Monday Poem

Hydrant
Jim Culleny

Steel sentinel on our street.
Its domed yellow cap  
topped with a wrench-ready fitting,
its three short blue arms wrench-ready too,
its stumpy red  torso squat in the snow
ringed round its base with brown March mush
in late winter when our longing for sun
is most poignant; when it hallucinates
buds and birds;
when it wants to crank the earth
a little further along in its revolution
at least a months-worth more  into its arc
to sooner reach that sweet relationship with Ra;
 
—it’s then I ask Ra to ask you to love me
as I love you until Hell freezes over or
until Ra’s firemen hook-up the waters of love
to douse the devil’s rival flame, or till I wise up,
whichever comes last.