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Donal Mahoney


​Kaleidoscope and Harpsichord

​As 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 Poplar

There 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 Listening

So 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 Town

Beautiful 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 Autumn

He 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.
​

​

Picture
Picture


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Go to page 2 of Donal Mahoney's poetry

A Quiet Beauty in Gray

The 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 Economics

It’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 Rose

After 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 Eve

Paddy 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 Pekingese

​Summer 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.
​
Go to page 2 of Donal Mahoney's poetry

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