After Burying a Wife

                by Donal Mahoney

        Were she here with me now,

        by the waist I would raise her,

        a chalice of wonder.

        I’d bellow hosannas

        and whirl her around,

        tell her again that I love her,

        press my face moist

        in the pleats of her skirt,

        ask her to sprinkle

        phlox on the curls

        of our children

        if they are with her,

        ask her to stay a while longer

        while I do so much more

        were she here with me now.

© 2009 Donal Mahoney

Donal Mahoney has worked as an editor for The Chicago Sun-Times, Loyola University Press, McDonnell Douglas Corp. (now the Boeing Corp.) and Washington University in St. Louis.  He has had poems published in or accepted by The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, Orbis (England), Commonweal, The Christian Science Monitor, Revival (Ireland), The Beloit Poetry Journal, The Istanbul Literary Review (Turkey), The Shit Creek Review (Australia), Public Republic (Bulgaria) and other publications.