Thursday, April 16, 2015

Donal Mahoney- Three Poems


Wheelchair with a View

When you sit in this chair all day
and look out the window for years,
the garden is calendar and clock

declaring the coming of seasons.
You know when to expect them 
but spring is always a surprise. 

After surviving long winters 
you forget after so many years
the daffodils will shout again 

and blooms on the redbud cover 
leaves that will hide young robins, 
their beaks open for more.

Winter is all you remember until
for reasons only God knows, 
spring smiles again.


Chicken Bone Stuck

We’ve been married 40 years
and we eat dinner together 
every night, Maisie,

except when I'm out 
of town on business.
That can’t be helped 

with bills and a mortgage. 
But never in 40 years till 
the other night did I ever

hear you say something
that stuck in my throat 
like a chicken bone. 

That bone is still there 
and I feel it whenever we 
eat dinner but never 

at lunch eating alone.
So after dinner tonight
I’m packing my bags 

and going to a hotel. 
We can have dinner at  
the diner sometime 

and if the bone's not
stuck in my throat we 
can kiss and make up,

provided you admit 
the hairs in my nose 
aren't crabgrass.


Yowling

Ed's wife found a sinkhole
in the yard a year ago
a foot wide, several feet deep

and she wanted it filled.
No problem said Ed.
The sinkhole is hidden 

behind a big bush 
next to their garage.  
Sometimes a feral cat, 

good as its eyes may be,
falls into the hole at night,
never to come out.

The yowling can go on
longer than a week.
Neighbors around 

Ed’s stockade fence 
ask where the yowling
is coming from and Ed 

asks them if they
have a cat in heat.
They always say no

and the questions stop.
Meanwhile, feral cats, 
once a plague in Ed's yard,

no longer crouch
in the foliage and leap 
to pluck robins and 

cardinals out of the air.
Birds can worship now
at Ed’s suet and feeders, 

wipe their beaks in peace,
serenaded at times
by the yowling.


Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri. 

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