Doubting Thomas

For years I've fed this feral cat at 4 a.m.,
a crouching mound of fur, Satanic black, with yellow eyes
that never blink. I call him 'Doubting Thomas.'

I place his can of Fancy Feast five feet or so from him.
He doesn't stir till I go in the house
and douse the porch light.

Then he leaps and cleans the can
and saunters off till 4 a.m. the following morning
when he's back again, eyes ablaze, crouching.

This pact I have with Doubting Thomas
helps me realize how God must feel
eons after the Big Bang.

Some folks, you see, aren't certain God lit that match.
Some believe the Big Bang just happened.
Out of nothing they believe something came to be.

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poem by Donal Mahoney
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Scenes from a Parish

The weekday Mass at 6 a.m.
brings old folks out
from bungalows
around the church.
They move like caterpillars
down sidewalks,
some with canes,
some on walkers.

Young Father Doyle says the Mass
and is renowned for giving
homilies on weekdays
superior to homilies
heard in other churches
even on a Sunday.

After Mass, he goes back
to the rectory to care
for a mother older than
most of his congregants.

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poem by Donal Mahoney
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What Purpose Does A Rabbit Have

The same nightmare woke my father
every night for years.
He had no idea what it meant
and so he wrote the story down
and saved the note and hoped
some day he'd understand it.
But a note like that
can be misplaced.

Decades later Father
found the note
in a drawer of socks
he hadn't worn in years.
He found it underneath
his old glass eye the night
Mother came back on the Harley
to 'make their marriage work.'

He reminded Mother they had
been divorced for years

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poem by Donal Mahoney
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In Certain Matters of the Heart

It's a matter of the heart,
the doctor says,
and he can fix it
with catheter ablation.
'It works miracles, ' he says,
'in certain matters of the heart.'

He's been a cardiologist for years.
'Take my word for it, ' he says.
'You'll be sedated. Won't feel a thing.'

No excavation in my chest, either.
Instead, he'll make little holes
in my groin and snake tiny wires
to the surface of my heart
and kill the current that makes

my heart race like a hare
at times and mope
like a turtle other times.

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poem by Donal Mahoney
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Kaleidoscope and Harpsichord

As I've told my wife too many times,
the meaning of any poem hides
in the marriage of cadence and sound.

Vowels on a carousel,
consonants on a calliope,
whistles and bells,
we need them all
tickling our ears.
Otherwise, the lines
are gristle and fat, no meat.

Is it any wonder, then,
my wife has a problem
with any poem I give her to read
for a second opinion, especially
when the poem has no message
and I'm simply trying to hear
what I'm saying and don't care
if I understand it.

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poem by Donal Mahoney
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Father Spoke in Code

Father spoke in code
Mother understood.
She would cry
once he went to bed.
I never understood the code.
My sister didn't either.
As we got older, we quit
asking Mother what he said.

A feral cat claimed our yard.
It would leap the fence
when anyone appeared.
Except, of course, Father.
When he came out to walk
around the garden after supper,
the cat would sit straight up,
then rub against his leg
and look at him as if it understood
what others never could.

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poem by Donal Mahoney
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It's Almost Sunday Morning

In the summer of 1956,
any Saturday at midnight
when the moon was full
and the stars were bright,
you would see Grandma Groth
on her front-porch swing
waiting for her son, Clarence,
still a bachelor at 53,
to make it home
from the Blind Man's Pub
after another evening quaffing
steins of Heineken's.

Many times when I was young,
I'd be coming home at midnight
from another pub just steps behind
staggering Clarence.
I'd always let him walk ahead
and listen to him hum
'The Yellow Rose of Texas.'

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poem by Donal Mahoney
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Two in the Head

Zenobia Jackson told Officer Murphy
that her husband, Rufus,73 years old,
was 'a wonderful man when he was awake'
but he had been jerking 'something terrible'
during his sleep and kept waking her up.

He'd swing his arms, she said,
like all those martial arts men on television.
But when the bouts were over, he'd kiss her
on the forehead and go to bed.
'He was just a doll, ' she said,
'when he was awake.'

In the last month, however,
Rufus had fallen out of bed three times
'fighting' in his dreams.
In the morning he'd explain
he had been dreaming
that he was in a fight at work.
Sometimes he dreamt

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poem by Donal Mahoney
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Kissing Carol Ann

Back in 1957
kissing Carol Ann
behind the barn
in the middle of
a windswept field
of Goldenrod
with a sudden deer
watching was
something special,
let me tell you.
Back then, bobby sox
and big barrettes
and ponytails
were everywhere.

Like many farmers,
Carol Ann's father
had a console radio
in the living room,
and every Saturday night

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poem by Donal Mahoney
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Paddy Murphy's Wake

The priest had been here earlier and the rosary was said
and relatives and friends in single file were offering condolences.
'Sorry for your troubles, ' one by one they said,
bending over Maggie Murphy, silent in her rocker,
a foot or so from Paddy, resplendent in his casket,
the two of them much closer now than they had ever been.
A silent guest of honor, Paddy now had nothing more to say,
waked in aspic, if you will, in front of his gothic fireplace.

But the hour was getting late and still the widow hadn't wept.
Her eyes were swept Saharas and the mourners wanted tears.
They had fields to plow come morning and they needed sleep
but the custom in County Kerry was
no one leaves a wake until the widow weeps.

Fair Maggie could have married any man in Kerry,
according to her mother, who almost every day reminded her of that.
'Maggie, ' she would say, 'you should have married Mickey.

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poem by Donal Mahoney
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