Happy Days by Jim Burke

I see bare-assed trees against the skyline, spooky as hell. They are waiting, knowing, something’s coming, rising, and I’m listening to the American actor, Jon Hamm, reciting Frank O’Hara’s poem, “Mayakovsky.” All across the sky there is light. I was five years old in nineteen fifty nine. I had beaten pneumonia. My younger brother Doug, would be born in a year and in another five, my grandfather would be dead. Frank O’Hara died when he was forty years old. I’ve beaten pneumonia once, and I’ve been lucky to beat it twice. Me and Doug, we’re strong as rocks. I’m sitting at the kitchen table staring into the light. Frank O’Hara wrote breaths of fresh air and in the freshness, asked twice: What does he think of that? What do I think of that? And all the time I am thinking Doug and me, we’re strong as rocks.

Jim Burke lives in Limerick, Ireland, recently completed an MFA in Creative Writing at MMU, UK. Poems published in Shamrock Haiku Journal, The Crannog Magazine, The Stony Thursday Book, The Shot Glass Journal, Live Encounters Online Magazine.