Monday Poem

Flash Fires

If these thoughts became fossils
they might be found by some
neuro-paleontologist in time to come
buried among those of others
pressed in the strata of notions
like carcasses of trilobites in stone
or the bony ghost of a pointing finger
caught in basalt —but they will not be

These thoughts are here and gone
like the flickerings of fireflies
after being incarnated momentarily
in wind blown through a larynx
and taken by a breeze to ears
into a mind or two and recalled
a few times like echoes
articulated by dancing tongues
and lips of others
until they run out of steam
after perhaps a generation
and vanish
like the smoke of flash fires in a
wilderness

by Jim Culleny
Oct 12, 2010