Village Streets Read online

Village Streets

  Mary Ann McDonnell

  Village Streets: Poetry by Mary Ann McDonnell

  Copyright © 1991 Mary Ann McDonnell

  Cover photo by Eric McRoberts.

  A print version of Village Streets was published in 1991 by Zeugpress.

  This electronic publication was prepared in 2014 by W. R. Rodriguez of Zeugpress.

  Table Of Contents

  I

  Village Streets

  Some Things Old Men Do, Day In And Day Out

  Longing

  Lonely Room

  Hospital Night

  Ether

  When Visiting Hours Are Over

  Votive Light

  I Am Very Tired Lord

  The Day After The Funeral

  New Widow I

  New Widow II

  The Pause That Refreshes

  Who Is That Knocking On My Door?

  I Remember When Uncle Frank Took Aunt Rose To Live In The City

  Collectors’ Items

  Rainy Night

  Amnesia

  Missing You

  Cold Night

  II

  Whitney Museum Special Showing

  A Coin

  Good Looking Guy (All Of 17 Years Old)

  Jukebox

  Girl On Saint Mark’s Place

  Whore

  The Traveler

  The Games Go On

  The Last Out

  Sorely In Need Of A Lie

  Hm! I Wonder You Silly Clown

  Arts & Crafts Exhibit

  Snow In The 9th Precinct N.Y.C.

  What If I Went To Ireland

  In Castledown Square

  To Wake The Dead

  The Old County Champ

  Dreammender

  Evening Comes To The Backyard At 1802 Redwood Lane

  Pussywillows Make Me Feel So Sad

  First Frost

  Autumn

  Come Fill The Cup

  The Thief

  No Pets Allowed

  Forecast

  What Do Little Boys Keep In Old Cigar Boxes?

  Noise And Violence

  The Great Debate

  On Tides Of Passion, Or: The Lovers

  The Rejected Juror

  Ode To A Cucumber

  (Your) City Property (Park)

  The Relative Account

  They Are Not Sick, They Are Dying, A Most Natural Thing To Do

  Dedication

  For Eddie

  and all of our children,

  those born of us

  and those who have come happily

  into our lives,

  and for their children.

  I

  To wonder and to still accept in faith

  Is faith as it is meant to be

  Village Streets

  These are the streets we walked along

  A long time ago.

  I walk them now alone.

  I look in shop windows we looked in then—

  “Old George’s antiques.”

  I see he sold a few pieces.

  Ah, but the Chinese console table

  With the patina of dust

  Is still just as it always was.

  I can still see your face so clearly darling—

  I don’t think I’ll ever walk down this street again.

  Like George’s Chinese table

  I find

  Some memories are best left, undisturbed,

  Covered gently with dust.

  Some Things Old Men Do, Day In And Day Out

  Very early in the morning

  They rise

  Tread familiar steps

  To the bathroom

  Perform their ablutions

  Then

  Put on the coffee pot

  Spread generic jam

  On generic bread

  Reread last night’s newspapers

  Talk to the bird

  Feed the cat

  Take the dog out

  Exchange a few words

  With their young neighbors hurrying off to work

  Then

  Back to the house

  Water the plants

  Some of them (promised their wives they would

  The wives who died first

  Leaving them alone)

  Then

  They take out the garbage

  Throw the spread across the bed

  Take books back to the library

  The laundry can wait till tomorrow

  Old men are busy, busy, busy

  Attending to all the tasks

  That hurry their days

  Till the ten p.m. news

  Then they can wind the clock

  And tomorrow they must

  Take the laundry

  Longing

  The days go by all quiet.

  Sabbath to Sabbath

  Another week—

  Yet—

  Constantly I seek

  To hear a word

  If only a whisper

  From one who could not speak.

  Silence, soft as China silk

  Fills every room

  Of the apartment with nothingness.

  Silence trapped—

  Holding its breath,

  Waiting—

  Waiting for the sound of two heart beats.

  There is only the beat of one

  And

  The faithful old clock on the bureau.

  These sounds don’t count!

  He isn’t here—

  Lonely Room

  Sh!

  Listen to the falling rain.

  Loneliness is here,

  Loneliness lives in the shadows of this room—

  My lamp gives little comfort,

  The rain keeps falling,

  My tears are falling too—

  My heart asks where are you?

  Hospital Night

  Doors open and close, open, close.

  People come and go.

