Monday Poem

Shell

To have only what we need

Space to the horizon
drawing us out

A songbird reminding us
there are more things in heaven and earth

The hawk that stalks it—
a taste of temporailty

A rock on which to sit when sweat comes;
a place to rest and consider the horizon

Wild blueberries whose blueness tantalizes;
whose juice becomes blood

A sun at zenith being warm:
comfort, mother of blueberries,
builder of lungs

A sweet suckable breeze
cool answer to a smothering other
bringer of invisible stuff from
respiring trees

A path under my feet between rocks and roots
following an incline to a bare ridge that appears and
disappears behind hemlock and pine, hovers over laurel,
is lost behind sharp outcrops, is sometimes clear as a bell

A curling, troubled stream
—bubbling cache of rain

Cupped hands
to pull it in

This beholding
shell

by Jim Culleny
5/21/11