped I'd improve. "After all," she said, "you've been writing for years but reading a poem like this is like looking through a kaleidoscope while listening to a harpsichord." Point well taken, point well said. But then I asked her what should a man do if he has careened for years through the caves of his mind spelunking for the right line for a poem only to hear his wife say after reading one of his poems that it was like "looking through a kaleidoscope while listening to a harpsichord." What should he do--quit? "Not a chance," she said this morning, enthroned at the kitchen table, as regal as ever in her fluttery gown and buttering her English muffin with long, languorous strokes Van Gogh would envy. "He should write even more, all day and all night, if need be. After all," she said, "my line about the kaleidoscope and harpsichord still needs a poem of its own. It's all meat, no gristle, no fat." Wrens in the PoplarThere are peeps
from the wren house high in the poplar as the sun peeks over the roses. Or maybe I'm wrong. Perhaps I hear altar boys reciting their prayers at the foot of the altar at the start of a Latin Mass decades ago in a church silent now for years. Whether it's peeps or prayers I'm not certain until I see the cat hunkered like a tank under the poplar, hoping to receive communion. They Don't Know I'm ListeningSo here I am, all decked out
in a new suit from Brooks Brothers, haberdasher to corporate stars. My wife just got here, rattled. The kids have been here for hours, flying in for the occasion. My wife will make certain I look as spiffy as possible. The oldest boy just told her a neighbor has agreed to cut the grass, rake the leaves and shovel the snow, chores I performed for decades in return for a mug of coffee and wedge of pie. Now my wife is asking the undertaker to puff out my tie, something she did before I’d go to the office, armed with a thermos and brown paper bag. Stranger Comes to TownBeautiful fall day
in a potter’s field outside a small town. A funeral is underway but that doesn’t stop the leaves russet and gold a few still green falling among the stones without a name. The minister reads a verse over the grave of a man found by deer hunters. No idea who he is or where he came from, a body dumped. Four people from the clapboard church with the wayward steeple over the hill gather 'round heads bowed, hands clasped. An old worker with a shovel stands like a soldier near the shed and waits for everyone to leave so he can finish up. It’s almost lunch time. One by one cars pull away and now it’s just us, the dirt and a gold leaf falling on me Little Gourds in AutumnHe was upstairs doing something
on the computer when she got home in the rain so she sent him an email from her recliner rather than calling from the bottom of the stairs. Why disturb him. Nothing urgent. She was weary after a long day with the ladies who meet every week and arrange flowers in the Japanese style, a style where less is more, a style befitting their age, the ladies agree. But no flowers today, she wrote. Instead they arranged gourds, little ones, in an autumnal way. She said Victoria hadn’t come. It’s hard for her with the walker but her daughter buys her flowers to make arrangements at home. Her living room looks like a wake. We’re better off than Victoria, better off than a lot of people, she reminded her husband. We have to be thankful. But now it was time for a nap. She would check the mailbox again on rising and let him know if the bills and magazines had finally come. The postman, she said, is likely sitting in his van avoiding the rain.
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A Quiet Beauty in GrayThe beauty of gray
I never noticed until the other day I saw this mockingbird, a quiet beauty in gray, on the bare limb of a dogwood tree, peer down through snow and scold below a Maine Coon cat, a jungle of fur in gray, sitting and staring at a feast that will never be, the two of them a watercolor in the quiet beauty of gray. Trickle-Down EconomicsIt’s war
plain and simple when I fill the feeder out in the sycamore with millet and niger and sunflower seed. Back in the house I stare out the window and watch juncos and chickadees bicker on the perch, spilling more than they eat. Cardinals and jays drive them away, argue and spill even more. Then starlings take over, and like rice at a wedding, seed fills the air pleasing the doves below. They walk like old nuns and peck at the manna. Apple Fritter and a Single RoseAfter 30 years together,
Carol tells me late one evening in the manner of a quiet wife that I have yet to write a poem about her, something she will never understand in light of all those other poems she says I wrote about those other women before she drove North. And so I tell her once again I wrote those other poems about no women I ever knew the way I now know her even if I saw them once or twice for dinner, maybe, and a little vodka over lime and ice. Near midnight, though, she says again in the manner of a quiet wife it's been thirty years and still no poem. When morning comes I motor off to town to buy a paper and a poem for Carol but find instead undulating in a big glass case an apple fritter, tanned and glistening, lying there just waiting. So I buy the lovely fritter and a single long-stem rose orphaned near the register, roaring red, and still at full attention. I bring them home but find Carol still asleep and so I put the fritter on the breadboard and the rose right next to it, at the proper angle. When she wakes I hope the fritter and the rose will buy me time until somewhere in the attic of my mind I find a poem that says more about us than this apple fritter, tanned and glistening, lying there just waiting, and a single long-stem rose, roaring red, and still at full attention. New Pickle on Christmas EvePaddy stops at Rosen's Deli
and orders brisket on a Kaiser roll, a dab of horseradish, a new pickle on the side. "Latke, too, Sol. Coffee later. No dinner tonight. Maggie's not feeling well. I'll eat here and take a tub of noodle soup to go." Paddy eats and meets Sol wrestling with his register. "How's Mrs. Rosen, Sol? Haven't seen her in a month of Sundays." "Could be cancer, Paddy. They operate next week. Things don't look good. Doc says everything depends on what they find inside." Paddy has no idea what to say. He knows Minerva Rosen better than he knows old Sol. Years ago she handed him his first new pickle. "At church tomorrow, Sol, Maggie and I will pray hard. I hope to God it works. At times, praying's all anyone can do." A Widow and Her PekingeseSummer evenings
after the news at 6 p.m. the Widow Murphy comes out of her tiny bungalow and sits on her front porch swing with her ancient Pekingese yapping mournfully in her lap. She waves to certain people, just a few, while ignoring most although she knows every neighbor after her long reign on the porch as the queen of our block. We live next door but she never waves to us or says hello to me not even back when I was 10 and offered to mow her lawn free for nothing, as I used to put it. She simply looked away and let the Pekingese yap her answer. My father told me then not to worry about the Widow Murphy’s ways. Her husband died in Korea, he said. They never found her son in Viet Nam and she had a daughter doing life for murdering a man the jury must have known had beaten her for years. The man was her husband and a cop. Later in my teens my mother said the Widow Murphy had every right to be a private person and live out the remnant of her life as she saw fit. But when I was 10 cutting our grass, I thought she was a ventriloquist and the Pekingese her dummy yapping for all the world to hear: Life isn’t fair, isn’t fair, isn’t fair. |
