Professor O’Riordan
Chairman of NanoTechnology
at Trinity College, Dublin
is the kind of chap
who while on stage in Stockholm
being awarded the Nobel Prize
in Biology for a lifetime of work,
80 hours in lab per week,
3 divorces and 6 children
that refuse to speak with him,
who is massively
distracted now
by a pesky hangnail
on the ring finger
of his left hand.
He’s simply intrigued
by very tiny details.
Time with Wislawa S.
The Polish poet is an acquired taste
the man lounging
in his soft robe declares to himself.
She writes obliquely like a cloud
invisible at night
or a journalist on holiday
who continues to write about people
seen clearly yet might know
little about.
There’s an abstract quality hard
to pin down he concretely realizes,
(or perhaps my limitation?)
as this morning
he perseveres reading,
the thick book, a grin,
slight chagrin, minor
frustration, a frown.
Then two doves perch
and lounge
atop
backyard’s wall.
This Bus Is A Bust
Waiting forever this morning for a second
Cup of coffee to complete its cycle
Of brewing is like my son and I last Saturday— Sunny cool afternoon in Chicago—
Used record store, soccer game and beers
In neighborhood bar, brunch with cousins,
Street fair, rowdy onstage indie rock bands And at tail of the day our ride homeward
(actually Airbnb-wards)
Towards thankful rest and a warm meal
Only to become weirdly stranded,
Marooned on this urban island,
Walking in haste between bus stops
Then languishing impatiently stewing
On various corners, hunger pangs at first Barely whispering, eventually shouting
(The Thai restaurant across from the third or Fourth empty corner—tables without patrons
yet refusing to seat nor feed us)
Over what felt like entire days
Of trudging then standing frozen,
Necks craning,
Eyes peering southwards
For signs of hope, just a tiny glimmer,
Along Damen St as the #50 bus wandered
On its wayward journey,
Optimism and transit passes
Now wholly dimming, our rescuer and us
Asunder,
Predictably never quite arriving.
I’ll now sip from my second cup of Joe
To raise a tardy toast
For our lost lamented driver..
Time and the Purloined Pen
“..we had bags of time to catch the ferry..”—
Billy Collins
Lounging like an aristocrat in his blue
bathrobe, he informs himself ‘we have more
than enough bags of time to weed
the backyard garden’ so instead of rising
to the task at hand buried at bottom of these
supposedly copious bags of time he picks up the pen pilfered from the Kilkenny hotel,
the place in the heart of the small cobblestoned city with the most sumptuous breakfast he’d ever feasted on, long tables laden with sticky pastries, sausages, melon, salted ham, fresh orange juice, dark coffee kissed by dollops of whipping cream and eggs of every ilk, yes as that pen began to slide like Irish butter over the blank page
and into an unkempt garden of sprawling weeds and tangled wildflowers in the next Irish town, cozy and chilly, wet with mist and a big enough bag of time to begin another poem.
The Lilt and Tilt of the Sky
Pleased with the lilt and lay of the land as the plane criss-crossed the continent from Caribou, Maine to Carmel-By-The-Sea, California, Jane re-read the novel about clones in the English countryside and noticed how this time she didn’t much care how things in the story concluded. Once she’d completed the book, with two or three sighs she sat erect putting pen to paper and wrote this in her journal as the plane trembled and shuddered in a sea of sudden turbulence:
“A poem is a smudged mirror for strangers,
a stained glass window lit by a sun blossomed by anger, an orchestra of yearning for those who at all cost take the first detour around upwelling danger. A poem is a volcano who dazzles those kneeling like monks on a thin shimmering precipice gazing at the crater steaming madness. Poems can hold fierce knowing, rivers of lava underneath glowing, can soothe like a breeze from the imaginal East so attuned so tenderly blowing. This airplane carries us darkly towards a possible world of eruptions ferociously flaming our nights and also warm handfuls of invisible fingers extending gems that glimmer, showering us empty of grasping with unasked for emeralds of infinite blessings.”
With that, Jane tucks the notebook back
into her forest green carryon bag and rips open the minuscule sack of pretzels the airlines generously provided. All turbulence calm for now.
Jane at 44
The svelte woman in pointed boots
blurts profanities as she stomps
past a jaundiced man
with the thin face
leering lips
gray eyes that stare
straight through painted stone
into her private sanctuary
and those remembered
pleasures locked within
that treasured vault
the one safe untainted place
she’s truly home.
