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Donal Mahoney Poem
We have something in common, a fellow I talk to now and then. We’re about the same age and perhaps the only ones in the diner who think our past lives are interesting. So when the two of us shoot the bunk over coffee, it’s amazing that two men who sometimes can’t remember much about yesterday remember a lot about the past. But the past sometimes shines a light on the present and the lives we lead today.
It’s no secret there’s a movement on by some to make America “great" again. My friend said when he was young, America, despite its problems, was not so bad. And despite its problems today, it’s still not so bad. Witness all the people who want to come here, he said. Who can blame them?
I told him I never thought about America being great until the recent election. I simply thought America was the only country in which I would want to live, both as a young man looking for work and as someone now retired because of the opportunity I found in America.
There were problems along the way, at least three of them quite memorable, all of my own making. But no need to go into those. I think what my friend Duane had to say is more interesting.
He still gets letters and notes from old high school classmates, class of ‘64. Some of them even use a computer and know how to send emails. He’s been their friend for 67 of his 71 years. Any note, letter or email, he said, makes life in a wheelchair easier.
One of his first high school memories happened during the Korean War--collecting metal and bringing it to school. Mrs. Lydia Rayburn (all names changed to protect the innocent and guilty) would take the metal to Herman Ladd's junkyard and sell it. She’d use the money to buy gifts for wounded soldiers and their families. She herself was a war widow from World War II.
It was a great day, Duane said, when the Korean War ended. And it was a war, he reminded me, not a conflict. I couldn't disagree but my war memories preceded his. I was in grammar school during WWII, too young to be drafted for Korea. I was one of the lucky ones as was my friend also too young for Korea.
Duane remembered everyone in his school getting under their desks during nuclear drills....as if being under a desk would keep them safe from radiation.
And he remembered being in Mr. Claybourn's class when Sputnik was launched and being in Mr. Taylor's class when Alan Shepherd took his flight. Everyone in class cheered when the trip went well.
He recalled vividly a striking young president who stood bareheaded and read a speech that called the nation to greatness. It was a far different time than now and the call to greatness meant something different, Duane said, than what we hear today. The call seemed noble then, he said. We agreed that whatever the call to greatness is today the word noble doesn’t seem to fit.
The civil rights struggle came to Duane's small hometown when his high school was integrated in the fall of 1962. He told me proudly there was not one fight, not one walkout, not one act of civil disobedience ruining that transition. In fact, he and his classmates learned something about dignity and patience from their Black classmates although no one mentioned it at the time.
I was able to relate to that because in 1953 I was a sophomore in Chicago high school called to assembly a day before the semester started. It had been an all-white boys school and the principal told us there would be three Black freshmen joining us the next day. There were no gasps, not even when the principal issued a warning I will never forget.
“Bother them,” he said, “and expulsion is immediate.”
No one bothered those three young men who broke the color barrier in 1953 and the school today is thoroughly integrated and thriving. Most graduates move on to college and do well in life as the alumni newsletters attest.
In high school the Cuban Missile Crisis also bothered Duane. His fellow students were upset, and many folks in his town thought the End of the World was near. There was a sigh of relief when the Russians backed down and removed their missiles from Cuba.
But most of all, Duane was shaken by the death of that young president, John F. Kennedy, who had called the nation to greatness in his inauguration speech.
Another student, Annabelle Jones, was in a car with her boyfriend the day President Kennedy was shot. It was after the lunch break when she told Duane President Kennedy was dead.
Duane and his classmates were broken, for want of a better word, as was the nation. He doesn't remember Americans ever being as optimistic again.
I told him his experience after the assassination was the same as mine in Chicago. I agreed as well that Americans alive at that time and still alive today have never been the same. Their lack of optimism may have trickled down to the generations that followed. Hard to tell.
Duane said that despite the assassination, his graduation day was wonderful. The sad thing is he has never seen some of his classmates again. He cherishes the ones he does hear from, the ones who come to reunions, and the ones who visit him now and then. All the years roll away in spite of the wrinkles and infirmities.
At every reunion they’re kids again talking as fast as they did back in high school. They’re still afraid that if they don't say it, it won't get said.
He and his classmates turned out to be who they are because of who they were in that small school. Their teachers and their parents made certain of that.
For many in his generation and mine, that seems to be true. We both wish we knew a way to pass the formula forward to the students of today. They are the ones who will have the most to say about how great America is in the future, far more, Duane and I agreed, than those doing all the talking about it today.
Donal Mahoney
Copyright © Donal Mahoney | Year Posted 2017
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Donal Mahoney Poem
A group of older men gather
once a week to talk about life
after a heart attack.
Old Len chews tobacco still
and tells jokes in a voice so low
no one can hear the punch line.
Another man asks Len
to talk louder so they all
can hear the punch line.
That’s when they discover
Len's been telling the same joke
at every meeting, over and over.
The joke’s about a loan officer
who lends a man $10,000 for a
face lift that turns out so good
the lender can’t find him.
With heart attacks in common,
the men yell “Tell it, again, Len!”
