Monday Poem

No One in Particular

Are you looking at me? I say to the mountain
which moves as I run the tiller down the row.

But it may not be the mountain I address.

Are you talking to me? I say to the pale moon
which hangs in the blue sky like a ghost ball.

But maybe the moon is not the ghost in this conversation.

The Briggs & Stratton snorts. The Troy's deep-treaded
rubber turns.  The Buddha in the engine barks.  The tines
lift clumps of the secret earth buried under hard sod.

Are you censuring me?  I say to the crow
who stands off like an incriminating shadow.

But the crow may not be the shade to whom I speak.

Soon spinach will be sprouting in these rows.
The prints I leave in the soil behind the tiller
will have been smoothed over by a rake.

Are you rattling my cage?  I say to no one in particular
who is mute as the scent of dark humus overturned.


by Jim Culleny, 4/10/10