Christopher Donahue

A perfect, summer morning in July. The golden early light angles through the yard illuminating the flower bed out back. I sit on the porch in the early shadows. The air is warm and still. A coffee cup steams nearby. The birds are chirping and my cats are laying about, cleaning themselves.

I am indeed in the moment. It is the last day of my vacation. Relaxed, I contemplate the serene emptiness of my un-busy mind. Two weeks off have removed the worries of work that seem to always be running in the back of my mind like some behind the scenes computer program.

I have a school-teacher friend who gets eight weeks off a year. When he goes back to school he always says “re-entry” is tough. He’s not joking. I know what he means even though I only take two weeks. I wish I could stay in the summer moment forever: the calm, the fun and the lovely weather. I can’t of course.

But, I can still have ice-cream for breakfast.

copyright 2018   Christopher Donahue

I should have never saved that bowling ball.

Spring had returned. The earth, which incidentally is shaped like a bowling ball,  had traveled all the way round the sun again. And there I was engage in my annual spring-garage-cleaning ritual. I had forgotton about that 16-pounder surfaced in all the other junk.

I rescued the ball last year from a neighbor’s curb side trash pile. My wife protested at the time, insisting we didn’t need more junk. I didn’t rejoin with the old line about one man’s trash etc. Instead:

“You never know when you might have to pick up the seven-ten split.”

But life is not without regrets. I wish I never saved it in the first place but how could I throw out a perfectly good bowling ball now? After hemming and hawing, I postponed the decision another year by moving the ball to a different part of the garage. And then I it out of mind.

Until the earth goes round and round again and it’s next spring.

copyright 2018 Christopher Donahue

Up early in the golden light, the grass lush and wet with dew, I stand in the backyard and marvel again at the beauty of spring. I’m perfectly comfortable barefoot, wearing a t shirt and gym shorts. It’s quite a contrast to six months in the future, or past, when I could be knee deep in snow. Nice weather arrives late in New England, stays briefly and leaves early. All of which explains why it seems such a marvel when it’s here.

Putting my coffee cup down on the stones that line the garden, I proceed to plant the seedlings that spent the week on the porch waiting for me to find time to put them in the ground. One by one, I scoop a little hole, plant the little tomato seedlings in and cover up the roots. Then I stick the little plastic signs that identify what type of tomato they are. The sign planting is all ritual because I never pay any attention to the identifiers after that. I just eat the tomatoes.

A little gardening in the early morning gives me a wonderful connection to the real, natural world I live in. It takes me out of the climate controlled human environment where I spend most my time and reminds me I live in a real, natural world with seasons, life, growing and, harvest.

And then I realize planting tomatoes in the morning before work, sure beats shoveling snow.

’tis a far better thing I dew!

copyright 2018 Christopher Donahue

May came to a close and once again I waited for the train to work. The calendar said spring but it felt like summer. The trees lining the opposite side of the tracks were resplendent with lush green leaves.  I stood in the calm of the morning on the platform. The golden, early morning light felt warm. Leaning back against a railing, I turned my face toward the sun. Eyes closed behind shades, I could hear the birds calling, the buzz of bees, a wind through the trees and the low murmur of fellow passengers here and there in light conversation.

Enjoying the moments of morning calm, I imagine somewhere out there the locomotive approaching. I imagine the train crossing the marsh under the now hot sun. Furious, powerful, brute, the locomotive thunders blindly down the track, startling birds out of the tall grass and cattails.  The train thunders through the still morning; calm returning in it’s wake.

Back in the here and now, I look at my watch. The train should arrive any minute.  I strain to hear the first sound of the juggernaut. What will be the first, distant sound I hear of that approaching cacophony? I imagine I hear… something. A clang perhaps? But I’m wrong. There is nothing but birds and buzzing. Then there it is. The first few clangs of a bell. Then the whistle. I am surprised how far the sound of the bell travels in the still calm morning air.

As the train approaches the platform my calm morning disappears. I can feel the presence of the locomotive beast until the banging and clanging, whistles, hisses and thumps are sonically overwhelming. And screech of breaks.

It’s says something about me as a human that I willingly get inside the beast.