Donal Mahoney
Copyright © Donal Mahoney | Year Posted 2017
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Donal Mahoney Poem
Third day on her honeymoon
Sharon asks Butch what it's like
for a man before he gets married.
A bricklayer by trade,
and a man of few words,
Butch doesn’t know what to say
but he knows Sharon has always
liked to go bowling; in fact,
that’s how this odd couple met.
So he tries an analogy although
he doesn’t know it’s an analogy.
From age 12 on, Butch tells her, he
always felt like he had a bowling ball
in his pants; that was a problem.
He couldn’t find pants to fit.
When he became a man he joined
bowling leagues, three or four, and
went bowling as often as he could.
Then Butch tells Sharon he met her
and knew he had to quit bowling
having found a lane of his own.
Donal Mahoney
Copyright © Donal Mahoney | Year Posted 2017
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Donal Mahoney Poem
In the woods soft snow
falls on the first day of spring.
Two daffodils laugh.
Donal Mahoney
Copyright © Donal Mahoney | Year Posted 2017
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Donal Mahoney Poem
Black lives matter
in different ways
to different people
in the American rainbow
especially bus companies
that bounce over potholes
in the big cities of America.
For them money matters.
If blacks stop riding buses
the buses will be empty
except for other poor folk
white, red, yellow, brown
who don’t drive cars
but are too few to keep
the buses bouncing.
Everyone will understand
that black lives matter when
everyone understands
that black money matters
not to blacks alone but
to all stripes in the
American rainbow.
Donal Mahoney
Copyright © Donal Mahoney | Year Posted 2017
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Donal Mahoney Poem
Otis was once a monk
who took no vows, was
free to leave the abbey
and eventually he did.
I met him over chicken wings
at Sadie's Soul Food Grill.
For almost 20 years
every spring and summer
Otis labored in the fields
raising vegetables
and crops of every kind.
In fall and winter he
would gather leaves and
plow the snow, wheel
ancient monks up and down
the endless silent halls.
He loved his work
because he liked to help
anyone in need.
I asked Otis why he left.
He said because at first
he thought life was a burp
somewhere in eternity.
He still believes that but
wants to hear the burp
before he’s in eternity.
Otis likes the chicken wings
at Sadie’s Soul Food Grill,
especially the real hot ones.
He ate chicken at the abbey
but nothing like the wings
at Sadie's Soul Food Grill.
A real treat before eternity.
Donal Mahoney
Copyright © Donal Mahoney | Year Posted 2017
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Donal Mahoney Poem
She’s been making quilts
for half a century and he’s been
making poems that long as well
and every now and then he brings
a chocolate shake to her place
so they can take a break and talk.
He always finds her at the frame,
peering through thick lenses.
"I’m still house bound, Walt,"
she laughs and likes to say.
Once she told him quilts are poems.
She works with scraps of cloth
and he with scraps of words and quilts
and poems are never done until all
the scraps are where they have to be.
Now she's working on a Double Wedding Ring,
a quilt not unlike a sonnet in that both follow
patterns of their own but she likes crazy quilts
because she can improvise with scraps
she finds on floors around the house.
Her job's to make something beautiful
from scraps others might throw away.
He has no problem understanding that.
He saves scraps of words and marries them
in ways some folk find odd or useless.
Finishing her shake she says maybe
they play jazz and just don’t know it.
She likes Miles Davis and puts his album on
when a crazy quilt won't go her way
but she would never listen to Miles while
she’s at work on a Double Wedding Ring.
Yo-Yo Ma, she says, is the man for that.
The old poet says he would never disagree.
Donal Mahoney
Copyright © Donal Mahoney | Year Posted 2017
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Donal Mahoney Poem
Caseworker Determining Eligibility
Cabrini-Green Projects
Chicago
The child, age two, hammocked in the half
moon of his mother’s arms, is locked
in palsy, yet moves an eyelid as I ask,
moves the other as his mother answers,
application form interrogation.
The father was a white policeman.
“Curiosity,” the mother says. “No more.
I didn’t go with him for money.”
Donal Mahoney
Copyright © Donal Mahoney | Year Posted 2010
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Donal Mahoney Poem
Reunions can happen
and leave you speechless.
I’m standing at a bank
of elevators in a hospital
going to visit my wife
when a wheelchair rolls up
carrying my internist
from years ago.
An excellent doctor
who retired to teach,
according to rumors.
Now he’s pushed by a woman
I assume is his wife.
She looks sad
and he looks worse.
He asks how I’m doing
and I say not bad.
I ask how he’s doing
and he says he’s dying.
And adds that he hopes
I never have to.
He says he never realized
despite his patients
dying could be so hard.
Donal Mahoney
Copyright © Donal Mahoney | Year Posted 2017
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Donal Mahoney Poem
Dad hit me only once, an upper cut to the solar plexus. It nearly lifted me off my feet. I was 17 then and already fairly tall, 6’1.” He was 48 and of medium height, 5’8,” a fireplug who if provoked could whirl like a dervish if you can picture that.
