And These Thy Gifts: Poems 2007-2009

By Thomas Porky McDonald

The seventh collection of poetry to be released by Thomas Porky McDonald, And These Thy Gifts: Poems 20072009, contains another five-book set of unique material. In Theresa, Red and Serenity, the self-styled ramble poet began an arc that would permeate throughout the entire volume. Pieces like God through the Lens of a Kaleidoscope, You Wonder Where Were At, and These Thereafters all spoke of the current world, in relation to a world that once was. Where is My Spy? and Irish Girls in Waiting cited friends McDonald had made in his two decades working in NYC Transit, and Incident on Blake Street, Inside the Crawford Grill, and Is Heaven Such a Place? touched on the ballpark. In book two, Contemplating Farewell, the collection amps up, as the impending demise of Shea Stadium and the sudden loss of a dear childhood friend take center stage. I Wonder About Yesterday and A Final Opened, Indeed honor Roy Riegel, who passed away on Opening Day of the 2008 baseball season, and The Lights of Skillman, A Ramp Overlooking Ecstasy, and In 73 all looked back at Shea, even as it still hung on for dear life.
Whispering to Heaven, the third book of the set, used a trip to Los Angeles (Risin Mojo on the Diamond, The Night the 70s Returned and When Nothing Turns Up Differently), Anaheim (The Boater Battalion, A Rubys Diner Monday) and San Francisco (Where Were Without Willie, The Known at Polo Guy) to lead up to the final days of the old yard in Queens (Sittin in the Greens).
In the last two books of the collection, On the Steps With You and The Wonder of the Silver Wander, the final days of Shea and the election and inauguration of Barack Obama as the first black U.S. President offer up the most evocative images. The Planes Weep Openly, And So the Fade Begins, The Sound of Hope and Another Tuesday (Steps) and The Seats that Have Come Home Again, Agee and Jones, From 16 to 44 and Whistle Stops (Wander) offer up the best of these. All in all, And These Thy Gifts: Poems 2007-2009, might well be McDonalds most reflective volume yet.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Apr 21, 2015
• ISBN: 9781504906258

Thomas Porky McDonald

Michelle Le Chen was 7 years old when her father was incarcerated in 1975. Her mother spent the next 17 years working for her husband’s escape or release. The rest of Michelle’s family escaped from Vietnam in 1979-80, with most of them settling in Virginia, where she would live for the next 25 years, before moving to Florida in 2014.

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Jacket Design, Formatting and Original Covers

by Olga Khrapovitski

Cover Photos: Theresa, Red & Serenity, Contemplating Farewell, Whispering to Heaven and The Wonder of the Silver Wonder

by Lance Tallman

On the Steps With You by Adam Boneker

© 2015 Thomas Porky McDonald. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 04/20/2015

ISBN: 978-1-5049-0624-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-0625-8 (e)

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AND THESE THY GIFTS

POEMS 2007-2009

Introduction

Book-Thirty-One—Theresa, Red & Serenity

Theresa, Red & Serenity

1) Theresa

Sundays Open Earlier

God through the Lens of a Kaleidoscope

And Cagney

In Colors More

My Entourage is Everywhere

You Wonder Where We’re At

More Like Monday

A Distant Fair

Beneath Uneven Skies

Attacked by Joyous Images

Glory in the Catalyst

For All Those Before

Where is My Spy?

Irish Girls in Waiting

Altering the Sequence

What I Have of Him

Poet’s Larceny

Connection

These Thereafters

2) Red

For Those Who Played

Incident on Blake Street

Pillars of the Team

A Few Innings Down the Third Base Line

Thinking About Archie

A Month Between Lefties

No Time to Replay

The Strangest Place

An Andrews Moment

Cooled Images

No Negatives

The Test Run

When Your Spirit’s Been Broken Down

Seven Seconds to Eternity

Hardly an Average Joe

Inside the Crawford Grill

Is Heaven Such a Place?

