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Poem – In The Mood (By Donal Mahoney)

We’re going dancing, my wife and I, 
to a Charity Ball high in the sky where
Glenn Miller’s band has been playing 
since 1944, the year his plane got lost 
over the English Channel.
No wreckage was ever found,
not a single body.
Glenn Miller was going to France 
to play for American troops 
during World War II.
Government records say 
he’s still “missing in action.”
 
Maybe so, but I hate to go dancing, 
even with music by Glenn Miller.
So I told my wife I’ll go if she
can find a dress as red
as the one she wore in 1956 
when Father Hennessy said,  
“This is a prom. Not burlesque.”
A slip of a girl back then,
she made things worse 
with black seamed nylons.
All the rage back then, the nylons  
disturbed the padre.
 
But if my wife can find a bright red dress
and a pair of black seamed nylons,
I’ll wear the old seersucker suit
I bought at Macy’s for the prom. 
It goes real well with the “duck tie”
I found “on sale” for 50 cents  
at the Army Surplus store.
Father Hennessy loved that tie.
Even now I can hear him bellow,
“That tie’s so wide the ducks 
will fly for 50 years to cross it.”
How prescient the padre was. 

 

 

Author Bio:

donal-mahoney
Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri. He has had fiction and poetry published in various publications in the U.S. and elsewhere. Among them are The Galway Review (Ireland), The Recusant (England), The Missing Slate (Pakistan), Guwahatian Magazine (india), Bluepepper (Australia), The Osprey Journal (Wales), Public Republic (Bulgaria), and The Istanbul Literary Review (Turkey). Some of his earliest work can be found at http://booksonblog12.blogspot.com and some of his newer work at https://www.antarcticajournal.com/donal-mahoney-recent-works