Fritter
by Mary Armao McCarthy
I relish a fritter of time
inhale its essence
nibble the crusty edges
lick icing from the top
let moments dribble my chin.
With my tongue I capture
its last morsel.
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Apple Picking
by Mary Armao McCarthy
When apples flood the sky, I
yearn for days of ladders and youth, when I am
nimble and pick with small helpers, till overtired
we trudge our offerings to be weighed. Then full of
bright intentions for pies and cobblers and peeling the
red skin into streamers-- comparing whose is great
enough to be declared winner of the harvest
contest in our kitchen-- we stow the bushels where I
dip into them for weeks. I give myself
the center star, a day now so desired.
Note: This is a golden shovel poem, which takes a quote and uses each word to end a line in a new poem. The last word of each line above forms the quote from Robert Frost’s poem, Apple Picking: “for I am overtired of the great harvest I myself desired."
~Poem written in Ellie O’Leary’s class at Pyramid Live Center, NYS.
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YearS
by Mary Armao McCarthy
The numbers play hide and seek,
last year’s digits
as familiar as today’s
or those a decade older
and more.
A football announcer did it yesterday.
He was off tenfold like a missed first down.
It comes on me like
a rest stop in a song,
a musical non-note,
a pause
till my brain catches up,
leapfrogs a black hole,
grabs this year’s number
like a word over-repeated,
its meaning lost and then regained
in the immensity of time.