Jamail Center for Legal Research
Tarlton Law Library

Inside Information

She accepted
her generation's requirements:
debts of nature and class
in her voyage to Manager, and
provided her planet the children due,
while facing: sickness, divorce and bad luck;
at 40 she thought she was through.

She should
have no reason
to be on top

only lately
have things worked
before that nothing

how she continued
is a puzzle
why she did, we wonder.

Where did her hope come from?
We doubt she knew.

Some have a birthright saying OK
some not.

While others, their world
pursued and won
have fallen weary.

Silver

The woman listening in the corner
dressed in leather, we asked
when the music slowed, how many
years she sang?  her reply:
the first decade flew,
no dammit, it took the Concorde
the middle ones, a lot of work
the last ten were faded

Stardom threw a switch and became
a huge suction on me-gradually, I lost
pain seeped into my feet, all the way up.
At the end of the day, she advised
we're all lonesome cowboys.
a bedroll
a rusty rifle
(hardly Orion or Mars) but,

trying to head back out again, one more time
to blow away the stars.

Poetry Day

Factories of the world, for a day
shut down for poetry
from Japan Haiku, tanka, and
bold new free verse; Brazil
sent verb and vivid colour dances,
the Germans joined the French
with strong lines, all taking
their poetic chances.

American workers
slow at the start, yet by closing time
their faxes were singing too
with meter and with rhyme.
CEOs of companies and nations
all signed pledges, commitments for provisions
endorsing this yearly day, in honor
of their wise, their workers, and their visions.

North of Sun

Cold shocks
the outer branches
mercilessly pinned against
December's cobalt sky, as
nuthatches hop up/down, around
these hoarfrosted sticks, then join
the courteous chickadees, all
scouting for seeds, energy
as they porpoise through heavy air
to rescue themselves
one more time, here in winter
far north, from sun.

Donal Heffernan is an adjunct professor of international law at the University of Minnesota-Metro. For many years he was counsel to Cray Supercomputer Company and Silicon Graphics Inc. He also served as counsel for the American Indian Movement, and as a member of the Wounded Knee trial team in the 1970s. 
Heffernan is the author of two collections of poetry Orion (Lone Oak Press, 1993) and Duets of Motion: Poetry & Fiction (Lone Oak Press, 2001). For the past 15 years, Heffernan has lead a regional group of Joyceans in Minneapolis or St. Paul in readings for Bloomsday on June 16th. In 2001, he received a fellowship from the Minnesota State Arts Board for literature and was invited to give workshops on poetry and business at the Fringe Club in Hong Kong and at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. 
Heffernan was born on November 11, 1940 and raised on a farm near the Winnebago reservation town of Homer, Nebraska. He attended the University of Nebraska where he ran track; he obtained his B.A. in Political Science from the University of South Dakota, and his J.D. from William Mitchell College of Law.
"Silver" was first published in Law & Politics in 2001. "Silver," "Inside Information," and "Poetry Day," and "North of the Sun" were published in Donal Heffernan's Orion (Lone Oak Press, 1993).