Donal

A Work in Progress 
7

…in a library aisle 

                         a scroll newly added

telling of Donal standing between two shores

not wanting to get where he thought he was going

he’d surprised that flint eyed black clad boatman coming on board

taking two coins off his own aware eyes 

amazed

for he’d stepped ashore in New York instead 

of where he thought was going

nineteen sixties New York

where he first found love 

then love absent

first realized poems accepted sometimes liked

New York City’s so full of life death spills over its edges 

an overflowing Hippocrene in the West

where river sent candle lit wreaths 

first meet an incoming tide

first light ricochets from windowpanes 

dawn carpet-bombs skyscrapers ahead 

seen from the Staten Island ferry

Christine and Alan were there to see that sight 

before cancer took her away

where death still spills over

Michael March was there sipping espresso

in a coffee house courtyard mid-town Manhattan

Sami Al Banna lived in Butler Hall

Inderjit Badhwar and Shama

Virginia and Jimmy

she was there too

     playing piano in Barnard Hall

         a visitor from Philadelphia 

            H.C.

            but he did not know her then

                 or H.D.

when he stepped ashore, he’d come to New York

Bruce Choppin was there and John Hall

The Who performed Tommy at The Filmore East

when Donal lived in Northumberland

Bruce visited Roughside with Rachel

only a few did that

It was 1969

Gilbert Peaker got mugged on Morningside Heights

John Tukey with a bad back lay across desks 

at an IEA/UNESCO meeting

at Teacher’s College, Columbia University

Forrest Baskett was there from Stanford

Bruce brought together math guys     

statisticians     

computer scientists 

Donal who was a poet

before he was a programmer

for a mighty machine

IBM’s 360/91

Forrest said Assembly Language was too low level

impractical for IEA

he would choose to write FORTRAN

instead

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                       2025