I have a shirt tail relative
I'll never meet.
Hidden behind
our Irish lace curtains.
His second wife left him.
Moved away home.
Took the two children
and the cat.
“So get a new cat." I suggested.
“Better yet get two!" He replied.
“But, I have a lot of antiques."He said.
And so he lives in that big house
alone and lonely.
And I have two cats.
©️Mark W. Ó Brien
22July2022
Esq. Filkins is not dead!
Someone has been telling stories.
A new species of Lillie has flowered.
When will this warm wave weaken?
The buckwheat is being cut.
Sand’s steam mill has commenced to grind.
Every kind of bug is copulating in our apple tree.
Black-eyed Susans are in bloom.
A dead bird has flown into our window
and lies in state among the flowers.
Mice are having the run of the place.
We have been away on vacation for too long.
I’ve been writing the same poem for years.
You only just realized it.
©️Mark W. Ó Brien
13July2022
Esq. Filkins is feeling poorly.
He suffers from a union of the senses.
Special police have been sworn in to serve
though hop picking season.
The boarder house is doing a lively business.
Esq. Filkins is improving.
A man who has God in his body can cure all ills.
Many of our young people have been hop picking.
Esq. Filkins has called for his lawyer.
He has been writing the same poem for years.
A two-year-old heifer has strayed. Reward offered.
There will be little rest until after hop picking.
Esq. Filkins is dead.
Not much going on this week.
©️Mark W. Ó Brien
12July2022
I sit in a seat my father once sat upon
In a small town diner off the green.
I am tasting the coffee as he must have.
My mother would be sitting there too.
They’re smelling the bacon and eggs
as I count sixty years of burned toast.
What I can’t imagine now is how
they let the years pass by.
I wonder, would I have been me?
Would you have been you?
Do you think we would have found each other
in a small town diner off the green?
When I die and if I go to heaven
is it ok if it’s 1962?
©️Mark W. Ó Brien
28June2022
Fruit of all kinds is so plenty
that it scarcely pays for the gathering.
If a doorknob opens by itself
then maybe it’s haunted.
When your train of thought leaves without you
start walking.
Burglars are at work all around us
our citizens should oil their rusty revolvers.
If you don’t know where you’re from
you’re not from anywhere.
The prospects for a good ice crop in July
are slim.
Poetry is dangerous
because it causes you to remember.
Mark W. Ó Brien
22June2022
Master Robert Wands, the genial clerk at the new store
thought he would take a ride for his health one day.
He had his noble steed “Jack” before a sulky
as he passed Fryer’s Hotel heading west.
A steam engine stood on the side track
and it’s noise caused the horse to shy against the bank.
Suddenly “Rob” found himself tipped out of his sulky
as Jack continued his leisurely walk along the bank.
Jack and the sulky mean time remained right side up
although the bank is so steep a goat could scarcely climb it.
He then climbed up the embankment on to the West Shore RR
and was captured by Fred the baggage man of the Altamont local.
Master Robert Wands got into his sulky and finished his ride
whistling as he went…
©️Mark W. Ó Brien
09June2022
“The Postoffice Cat Is Dead.” the headline read.
I don’t know why that made me laugh
or the reason for the floating feeling
as the ground began to fall away and I watched
myself slip into a manhole backasswards.
I think of this each time a clear wind
blows around in my skull and I hover
for a moment at the edge of imbalance.
All those years were no more than a blink
‘till I started singing on the street beyond
and succeed in forgetting the exit
to my darkest days. It was then that I remembered
that poor cat and the supervening sub-head:
“Clerk Mistakenly Delivers Cat To Dead Letter File.”
©️Mark W. Ó Brien
06June2022