Ticket Stubs and Autographs

Until After There’s Nothing Left to See

3) Serenity

Where’s the Candle Lit?

In the Distance

A World That Can’t Appreciate Twain

Gutter Fish

Paradise Hell

The Genesis of Exodus

In Triplicate, You See

Drive-By Laughter

Should Demons Still Arise

The Third Day

Today, Tomorrow, When

Is Yellow That Easy?

I Never Played Santa Claus

Altar Boys at Dusk

The Signs within Their Eyes

A Notion Unknown

Life in the EAP

A Weekend with a View

Percussion from the Inside

Does the Quiet Town Remember?

Trustees of Humanity

A Forty-fifth Piece

Winters in the Park

Book-Thirty-Two—Contemplating Farewell

Home Again

The Voice That I Still Can Hear

1) People

I Wonder About Yesterday

A Final Opener, Indeed

Message From a Friend

The Originals, Always

A Handshake for My Dad

With Cousin John

Heard About Lucas

Sittin’ Next to Mudcat

Hondo’s on a Cell Phone

Grays on Grays

Even the Senators Would Blush

Escapees, Don’t Ya Know?

My Sportswriter

Beyond the Realm of Day-to-Day

Somewhere on Fifth

Of Heroes Gone By

What Would Bill Cullen Say?

In the Footsteps of the Former Child

A Night for Kings

The 86th Parallel

2) Places

The Lights of Skillman

Back to Where the Kids Used to Play

For the Legends

Livin’ For Miracles

The Backyard of Immortals

Lookin’ for Eternity

A Ramp Overlooking Ecstasy

I’ll Bring the Memories

A Brand New Monument

Those That Once Served There

Where Marian Still Sings

National Pride

The Ship and The City

Prone to Quiet Places

In ’73

The Inner Invasion

If My Time Doesn’t Come

The Way Back Home

3) Things

Contemplating Farewell

Then the None

Seasons in the Wind

The Nights of Green

A Decent Respect for the Heat

Hall Pass

All of Us Bird Dogs

For the Pollock

News in Time

The E Train Took Me Everywhere

About the Three

The Eavesdrop Car

The Birds of Sunday Morning

Empty Mayo Jars

Top Shelf

The Central Entity

Why Devastation Lies

When You’ve Been Touched by Magic

A Given

The Fourth Wall

Finis

One More Empty Seat

Book -Thirty-Three—Whispering To Heaven

1) Heaven

Whispering to Heaven

When Only the Dead Know Who You Are

K.D.’s Crossing

The Chill of Days

My Eyes Conceal

Missing Voices

What You See Along the Way

Risin’ Mojo on the Diamond

What Goes on Above

Sons in the Uppers

Words Lacked the Emotion

Beyond Yesterday

Letting the Jacket Go

When the Crowd was Better

The Season of Our Darkest Dreams

Teammates Once Again

A Diamond Midnight

One More Summer

A Lot of Good Friends

2) Earth

Standing in the Shower

Buried in Documentaries

Inside-out Inside You

The Mix

Pre-Game in the Soul

A Breathing Dinosaur

Underneath the Garden

Ravining

L.A. Story

Burning Images

Spare Me Your Superlatives

Cars are People

Race to the Rhyme

So Many Things

The Community of Man

From Munich to Beijing

Thunder in Their Hearts

3) In the Hole

When the Bats Go Silent

These Cathedrals

Like Before, 599

On Nuxy’s Night

In the Upper Deck

Hey, George!

First Ladies of Flushing

Stages

The Night the 70’s Returned

When Nothing Turns up Differently

50 Years Since Midnight

The Boater Battalion

A Ruby’s Diner Monday

A Gift Shop Touched by Fame

Where Were Without Willie?

