Monday Poem

Forty Thousand Two Hundred Eight

I’m out here stacking days as if it were a sport
I’m up to forty thousand two hundred eight

I sweat memory. I’ve taken off my shirt,
I’m feeling great. But as I stack them up
they’re growing short

I tally what till now I’ve done

Not far from a stupa
I eye the spot where I’d begun
near an arbor vitae hedge
in a shade of catalpa 

I’m looking for a bona fide antique

On spines of days my curate hands
feel to find the ones with bliss-laced hours
stitched with epiphanic seams

I come upon a few. They’re few
and far between

The sun’s past high. The pallid moon’s
a perfect ghost of round sentinel-still
upon a bald mountain ridge. I think
it might roll down

   I breathe honeysuckle and see wisteria
   clutch its pole twist up and round

I’d placed the pile with care
so as never to occlude the sun
yet carelessly have thrown
some days upon a previous one
then, too late, gone back to
square them up trying
to undo the done

by Jim Culleny,
January 2010