103:

I dreamt myself lost on the Albany Frontier.

was rescued by Blind Peter and Freeborn Garrettson.

They asked me what a Saint was face to face.

So I prayed the Lord make me one.

Said: “A voice moves me to do so!”

And I walked in the light for a time.

Today by way of six degrees

I have met them in person both.

Yet find myself still riding circuit endlessly 

crossing the Delmarva peninsula

taking the Delaware way

around and about Delaware bay.

Where did they ever get a name like Delmar?

Huh? What? It’s on the map you say?

©️Mark W. Ó Brien

10January2023

102: The wild poetic kingdom is no place for the faint of heart.

My poem didn’t get 

Picked for the big game.

There it sits on the sidelines

Kicking dirt and ringing hands

Knowing it’s true worth it moves on 

In search of a new anthology 

After mowing the others down 

With a semi automatic word gun

Peppering the audience with

Hollow point adverbs

And snub nosed infinitives

Emphatic fantastic ekphrases!

Ekphrastic spermatic poetics!

Take that! And that! And that!

Markle-

01September2022

101- Boomers:

We are winding down

Tooling the lane

Parking the car

Putting the cows in the barn

Walking the dog

Soaking the coals

Closing down the porch

Tidying things up

Switching off the front light

Calling it a day

Hitting the sack

Putting our heads down

and drifting off

“Good night my loves!”

Markle-

31August2022

One-hundred:

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

Ninety-nine:

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

Ninety-eight:

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

Ninety-seven: “Where do the stars go?”

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