Monday Poem

“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