The Known at Polo Guy

About the 42

Why We Listen to Scully

The Storm Inside

On That Day

A Memory Longs to Play

The Reason I Love Summer

Octobers Numb

All as One

Sittin’ in the Greens

Book-Thirty-Four—On The Steps With You

On the Steps with You

1) Anticipating

To Be With You Once Again

The Waiting of Their Lives

Lines to Cross

Jack Wilson’s Town

Scoreboard Watch

A Chance to Come Back, Endlessly

Anthem by Sax

The Return of the Flame

No Thanks

A Message of Friendship

Seller’s Market

Relentlessly Aware

After Yesterday

The Planes Weep Openly

Now That Summer’s Gone

All That Interim

Twilight’s Son

Billie, Judy, Linda and Joan

Some More

And So the Fade Begins

2) Pondering

Where Do the People Go?

The Lost Minority

In ’94

A Prayer That I Agree

Minnie Pearls

10 Stops with Aussie John

The Different One Who Mattered

Searching for Amusements

The Lonesome Nightmare

Another Fine Night

Sons of Legends

Steel Statues Seven

For Just One More Night

Roll Back

Jim McAndrew Blues

Shea Forever

A Moment Lost to Glory

An Open Sky Above an Endless Sea

The Sound of Hope

A Time for Poetry

3) Exhaling

When You Know its Not Your Heart

Many, Many Days

The Thrills

Curtain Call 514

Those Feelings

The Notion of Them

Wicker Trains

Drums on the Allegheny

When Everyone

Hoping the Doctor Heals

928

Good Morning, Ashes

The Third Friend

A Righteous Thing

Shades of the Sun

Early in the Land November

A Really Kinda Wonderful

Things a Dream Will Not Allow

Another Tuesday

Remembering

Collective Heartbeats

The People Always Show

Book-Thirty-Five—The Wonder Of The Silver Wander

The Wonder of the Silver Wander

1) Wondering

Thinking of John Dos Passos

An Eternal Lantern

Who Did You Lose?

Identity

For a Nickel Can

The Plumber’s Helper

Restless Nights and Angels

Where Exactly?

Term Limits

Becoming the Was

A Dickens Night

The Despicables

God as a Buzz Word

Where are the Professionals?

The Order of the Night

If You Wouldn’t Mind

A Civil Peace

It Was the Catholics Once

Thinking About the Children

2) Wandering

The Integrity of a Few

Offer Up a Mulligan

When the Poetry Comes

The Memorial Part

I’m Reminded in March

The Caterers of Yore

Between the Bottom and Tradition

An Inkling to Be Cold

Not a Question

Ladders

The Year You Work a Day

On Call

The Pretzel Stand

Long Ago Lately

As Your Smile Keeps Glowing

The Small Word

From 16 to 44

When Slavery Finally Died

Whistle Stops

3) Supporting

To Have a Seat Like Then

At Least a Quarter More

Whenever It Is

Things That Still Remain

The Tale of Two Down

Pontius Pilate Politics

The Brilliance of Simplicity

Every Time I Take That Ride

Smith and Carlos

Agee and Jones

The Place That Always Mattered

On the Whether

It Gave Us a Moment

Not the Final Year

A Notion Reborn

Say Thee Inspiration

What Storms May Come

A Long Weekend Coming

The First Day

Genuflecting

The Seats that Have Come Back Home

A Night of Numb Encounters

About The Author

Other books by Thomas Porky McDonald:

An Irishman’s Tribute to the Negro Leagues

Over the Shoulder and Plant on One:

An Irishman’s Tribute to Willie Mays

Where the Angels Bow to the Grass: A Boy’s Memoir

The Air That September

Hit Sign, Win Suit: An Irishman’s Tribute to Ebbets Field

Series Endings: A Whimsical Look at the Final Plays

of Baseball’s Fall Classic, 1903-2003

At a Loss to Eternity:

Baseball Teams of Note That Didn’t Win it All

Never These Men: One Man’s Look at Baseball’s

Creatively Cultured Characters

Does the Toy Cannon Fire Still at Night?

