Mary O'Connor: "These Days My Music"

is the sound of people talking in a coffee shop, just
the general rhubarb: asserting, doubting, saying nothing
much; the clink, the chuckle, the food-muffled murmur,
the startled intake of breaths, the rumble of pleasure, the Yes.

When I can’t talk with people or lift my eyes to them,
when food tastes like boiled barley and fried raccoon,
when I can’t pray or think or read or make a decision,
I want to be burrowed in a corner with a cold half-cup

in that congregation,
in that supreme court,
in that caucus, that conclave
that heavenly choir.

"These Days My Music" by Mary O'Connor. Text presented here by poet submission. 

Art credit: "da Black," photograph by Denis Allbertovich.


 

Mary O'Connor: "Good Days"

each glorious third week after Adriamycin


Low light before sunrise, distant birdsong, smell of damp earth.
Under the quilt in the laze of limbs morning-slack,
a long slow waking, and comfort in the bed.

                                      •

The head in order observes thoughts budding, branching,
lights flares, solves puzzles, constructs a theme. Happiness
just to have the words coming, the words in order.

                                      •

Color grows with light: sky, moving clouds, tulips, new leaves,
and this blackberry, its perfect globules closefitting spheres
of dark juicy purples.

                                      •

On my walk a stand of reeds caught by the slanting light,
back home tears let down simply as rain on the coarse yellow cloth
where my bread and apples wait.

                                      •

Neighbors, mail, and visitors, the heft of a squirmy baby
healthy as a trout. His organized joynts, his azure veins.
Later, sweet light shrieks of kids on a trampoline.

                                      •

Inner movements: to be stirred, to know a capacity for ecstasy, to harbor
an obsession that lights me up like a lamp, or a passion for a cause,
a book, music, the life of the spirit.

                                      •

What I don’t know not besting me
what I don’t know for sure not worrying me
what I’ll never know in the hands of God.

                                      •

That something lost with cancer treatment?
It was really something. Here. It’s back.
Thanks.

 
"Good Days" by Mary O'Connor, RSM. Published here by poet submission. © Mary O'Connor.

Art credit: Untitled image by unknown photographer (originally color). Caption: "Karen slowly injects the Adriamycin into the IV. It takes several minutes to inject."

Curator's note: In her submission the poet wrote, "On the good days during the chemo cycle, life wasn’t just good, it shone! Everything stood out in [high definition]. I remember the first time I got glasses when I was 13 and had been short-sighted for years, the way things just came into focus. Amazing. It was like that."

Mary O'Connor: "Standing Up in the Boat"

In this moment
all seems possible and all is risked:
life, safety, the day’s catch
the voyage, the homecoming.

As waves pitch the currach,
nearly engulfing it, he stands
on a plunging, rearing ground,
the thrown rope hanging

between his hopeful face
and empty air, a huge blessing of rope,
coiled, spiralled, looping
towards his small reach, his unsteady stand.

Still here he is waiting, wet and salty
standing up on the lurch of the flimsy craft
leaning against air, against hope, in his proper
position to catch it, this rope

coming over to the weak inconstancy, himself—
now he takes a slight crouch, to be pushed a bit
up or down at the impact,  hands out
eyes open, face, heart:  here.



"Standing Up in the Boat" by Mary O'Connor, from Windows and Doors. © Finishing Line Press, 2012.

Image: "Off the Donegal Coast," oil on canvas by Jack Butler Yeats, 1922. This painting inspired the poem.