Rattling My Cage
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 engage.
Are you talking to me? I say to the pale moon
which sits upon the mountain like a ghost ball.
But maybe the moon is not the ghost in this conversation.
The Briggs and Stratton snorts. The Troy’s deep-treaded
rubber turns. The Buddha in the engine barks. The tines
lift clumps of secret earth buried beneath 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.
Jim Culleny, 4/7/2010