Furnace

…………………….
Coffee’s made, tea-water’s on, frost glazes a pane
in iridescent strokes  as if rendered by an elfin etcher’s point
Struck through with silver its gravure of fern fronds
glistens on a clear silicon plate
……………….…………
An oddly regular postage stamp of brilliant blue
piercing an otherwise stratocumulus dome
marks a piece of sky beyond the frost-etcher’s art
…………………
a window in a window a frame within a frame
like a thought within a name
……………………..
The furnace sparks, the burner hums before
the blower starts, and hot air gushes from a grate
as if a house might warm its own cupped hands
to mitigate the lethal stillness of a still, cold, place
as we would mitigate a coming lethal stillness
by puffs from our own deep furnace
in the winter while we wait
………………….
by Jim Culleny, 12/18/09

 

 

 

 

Dead Zone

…………………………….
“Fish and other marine life could be left gasping for breath in
oxygen-poor oceans for thousands of years to come if global
warming continues unchecked, scientists warn in a new study.”
                               –National Geographic News; Jan. 28, 2009

You are sequestered in water
I am confined by the air
…………..

You are scaly and finny
I am soft-skinned and fair
…………………..

I am a reader of volumes
You are a swimmer in time
………………….

You read the text of the ocean
I stroke the sea of my mind
………………….
You draw your breath from a liquid
I take mine from a gas
………………….
I am as slow as a dimwit
You are exceedingly fast
………………….
I know little of coral
You know nothing of trees
………………….
You know the feel of a current
I know the touch of a breeze
………………….
You seem content to be fishy
I’m seldom content to be man
………………….
You take pleasure in isness
I take it however I can
………………….
Your limit seems bounded and narrow
I think my limit is none
………………….
I die by the bounty I squander
You die by the damage I’ve done
………………….

By Jim Culleny, December 7, 2009

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Geese

This morning when the sky’s red skin is
drawn across a beginning and the grass
is taut with frost and the clarity
of the edge of things recalls
the precision of an engraver’s point
an irregular V of geese passes left to right
like beads of an animated  rosary
each a honking Hail Mary
a striving prayer
an individual articulating dot
an I-am of we-are

we are moving south
we are honking like hell
we are drifting up and down
in a wandering V together
to reach some destination
by a means coded in our cells
by a wisdom unknown
by an accident or lovely intention
on a whim or a want
on an updraft or drawn down
by a turn in the weather

we have been invited and
we are moving south implacably
as life moves

Jim Culleny, December 4, 2009