“These are tears of joy. I can die a happy woman. Though I don't feel much like dying today… Think harder. Write faster. Please take your time and hurry if you possibly can.”
–from reader F.M. on a previously posted poem: A Politically Incorrect Ode to Whitman
Steep Sigh
Walt Whitman’s ready nearby
tucked humbly among authors
I keep close upon my night stand
for the waking of my
night eye
You'll see him in this drawing
I made years ago, still stacked
(a bedrock source) while others
cycled in & out of this small
proximate collection
like many million moments
that have blindly come and
slid by
Yesterday I found a poem
which said well some things
I've thought as days have
gone by;
…….;…of Whitman
and the subject he so expertly
unravels and so surely
pins and spins and
re-ties
And funny you should mention
tears since this morning
without reason I
………………….had a sudden sob-fest
returning from the dump
after dropping off our rubbish in
my weekly, sloughing,
drive-by
It might have been the singer
in the dashboard or
the adolescent female walking
sadly postured
plying the left shoulder as I
whizzed by
………………(a clone of my granddaughter?)
or— ……….who knows what existential lever
I'd leaned upon too deeply in a
steep sigh?
by Jim Culleny, 7/26/09
Night Table; drawing by Jim Culleny, 1997