Whole and Steaming
Dingle, Ireland
The bathroom carpet,
wall to wall, is blue,
the lightest blue,
to complement
the bowl and ceiling.
Apropos the moment:
I bend the waist
and heave the gristle
from last evening's steak.
Tomorrow I shall row again
to see those ancient men
in caps and coveralls
stand like statues
while they talk
and tap gold embers
now and then
from clay pipes
forever glowing.
I'll go there
at the dinner hour
and see them once again
fork potatoes,
whole and steaming,
from big kettles filled
at dawn by crones
forever kerchiefed
and forever bent.
At dawn you hear
the women
like a choir
sing their hymns
a cappella
as they genuflect and dip
big black kettles
in the sometimes still
sometimes foaming sea.
Donal Mahoney
Categories:
kerchiefed, history
Form: Free verse
Dingle, Ireland
The bathroom carpet,
wall to wall, is blue,
the lightest blue,
to complement
the bowl and ceiling.
Apropos the moment:
I bend the waist
and heave the gristle
from last evening's steak.
Tomorrow I shall row again
to see those ancient men
in caps and coveralls
stand like statues
while they talk
and tap gold embers
now and then
from clay pipes
forever glowing.
I'll go there
at the dinner hour
and see them once again
fork potatoes,
whole and steaming,
from big kettles filled
at dawn by crones
forever kerchiefed
and forever bent.
At dawn you hear
the women
like a choir
sing their hymns
a cappella
as they genuflect and dip
big black kettles
in the sometimes still
sometimes foaming sea.
Donal Mahoney
Categories:
kerchiefed, places
Form: Free verse
Bending, Grabbing, Sorting
Chinese Laundry
Chicago, 1970
In a storefront laundry
on North Clark Street
brown draperies release
this quiet man
who has my shirts.
He smiles and bows--
how carefully
he wraps them.
Before the draperies
fall back, I see,
for a moment,
in a circle swirling
almost out of sight
three kerchiefed women,
glistening black,
bending, grabbing, sorting.
Donal Mahoney
Categories:
kerchiefed, people
Form: Free verse