This evening when I return to the hotel
I see in my pigeonhole
Angela’s writing
on a yellow envelope.
What excuse will she have for not writing?
Too busy, perhaps,
stirring cauldrons of soup
while the cats dash about licking her calves.
Or don’t the cats know enough
to lick at her calves?
Would that I were the cats
and the cats were taller.
Donal Mahoney has worked as an editor for the Chicago Sun-Times, Loyola University Press and Washington University in St. Louis. He has had poems published in Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, Commonweal, The Christian Science Monitor and other publications.
