Donal Mahoney Poems

On Sunday his wife
and children walk
to Mass
...

Pastor Homer is a jealous man
and Opal gives him fits
through 40 years of marriage
dancing, laughing
...

I used to dream
in black and white
but now I dream in color.
Blood is red and real
...

The dapper young man tells
the homeless man one stool over,
After I get my law degree,
I'll get an MBA and go to Wall Street
...

There are people
I hope to see
lolling on a cloud
...

'Sometimes I want to sit down
and never get up, ' she confided,
tapping her cane as we crossed
...

I'm no expert on marriage
but you asked me so
here's how I see it,
decades removed from
...

If I hadn't died, I'd still
be bouncing along
in that Greyhound bus
through the mountains
...

The poor are hungry in America.
Their numbers would fill stadiums
throughout this prosperous land.
And feral cats are running wild,
...

Buford was a big man, at least 300 pounds, with a heart of silver if not of gold. No one messed with Buford. He had a limp and for years he had used a cane too short. Neighbors feared some day he might fall and sure enough one day he did fall in his backyard. He was going out to his dump truck. The only good thing that came out of that fall is that I got a chance to talk to an ambulance driver in Beijing, China. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

When Buford fell, he disappeared and left a massive hole in his wake. Dirt rose like a volcano eruption for minutes after he was gone. I lived across the street from Buford so I climbed over his fence to see if I could help in any way. I knew I would not be able to pull him out of the hole by myself. It would take a crane, I figured, to get him back on solid ground.
...