  Life centimeters along in unquiet rooms.

  It rides gurneys

  Up and down hallways through the night—

  Some nights are so noisy—

  Suddenly a sharp stab of pain.

  Astonished I hear myself cry out.

  I ask for help—

  Exposing a frightened, naked heart—

  A nurse comes, she is talking to me,

  I know she is, I can see her lips moving.

  Why can’t I hear her?

  She raises my bed then leaves the room.

  Sweat is pouring baptismally from my head.

  Salt burns my eyes, flavors my lips.

  The nurse has come back; she hands me a plastic cup.

  I can hear her now, she says words

  Like codeine, morphine—

  words that have become my bread and water

  My life—

  When morning comes I am getting out of here!

  Too much death—

  Too much life—

  Ether

  Down, down

  Deep

  Deeper

  Into

  That gyroscopic world

  Of

  Anesthesia

  Numbing the pain

  Making frenzied the brain, that cavorts

  Madly in dayglo colors

  Racing wildly

  From star to star.

  When Visiting Hours Are Over

  Dear old man,

  Lying there in your metal crib,

  An aura of fluorescent light

  always shining down on you.

  You ask us, “Is it day or night?”

  We tell you it is nighttime,

  But you don’t really care.

  We must be quiet—

 
; You doze off—

  But! we don’t want to be quiet, we

  Want to lift you in our arms, and

  Tell you out loud how much we love you,

  Tell you that it takes all our strength

  To leave you here in this hi-tech

  Medieval place, knowing you

  Might slip away—and we won’t be with you.

  What do they do to you

  When we go?

  We pray they give you a needle of kindness

  To free you from the pain for a little while.

  Visiting hours are over!

  There they’ve told us again,

  We must go now—keep sleeping darling—

  We go down in the elevator, dragging your

  I.V. pole, your kangaroo bag, your monitor

  And all the bleeping machines

  With us.

  They stay in our minds; we take

  Them home with us.

  We’ll bring them back first thing

  In the morning.

  Good night, dear heart—

  Votive Light

  Low soft glow—

  Candle in the chapel

  Flickering,

  Making little piffle noises,

  Dying

  Going out

  Leaving only

  Tiny waxen tears

  In

  A

  Little red cup.

  I Am Very Tired Lord

  I got to weeping today

  I missed all those who left me—

  Family and friends who went away.

  They promised we could meet again,

  Of course I know they couldn’t tell me when—

  I should go now Lord—

  Really I should—

  No one would miss me,

  Except maybe old Tabby here—he loves me.

  He is old and all alone too.

  My head and hands are shaking quite a lot lately.

  Please let me go now, Lord take me!

  There will be no wake, no Kaddish, no one to notify—

  Oh, I am so very tired Lord,

  Give me a quiet grave for sleeping,

  Then let me waken in your keeping—

  The Day After The Funeral

  The day slipped—by—by strength of will

  Willing the minutes into hours.

  Hurry, hurry, hurry into night.

  One day less—

  Time heals—

  Night—be blind, give sleep, give dreams,

  Hurry me into that time that heals.

  Give me sleep and a dream

  That I may journey back again

  If only now and then.

  New Widow I

  Out of the shadows of this night,

  I will rise at dawn

  And wonder—

  How the sun

  Has come again

  Now that in all this world

  There is no you.

  New Widow II

  When the night has died

  And the dreams have fled

  And you waken again to a half empty bed

  You call his name

  But

  There is no answer.

  You lie quite still—until

  You remember he is sleeping yet

  The other sleep—

  So you get up and start your day.

  Widows have found

  It’s always been this way.

  The Pause That Refreshes

  When in body, mind and soul

  I grow weary and sore distressed

  To renew myself

  I send my mind awondering

  And—from the coiling, resting roots of faith

  Branches spring anew!

  I am refreshed,

  For answers come to me—

  To wonder and to still accept in faith

  Is faith as it is meant to be—

  Holy mystery.

 

  Forsaking All Others

  Some marriages get better and better,

  The newness becomes a familiar

  yet everchanging pattern.

  There are the ups and downs and the plateaus.

  You live and grow and experience all

  the stages of life together—

  That’s the wonder of it all.

  After years, decades,

  You reach a zenith where old and new

  and everything along the way

  Become the norm.

  One day the play ends.

  Death who was always in the wings

  Enters center stage.

