Monday Poem

Fugitive
... -on a photo

A big brown bison walks the left white line
of a two-lane, black eyes scanning

contemplating asphalt he wonders
what happened to the grass

how’d this black ribbon come to bisect
my meadow between talus and hundred-foot pines
and where are the columbine?

He asks no one in particular because
not even the alpha male in a herd

would know. A car crawls slowly up behind
capturing the remains of a wilderness

Sonys gripped in the hands of small
homosapiens click at the ends of arms

stuck through windows catching
an outlaw bison who broke from a farm

whose humped shade steps like a rope-walker
down the white line’s length wondering where
the stillness went

Where are the clover and laurel?

What are these murmuring
beasts that glide like shadow ghosts along
this scar in my pasture clicking like crickets
trailing their burnt cenozic scent?

by Jim Culleny
October, 2010