Special of the Day
It’s Rocky’s Diner
but it’s Brenda’s counter,
been that way for 10 years.
Brenda has her regulars
who want the Special of the Day.
They know the week is over
when it’s perch on Friday.
Her drifters don’t care about
the Special of the Day.
They want Brenda instead
but she’s made it clear
she’s not available.
Her regular customers tip well.
Long ago, they gave up
trying to see her after work.
After awhile her drifters go
to the diner down the street
to see if the waitress there
is any more hospitable.
Brenda’s regulars don’t know
she has three kids her mother
watched every day until Brenda
took a vacation out of town,
then came back and helped her
mother find a place of her own.
Now Brenda’s back at the diner,
serving her regulars and
discouraging her drifters,
while Marsha, her bride,
watches the kids.
Donal Mahoney
Tenement Scene, Havana, 1962
Woman in a window
brushing long hair madly
screams at a little boy
down in the street
licking an ice cream cone
some man gave him
some man she doesn’t know
not the man she’s
brushing her hair for
who doesn't show up.
The man with the ice cream
may have to do.
Donal Mahoney
Waiting Room
First time seeing this doctor,
a specialist. Took a month
to get an appointment.
The waiting room’s packed.
I grab the last seat
next to a lady in a wheelchair
knitting something,
perhaps for a grandchild.
I pull out my cell phone
like everyone else
but just to check messages,
not into games.
No one’s looking at magazines,
it seems, any more.
It’s a cell phone world,
messages and Tic-Tac-Toe.
Half an hour later the lady
stops knitting and whispers,
“Sit back and relax, son.
Life’s a waiting room.
We all have appointments.
Every name is called.
Even those who believe
no doctor is in."
Donal Mahoney
A Symphony Lost
Harvey at 80
is losing his hearing.
He can’t hear his wife
when she talks,
a symphony lost.
But at dusk
in the garden
alone in a lawn chair
with a glass of iced tea
cubes circling
Harvey can hear
the whippoorwill ask
and the cricket reply
and that’s all the truth
that he needs.
Donal Mahoney
Ambrose and the Blind Man
Decades ago a small college
out in the boondocks
put Ambrose, a freshman,
on a Greyhound Bus to attend
a student convention in New York.
No other student wanted to go.
The college had to send someone.
On the bus Ambrose sat next
to a blind man who spent most
of the trip telling Ambrose,
a farm boy, all about women.
Ambrose listened with awe.
Everything he heard was new.
Ambrose knew little about girls
but had always liked them.
For his high school prom,
a friend set him up with a
quiet girl who needed a date.
Ambrose liked Shirley.
Back then, TV sets were small
with the picture in black and white.
“I Love Lucy” topped the charts.
It was Ambrose’s favorite show.
Back then, girls saved themselves
for marriage so most of what
the blind man told Ambrose
was breaking news to him.
So many girls, what to do?
He didn’t have money to date.
Ambrose is now a retired farmer,
the father of nine, who often reflects
on the blind man’s advice when he
sits in his rocker and wonders
after 50 years with Shirley if
the blind man was right to say:
“Son, it doesn’t matter how pretty
a woman is because every woman
has the basics any man needs.
Sample a few and find out.
Besides, you can trust me
when I tell you they all look
the same in the dark.”
Donal Mahoney
Man with the Can
Every morning
before the sun comes up
there’s a feral cat on our deck
waiting for a can of Fancy Feast.
It’s been that way for years.
It’s not always the same cat
because feral cats come and go
but barring a downpour of rain
or an overnight pile of snow
there’s always a cat
outside our door, looking
through the screen
waiting for service,
sometimes licking its lips.
The same cat can appear
at the door for weeks,
months, even years.
They’re close friends
with my wife but not with me.
We aren’t enemies but
the cats favor my wife.
I understand why.
The cats find our house, I think,
not because the cat underground
says the food’s good but
somehow the cats know
my wife was a farm girl
that barn cats loved before
she went off to college and
took a job in the city.
I think they begin to believe
my wife is one of them
because almost every summer
she comes out in the afternoon
and sits on the deck and
the morning cat comes back
over the fence and hops up
on her lap for a serious petting.
Over the years the cats and I
have been acquaintances at best.
They know I’m the one who puts
the can out before dawn
while my wife sleeps in.
But not one of them has ever
cozied up to me, the caterer,
or why not call it as it is,
the man with the can.
I have no problem with that
even if the best greeting
I can expect is caterwauling
on the rare morning I’m slow
popping the lid.
Donal Mahoney
