High and Blue Enough
plums on limb tips
across a grassy slice of space
have just begun to taste the sunny juice
that tips the scale of day —a star
that sprays its golden light across turning
leaves above our arbor vitae emeralds,
brushy backboned sentinels twenty feet tall
we planted there when they were three
sun is out of frame to right
but I visualize the mountain’s hump
of brown and ruddy trees it glides above
I visualize the red blaze I see
when time is ripe enough
I visualize the particles and waves
by which light in space behaves
space that’s wide enough
and deep and true enough
space that’s sweet and bright enough,
high and blue enough,
infused with life enough
to make all this possible
and now an aspen flicks an arbor vitae
its hellotouch of jittering leaves
in vacuum’s breeze
Jim Culleny
10/12/19