the skipper’s scrapbook

Poet in the Grandstand: An Enlightened Tour of Ballparks

and the Places Where They Live: 1990-2010

A Walk in the City: An Incomplete Tour

Poetry Collections

Ground Pork: Poems 1989-1994

Downtown Revival: Poems 1994-1997

Closer to Rona: Poems 1997-1999

Diamond Reflections: Baseball Pieces For Real Fans

Dem Poems: The Brooklyn Collection

Still Chuckin’: Poems 1999-2002

In the Cameo Shade: Poems 2002-2005

Vespers at Sunset: Poems 2005-2007

Short Stories

Paradise Oval… and other Tallman Tales

For:

Mom and Dad

Who gave me the Greatest Gifts:

Life,

Honesty

and

Loyalty

Bless us, oh Lord, and these, Thy gifts, which we are about to receive.

Catholic prayer over food

INTRODUCTION

As the years go by and you write more and more, certain topics and themes find themselves more in the mix. At least that’s how it happened to me. By the time I started this five-book set, I was deep in the midst of a two-decade whirlwind, in which I would write about 100 poems a year. And with baseball always in my inner mirror, the years 2007-2009 were most significant ones. When the New York Mets announced that they would be tearing down my lifetime home, Shea Stadium, to move next door into a new, open air ballpark following the 2008 season, I had decidedly mixed emotions. I had seen many of the new Major League ballparks in the country and they were very impressive and, overall, enjoyable to visit. But this would be MY home that was to be torn down, so that basic sad reality haunted me for the years leading up to the ultimate destruction. This collection is called And These Thy Gifts, based on an old pre-meal prayer that all good Catholics learned as children. And looking back on the pieces in the set, I realize that this was, to date, the most reflective of all that I had published thus far. There were still current times to consider, but many of the pieces looked back to my formative years and the gifts I had received back then, especially as I crept toward an event that I knew would be truly damaging to my soul, the death of Shea Stadium.

The first book, Theresa, Red and Serenity, noted two of my best friends from the two decades plus that I had worked at NYC Transit, (Theresa) Monah Johnson and Ira (Red) James. The cover is of three hands united, Monah’s, Ira’s and mine. And the pieces in that volume spoke of that friendship, if not directly, through an attitude of what was still right in the world, even as part of that world was about to change drastically for me. In the sections I called Theresa and Red, the past and its relation to current times was most prevalent in poems like God through the Lens of a Kaleidoscope, You Wonder Where We’re At, Beneath Uneven Skies and These Thereafters. A few great friends (beyond Monah and Ira) that I’d made during my time at Transit, both still there and now gone, arrived in Irish Girls in Waiting, Where is My Spy? and A Few Innings Down the Third Base Line. And baseball as a backdrop to these themes is well represented, too. Incident on Blake Street, about the Colorado Rockies’ 2007 World Series run, An Andrews Moment, about an event long ago and its recurring effect on me and the companion pieces Inside the Crawford Grill and Is Heaven Such a Place? which were inspired by a pair of plays I saw about Negro League legends Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige, all kept the game alive, so to speak. Thinking About Archie and Hardly an Average Joe, which spoke of former pro quarterback Archie Manning and longtime heavyweight Champion Joe Louis, showed that my antenna still spread a bit further than the beloved diamond.

In the final section, Serenity, I seemed to have gotten a bit darker, most notably in pieces like A World That Can’t Appreciate Twain, Gutter Fish, Should Demons Still Arise, I Never Played Santa Claus and Life in the EAP. The final piece in the book, Winters in the Park, closes with a look forward, to the very real eventuality of life after Shea, which led to the title of the second book of this collection. I called it Contemplating Farewell and the cover, which was supposed to feature a lone shot of Shea Stadium, was given a sad bonus when my lifelong friend Roy Riegel, died on Opening Day of the 2008 baseball season, the final one ever to be played at Shea.

Contemplating Farewell opens with a few pieces dear to my heart.