Donal Mahoney- Three Poems

Flotsam and Jetsam

They're usually poor people,

sometimes considered

the flotsam of society,

always in the way

at the grocery store,

at the post office.

They can’t find their money,

if they have any.

They’re never in a hurry.

They have nowhere to go

and you’re always in line 

behind them, a busy man 

with people to see,

appointments to keep,

deadlines to meet.

You try to be patient.

You know flotsam loiters

until life takes it away.

Later in retirement 

you stand on a street corner

leaning on your cane 

waiting for the light to change 

but for you it never does.

You now have something 

in common with flotsam. 

In a year, maybe less,

you will be jetsam as

birds soar over your plot

four seasons of the year.

You won’t be aware

that on street corners

all over the world 

the lights won’t change for

other folks still in a hurry, 

those who don’t realize yet 

flotsam and jetsam 

at some point in time

have something in common.

They have nowhere to go.

Big Difference

Behind every great man 

is a woman 

making him who he is.

Behind every great woman 

is a man

watching her walk.

A Milkshake Brings Advice

I bring a milkshake every other week

to an old man in a nursing home,

a refugee from Germany who paid me  

50 cents to cut his grass when I was 

a kid in Chicago after WWII.

I couldn’t understand him then

and I can’t understand him now 

but 50 cents was big money 

in 1950, 10 candy bars,

10 popsicles or maybe 5 Cokes.

Or I could mix and match and trade 

Pete the Collector for a baseball card.

Now my old neighbor sits in bed

and swigs his milkshake as I tell him  

that I drove by his house the other day 

and the new owners have planted 

roses and lilies everywhere.

Every color imaginable.

A botanical garden in bloom.

He blinks at me, smiles

and takes a final swig. 

Because of the language problem

we never talk about anything

except the house he will never 

see again and then marvel that 

he will turn 100 soon, quite a feat.

He smiles at that as well.

But he doesn’t smile when I get up 

to leave and offers me advice 

in the thunder of his accent:

“Someone had better stop ISIS now.

When I was a kid in Berlin, no one

stopped Hitler the bastard then."

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Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri.