Harvesting
Pumpkins
From
villages in Iowa,
Indiana,
Minnesota and Nebraska
and from
towns in the Dakotas,
Wisconsin
and Michigan,
there
stream to Chicago in spring
parades of
lithe girls
looking for
boys
who will
look at them
but who
find instead
the men who
will wine them
through
summer,
who will
wait until fall
to thresh
in the fields
one summer
can ripen,
the men who
will watch
till a
pumpkin falls from the vine.
This is the
courtship
village
girls dream about,
laugh
about, hope for.
Come fall,
these are the men
who fill
silos of girls
from
Elkhart and Davenport,
Ely and
other small places,
lithe girls
who in spring
come to
Chicago looking for boys
who will
look at them
but who
find instead
the
reapers, the men.
Donal
Mahoney
Email to a Son
from college 25 years ago.
Anyone who can climb
from ruffian in a juvenile home
to
university graduate to
business owner is remarkable.
One day your sons
will come to understand that.
Your siblings as well.
Couldn’t be prouder of your trek,
a magnificent one, done the hard way,
something I viewed from the valley.
My father had a passbook
with cash for me to go to college.
He always had work, hard work,
highly skilled, with no layoffs.
There’s always a demand for hot
wire
electricians willing to climb
tall poles and high towers,
attack voltage in any weather.
Life never steps back, forever
upstream,
and then suddenly we're salmon.
A final thrust or two and we die.
Thank God we have souls.
Donal Mahoney
Wildlife in the Garden
Birds and possums,
coons and squirrels
frequent my wife’s garden.
Dawn to dusk I spy on them
from an upstairs window
next to my computer.
They remind me of the city
poor foraging in Dumpsters.
This morning a coon
dispatched
a possum that had
frightened away two feral cats
I feed every day at 4
a.m.
When I went out on the deck
and waved my arms to dispatch
the coon, he sat on his rump
and stared at me with a glare
I saw 50 years ago in the eyes
of a girl who became a nun.
She is still a nun today.
She said cut it out back
then.
As did the coon today.
Donal Mahoney
