Bøger af Michael McMahon

Have you ever dreamed of soaring among the clouds, surveying all below you as you cruise through the wide expanse of the sky? Not many people get to fly a plane, and fewer still get an opportunity to become a licensed pilot but one Killeigh resident has done just that at the tender age of 17. Michael McMahon has followed his dream to become a pilot and has put pen to paper to tell the tale in his book.

The Silent Ones, Michael McMahon's sweeping debut, introduces a child dwelling in a garden of shadows that wound and sustain. "The Wish" suggests how he ties his father's sudden death to a grim jingle he mockingly directed at his napping father. The roots of his guilt are established in poems like "Quiet Time" and "Holy Writ" where the scowls of stern nuns in his Catholic grade school become internalized sources of shame. Juxtaposed to this guilt are poems like "Headwaters" and "Picnic at Taughannock" that celebrate blessings bestowed by family.In Part II of The Silent Ones, forces that harm and heal flow into a natural world that mirrors and shapes the personal. "Wilderness" is haunted by dissonant cries of coyotes tearing through boughs of Jeffery pine throughout the night. In "Raptor" the poet cowers from the drumming wings of a red-tailed hawk in attack. Conversely, "Camping by the Klamath" celebrates mule deer osprey and damsel flies at streamside, one of the many poems in Part II that laud the natural world's ability to grant restorative grace.The final section, attempting to resolve these tensions, invokes powers of ancestry. Here the poems depict the loving trust of parents, grandparents, granduncles and aunts who, remembering how it was, forgive him over and over, up to and beyond their graves.

Why are some clouds so dark? Why does lightning strike? What is a tornado? You can find the answers to these and other questions about weather in Why Does Thunder Clap?