The Silent Ones by Michael B. McMahon

 

What a pleasure it is to read Mike McMahon’s collection of poetry The Silent Ones. 

 

 

For a long time I have admired Mike’s dedication to crafting his beautiful, precise, and lyrical observations of his passage through our world. For many years, Mike has been on a patient, measured journey toward an understanding and mastery of the art of poetry, and the result is this book containing poems that are essential and quietly powerful.

 

Especially in these often dark and threatening times, reading Mike’s sometimes sad, sometimes humorous, always deeply insightful stories and observations has the same effect on the reader as a discovery that Mike came upon at the post 9/11 Munich Airport had on him:

 

Whorls of barbed wire—

spikes wrenched

in all directions—

crown the fence to shelter

travelers from acts of terror.

Tucked within those

jagged coils, a bird’s nest.

 

        (from the poem, “Natural Selection”)

 

There is in art that is as accomplished as Mike McMahon’s poems light and life and hope that are gifts for those whose eyes are open to them.

–Mike  Cole

 

 

McMahon’s finest poems have a way of dancing into the imagination, fleet dervishes whirling themselves across the page in the dance that never ends.

–Ed Miller, author of The Whole Enchilada