  On cue one of you

  Must exit.

  One is left—

  Then one day both of you will

  Be opening again, some time, somewhere far,

  far out of town.

  Who Is That Knocking On My Door?

  Just this morning there came a knocking on my door.

  It was a most insistent knocking

  I had never heard before—

  I called out rather timidly, “Who is it?”

  A voice called back to me,

  “It’s Old Age”—

  Quickly!—

  I turned the key and slid the bolt,

  And said,

  “Go away, the lady that lives here isn’t at home”—

  Then the voice of Old Age answered,

  “That’s quite all right,

  My dear—I’ll wait.”

  I Remember When Uncle Frank Took Aunt Rose To Live In The City

  Don’t look in the rear view mirror Rose,

  You’ve seen it all before. The farmhouses with their

  Wraparound porches, the trees, the gardens,

  What’s to look at? Old Joe’s tune-up garage

  And gas pumps? The corner saloon, the

  Cannon and flagpole on the green?

  No, Rose, you’ve seen it all—

  Don’t look back, Rose, look ahead, look

  At it this way—you won’t have the big

  Old house to keep up now, no more

  Gracing things and mowing the lawn, it was

  Enough to break your back.

  You can get out more, visit the museums,

  Take in movies and plays. They’ll be sidewalks

  And you will be able to walk around all

  You want, you’ll be doing new things

  Meeting new people—believe me Rose

  you’re going to like it—Don’t look back

  Rose—

  But Rose did look back, and cried,

  Strong Aunt Rose cried! God, how he hated

  It when she cried—she never used to do

  That, but just this last month, what

  With getting all her things together, and closing the

  House down, she cried and cried.

  Three months later Rose found her way back

  To the hard-to-take-care-of drafty old house in the country.

  Back to friendly old ghosts and evergreen memories.

  The family was very upset with her

  But in time they came around.

  I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if years

  Down the road one of them might

  Just find what Rose found in

  The old place.

  Collectors’ Items

  Why, oh why do I do this?

  Heaven knows I must stop!

  Seems to me, I am always saving things.

  An ornate old mantlepiece clock

  That ticked its last tock

  Thirty years ago. (One more thing to dust.)

  Faded old letters with expired dates and authors,

  Four baby shoes—

  One for each child, now an adult.

  Why do I keep these old things, things obsolete?

  Remnants of broken rosaries, prayers long ago ascended,

  Pretty buttons,

  Odd shaped stones,

  A brown gardenia,

  All these little bi
ts and pieces of my life

  Ratpacking down memory street.

  Rainy Night

  I listen to the rain—

  Whimpering, then roaring all night.

  Outside my locked door

  It beats a wild staccato on the glass windows

  With wind powered fists—

  Frantically seeking entrance inside this house.

  Does the rain wish to come in out of the storm?

  Or can this noisy furor

  Be the specter of some old sorrow

  Seeking quiet for its tomorrow?

  Amnesia

  I wrote my Paris memoirs of you

  Last night. Wine made the adjectives

  Flow and the verbs turn blue.

  I wrote and I wrote remembering

  Everything about you—you—you—

  Ah! But, I wrote with mock pen,

  In invisible ink on onion skin.

  I wrote it all down—

  Everything—

  I remembered about you, you, you!

  I wrote of you at dawn, at sunset,

  In the rain and the summer sun—

  I told the whole wide world

  How beautiful you were when

  Moonbeams played across your

  Face—

  Yes, indeed I wrote all about you,

  you, you—

  and

  it’s

  driving

  me

  mad

  I’ll be damned if I can remember

  your

  name!

  Missing You

  Gosh, how I miss those mornings,

  When we would “coffee cup talk,”

  “You tell me your dreams

  I tell you mine.”

  I miss those times we’d become so into

  Each others’ words and thoughts

  We would miss bus stops.

  I don’t miss bus stops anymore.

  I just

  Miss you, miss you, miss you—

  Cold Night

  Brrr! But it’s cold tonight.

  The moon shines down all golden bright—

  The air is clear.

  Swift moving clouds

  Grace the landscapes of the sky—

  And

  Here am I

  Walking alone—

  On a city street.

  My heart recalls another night,

  When our universe stood still

  And

  We warmed our little world

  Just walking hand in hand

  Counting stars—

  II

  Perhaps I’ll find another face

  That I’d know anywhere

  Whitney Museum Special Showing