Apples

One thing 

we all have 

in common is 

we're ripening 

for the harvest.

Donald Trump 

and Pee-wee Herman,

Bill Gates 

and Eliot Spitzer,

Warren Buffett 

and Anthony Weiner

are different 

in many respects 

but like the rest of us, 

they, too, are ripening

for the harvest.

They hang with us

from the same branch,

apples, big and small, 

ripening in summer, 

withering in fall,

waiting for winter

to conduct its harvest. 

Some of us hang

from that branch

and wonder 

what in the name 

of God is next.

Others just hang.

They appear

not to care.

Donal Mahoney

An Old Nun’s Opinion

An old nun sitting 

on a bench in front of her convent

saying her beads was

interrupted by a young nun

coming home from school

to the convent for the night.

She asked the old nun if she had heard

about the Supreme Court passing 

the gay marriage law

and the old nun said she had.

The young nun seemed surprised. 

“Well, Sister, you don’t seem upset!”

The old nun looked at her beads

and said, “This isn't Roe v. Wade.

This law won't kill anybody."

Donal Mahoney

Those Poems, That Fire

 

I stood in the alley, still

in pajamas, somebody’s shoes,

another man’s coat, my eyes

on the bronc of the hoses.

Squawed in the blankets of neighbors,

my wife and three children sipped

chocolate, stood orange and still.

Of the hundred or more I had stored

in a drawer, I could remember,

comma for comma, no more than four,

none of them final,

all of them fetal.

 

Donal Mahoney