Friday, December 24, 2021

PEOPLE WATCHING NEAR PENN STATION (OR, AGAINST BASHO) by Dan O’Connell

among moon gazers
            at the ancient temple grounds
            not a single beautiful face 
- Basho


Got a window seat at Houndstooth Tavern, 
ordered fish and chips and a bottle 
of white wine, then a bottle of red,
and watched humanity pass by
until I could not take it anymore – 

that sweet infant tucked in light blue blankets, 
the beaten-up stroller he’s steered in
over cracked concrete like choppy waves 
amid doctors and the destitute and all others
going about their day’s destined business,
smiling back at his mother’s face,
that one face in a sea of city faces
that neither the baby nor I could see
behind her winter scarf – 

that beautiful face





Dan O’Connell is a four-time award winning poet, and multiple finalist and honorable mention. His poems have appeared over eighty seventy times, including in Mississippi Review, America Magazine, Assisi, Prometheus Dreaming, and Ghost Town Literary Magazine. A former Philosophy professor, Dan is an eviction defense attorney. He is the author of two full-length collections of poetry, Different Coasts, and Theory of Salvation, and the chapbook State of the Union. Find Dan O. at www.danoconnellpoetry.com




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