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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