Donal Mahoney

SIREN AT THREE IN THE MORNING

You want to abide by custom
but what kind of card
do you send
a man of those years
swept through the night
in a riot of snow
and wet streets
to a hospital quit
one month ago,
a fifth of his gut left,
that eaten through?

* * *

RETURNING TO WORK

After the others had welcomed him back,
had shaken his hand and returned to their desks,
another as ancient pulled over his chair
to inquire of him who six months before
had been taken away
on a pallet of interlocked arms
and parallel faces:
“What happened that day?
No one would say.”

Both men talked softly,
held cigarette rites:
the delights of the tapping,
the lighting, the stubbing,
the one man explaining,
the other one listening,
both of them knowing
a matter of months.

Donal Mahoney has worked as an editor for The Chicago Sun-Times, Loyola University Press, McDonnell Douglas Corp. (now the Boeing Corp.) and Washington University in St. Louis. He has had poems published in or accepted by The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, Commonweal, The Christian Science Monitor, Revival (Ireland), The Beloit Poetry Journal, The Istanbul Literary Review (Turkey), The Davidson Miscellany, Public Republic (Bulgaria) and other publications.