Current Tally:
I’m out here stacking days as if it were a sport,
I’m up to twenty thousand six hundred eight.
I sweat memory. I’ve taken off my shirt,
I’m feeling great, but as I stack them up
time is growing short.
I tally what till now I’ve done.
Not far from a stack of stones
I eye the spot where I’d begun
near an arbor vitae hedge
in a shade of catalpa.
I’m looking for bona fide antiques
scented and yellow as old books.
On spines of days my curate hands
feel to find the ones with bliss-laced hours
stitched with epiphanic seams.
I come upon a few, they’re few
and far between.
The sun’s past high. The pallid moon’s
a perfect ghost of round, sentinel-still
upon a mountain ridge. I think
it might roll down.
I breathe honeysuckle and see wisteria
clutch its pole twist up and round.
I’d placed the pile with care
so as never to occlude the sun
yet carelessly have thrown
some days upon a previous one
then, too late, gone back to
square them up trying
to undo the done
by Jim Culleny
January 2010
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