He had been a prisoner of war in Ireland and then became a boxer in the United States after the English expelled him from Ireland around 1920.
Fortunately, he caught on with the Commonwealth Edison Company in Chicago and worked there as a trouble-shooting electrician for almost 40 years.
One day he reached over a hot wire too fast to save a rookie from experiencing a shock of 12,000 volts. He took the volts instead and that crippled one arm and brought about an early retirement. While recovering, he seemed more concerned about ruining his accident-free record.
But I’m getting years ahead of myself. I’m talking now about the day 30 years previous when he caught me with that uppercut in the dining room.
What had I done, you might ask?
Well, in the ignorance of youth, I had hidden an open jar of catfish stink bait between the cushions of the living room couch where I knew my father would sit to talk with my friends, all of us just home from high school.
He liked to talk with them and they with him.
In no time at all, the stench from the catfish bait filled the living room and he stopped talking and started looking around in a rather menacing way.
I had thought he would laugh because 10 years earlier he had told me, when I was perhaps in the second grade, about the time he and a fellow worker, Oscar Bergman, another electrician, had been making the rounds in their Trouble Truck, as it was called, in the alleys of Chicago. They would stop as required to take turns climbing poles to get the electricity back on after a strong summer storm.
As the saying goes, it was 100 in the shade and not much shade was available that day in the alleys.
Apparently it was Oscar’s turn to climb the next pole and while he was up there, my father flattened a patty of horse dung he had found in the alley. He put it in the pocket of a jacket Oscar had left on the back shelf of the cab of the truck, a jacket Oscar had worn in springtime.
Horse dung in Chicago’s alleys was common in the 1940s. Vegetable vendors would ride up and down in horse-drawn carts hawking their produce, all of it fresh from one of the farms on the outskirts of the city.
But on this day when Oscar got back in the truck he yelled something to my father who was then climbing the next pole.
“Joe, there’s a helluva stench in the cab of the truck.”
Oscar had a very thick Swedish accent, as thick as my father’s Irish brogue, and as a young child I had a chance to hear them converse when my father brought Oscar over to the house. They had become close friends, different as they were, and the music of their two accents was wonderful to hear. They communicated with gusto.
Oscar’s remark about the stench from the dung patty, however, has remained with me all these years:
“Joe, there’s a helluva stench in the cab of the truck.”
In childhood I said it over and over with more relish, I’m afraid, than a nighttime prayer I had been asked to memorize. I think it is still a prayer taught by some parents. It was called “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep.”
In any event 10 years later when my father found the stink bait I had hidden in the couch, he didn’t find my trick as funny as the one he had played on Oscar Bergman.
No doubt he was embarrassed in front of my friends who I had told about the set-up in advance. No doubt they were smiling if not stifling a laugh.
I ran out of the living room as soon as I saw my father leap off the couch. He caught me in the dining room and delivered that uppercut.
Decades later now there are times when I can still feel that punch although he didn’t turn his fist when it sunk into me. I always wondered why he failed to do so.
When I had gotten eyeglasses for myopia in third grade, he had taken me down the basement to teach me how to defend myself based on skills he had learned as a boxer.
Showing me how to fake with my left and deliver my right, he told me that if I ever got in a fight to turn my fist each time I landed a punch. Telling that to a third-grader was a remarkable event in itself. But I remember it to this day.
I listened to my father all through childhood and also watched what he did. Like many children fortunate enough to have a father in the home, I learned good things and bad things that way.
It turned out at school that he was right about other boys bugging me about my new glasses. Three fights in three days, all of them broken up by the nun in charge of the playground during recess.
But the day my father got me with the uppercut in the dining room, I didn’t cry and I didn’t flinch, just leaned back against the wall. To cry would have been bad form for the first-born son of an Irish immigrant.
Crying wasn’t an acceptable response to physical pain in the house I was raised in. No doubt that was because my father had endured much physical and emotional pain throughout his life, especially in that British prison in Ireland where the guards broke both his legs with rifle butts and then let him sit on the cell floor for quite some time without medical attention.
So I kept my mouth shut and watched him walk away. First time I ever saw him with his head down.
He was obviously ashamed and embarrassed that he had hit me, something he had never done before or after in spite of infractions I would have thought far worse.
I did well in school, which saved me in his eyes, but I was far less than a well-behaved child.
I learned a couple of things, however, from that uppercut, one of them funny and the other quite important later on in life as an adult.
The funny thing was I kept thinking how lucky Oscar Bergman was to escape with just a horse-dung patty hidden in the pocket of his jacket.
But later in life, memories of the uppercut reminded me never to strike any of my five kids, whatever the problem. Looking back, that is something I am happy never to have done.
I can tell you, though, some of my children's mischievous deeds were far worse, I thought at the time, than hiding stink bait between the cushions of a living room couch. And those are stories dear to my heart I hope someday to write.
Who knows what my kids might think if they happen to read them, especially those of them still in the throes of raising children of their own.
Donal Mahoney
Copyright © Donal Mahoney | Year Posted 2017
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