JOHN J. RONAN - POEMS

John J. Ronan is a poet, playwright, movie/TV producer, and journalist.  He has received national honors for his poetry and is a former NEA Fellow, Ucross Fellow, Bread Loaf Scholar, and Poet Laureate in Gloucester, MA, where his cable program The Writer’s Block with John Ronan is in its 27th year. Poems have appeared in Three Penny Review, New England Review, Southern Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, Folio, and many other publications.  Media productions have won a Telly, an Aurora Gold, a First for Education Programming from the NECTA, as well as other awards, and have been aired on PBS outlets.  In 2010 his book of poetry, Marrowbone Lane, was named a Highly Recommended selection by the Boston Authors Club.  A new volume, Taking the Train of Singularity South from Midtown, appeared in January 2017.  (TheRonan.org)

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                          At the Vet’s
 
 
Even expensive vets are trailer park
In tone, single wide and used at that.
Dogs do this.
Cats.
The odd exotic – a snake or lizard, rats.
It’s the public pissing, the crap-where-you-will clients
Who live and think in immediate never minds.
Diplomas hang next to a television set
Looping pet PSAs,
Opposite shelves of Pet Mart Products:
Hamster wheels and dog chews, flea
Collars, flea powder, taxonomic charts
Of the familiar puddle-to-people tree, seeds
And leashes, carriers, shampoo, canopic jars -
With ovals carved for a mug shot of the loved
One, portrait in long-ago-dog.
A woman enters, stoled in silver fox.
She passes the diplomas and urns, the TV
Explaining deductibles, a five pound Pom
At her jeweled breast: “Give mommy a kiss.”
High heels click-clack across
The waxed and easily cleaned linoleum floor.
 
                Dives: On Confirmation Bias 
                                       There was a certain rich man who was clothed
                                        in purple and fine linen...  Luke 16:19
 
 
Turns out, the obese are obliged to eat –
The latest gene theory.  Others address
Bi-polar and A.D.D.,
Or why students, vexed, should study less.
Concerned with popular disease, America leans
On the no-fault of science to nail down
The exceptional cool of its people - like you, like me.
The wider universe, too, excuses humans:
Late or spacey’s explained away by relativity,
Love loss and loose ends by entanglement.
Your own observation, of course, ends uncertainty,
And obscure powers that shadow stars, the benevolent
Dead or dark matter, approve what we do:
As, “All is forgiven” and “Everyone loves you.”
 
 
 
 
                             Dives: Uncontrollably Old 
                                             There was a certain rich man who was clothed
                                             in purple and fine linen...  Luke 16:19
 
 
A time-worn tease, “You couldn’t handle it!”-
The young one by the restaurant door,
Angled finely in afternoon light,
Jeans and high heels.  Wham-
Bam’s ebbed to pleasant, unoften.
Usually, it’s the news and three innings,
Sleep.  Age is a. m.
 
In the first, mid-twenties, “Sir”
Hints of arthritic ache, unsteady
Heart and mind – the eighth decade’s
Slippage of personal universe and truth,
Divide of appetite and ash.  Witness
The reluctant blood, the phantom limb,
And lately, the codger-condescending “Cute.”
 
Early bird dines at five:
Soft targets, softer food -
The old lady trade, fondue.
Rascal’s twenty feet back,
A distance that lengthens day-by-day,
And the young woman steps aside
To hold open the door, unasked.