And leave the beautiful morning behind.

copyright 2018 Christopher Donahue

Last week, I was riding public transit to get around Boston like I usually do.  I took the Orange Line to Back Bay to catch the bus to Boston University Medical Center.  From there, I’d make the short walk to a meeting scheduled nearby.  As I came out on the street from the subway, I wondered which line I needed to get into to catch the Boston Medical Center bus.

It turned out to be obvious. One didn’t need Sherlockian powers of observation to identify which line was for the bus going to the hospital.  The queue to my left  looked like any random group of ten people you could find in the city. The queue to my right  was made up of people with walkers crutches, and bandages.  I got in the line on my right and took the bus to the hospital area.

Later in the week, I got on a bus in a different part of town for a another meeting.  As I rode along,  I realized my fellow riders were college students and carrying all sorts of art supplies:  Framed canvases, finished paintings, big portfolios for drawings etc… I hadn’t thought about it before boarding, but obviously this bus went right by the Massachusetts College of Art.

This made me wonder what it said about me.  Obviously, I’m healthy and not an artist. But what else? Am I an outsider, or am I just traveling onward to where I belong?

Or am I too cheap to take Uber?

copyright 2018 Christopher Donahue

Here’s another poem for National Poetry Month!

Late Spring

bare trees

fallen leaves

stuck

waiting

in winter cold and rain

for a Spring

that missed its cue

and is somewhere else

copyright 2018 Christopher Donahue

This Wonderful New England Spring compels me to effuse: Another day sick and tired. Another day sick and tired. Another day sick and tired. Another day sick and tired. Another day sick and tired. Another day sick and tired. Another day sick and tired. Another day sick and tired. Another day sick and tired. Another day sick and tired.Another day sick and tired. Another day sick and tired. Another day sick and tired. Another day sick and tired. Another day sick and tired. Another day sick and tired. Another day sick and tired. Another day sick and tired. Another day sick and tired. Another day sick and tired. Another day sick and tired. Another day sick and tired. Another day sick and tired. Another day sick and tired. Another day sick and tired. Another day sick and tired. Another day sick and tired. Another day sick and tired. Another day sick and tired. Another day sick and tired etc..etc…

copyright 2018 Christopher Donahue

He looked like a tough guy from the movies. Six-three or so tall. Lean and mean. His head was shaved and he had the requisite five-o-clock shadow of an action movie getaway driver. Was he a French martial-arts expert, AWOL from the Foreign Legion, in town for a jewel heist?

His dark, pitiless eyes told a different story.

His hulking frame was perched, almost squatting, on a child’s size chair in the play area of the local supermarket.  The children were oblivious to his suffering and were busy screaming and yelling and running all around him. A ball, or toy of some sort bounced off his head. He did not  flinch or even look up. Entirely overwhelmed, he looked miserable. A man resolved to his fate. He was vanquished. Beaten. He looked like he wanted to cry. Whatever caper he came to town for, his present situation was more than he could handle.

I looked away.

copyright 2018 Christopher Donahue

The Friends of the West Roxbury Library are having their annual April poetry contest. This year’s theme is listening. Here is the first poem I’m entering in the contest!

Listening to my wife

She tells me this and that

She tells me

again

how Pavlik lost his shoes at a concert when she was in college

and how

he died tragically in a plane crash in Costa Rica

it occurs to me

but for chance

Pavlik might be

instead of me

listening to my wife

copyright 2018 Christopher Donahue

How was it he could be surprised it was snowing? After all, it was February and it is widely known it snows in Boston in February.  And he had been living in Beantown for twenty years so he had no excuse.

Nevertheless, he was surprised to leave work for the weekend and find it lightly, steadily snowing. It was a messy cold evening. He walked to the train through a monochrome city-space: shiny black, white and gray. The heavily salted streets were black-wet as the snow melted instantaneously. On the roofs and sidewalks, the snow settled nicely. He hurried past Faneuil Hall and noted the Sam Adams statue sported a white cap of snow.

In the swirling breeze of the evening, the enticing smell of a delicious steak from a nearby restaurant wafted over him. He was hungry and a nice steak would be just the thing on a dank, February night.

And then he remembered he gave up meat for Lent. And then he remembered why he gave up meat for Lent.

And that was really the point of the whole ascetic exercise wasn’t it?

copyright Christopher Donahue 2018