“Fish and other marine life could be left gasping for breath in oxygen-poor oceans for thousands of years to come if global warming continues unchecked, scientists warn in a new study.” –National Geographic News; Jan. 28, 2009Dead Zone You are sequestered in waterI am confined by the air You are scaly and finnyI am soft-skinned…

GeeseThis morning when the sky’s red skin isdrawn across a beginning and the grassis taut with frost and the clarityof the edge of things recallsthe precision of an engraver’s pointan irregular V of geese passes left to rightlike beads of an animated rosaryeach a honking Hail Marya striving prayeran individual articulating dotan I-am of we-are…

Making Way —Narragansett Bay 1960 We part from the dockslow as disengaging loversone landlocked the other afloater who won’t bekept at bay The diminishing pier slides back its bollards and planks deployto some other place not herebut to a distancing otherworld—the tether breaks as stern-first we pass the channel buoy ….Quarter back, the O-D says.….Quarter…

Icon ………………………………………………………………………………………….I received a snap of Duke the Dog in which duke in radiant atmosphere standsquintessentially dog-like ……………………………………open-mouthedlolling tongue four-squarepaws planted in green earth ……………………………….…..expectantpoised to please …………………very Christ-likein mist halo silent light still ………………………………. ….all aware I’m yourshe barks standing by……………………….. throw that last stick nowbefore I mount this brilliant torchand rise to sit…

“… scientists (have been) able to trick (fruit) flies into having associative memories of events they had not actually experienced.” …………………………………………………… –Nature News, Oct 15, 2009Which is Which or Who is Whom They say fruit fly brains may be made to have memories of where they've never flown I’m like a fruit fly in this…

To Roof Ah, to put a roofing spadeto desiccated shingles To lean upon the spade-handle’s endleveraging stubborn nailsfrom their impacted seats To wrench my back To abrade my bleeding hands againstroking the asphalt’s pebbled face To fight a wind while laying felt which, like Ahab’s sails, would whisk me to a mad roofer’s end To…

“Gravitational corridors could help spacecraft ply the solar system like shipsborne on ocean currents, (say) scientists investigating space travel.”…………………………………………………………….–The Telegraph; Sept. 10,2009 Ignorant Explorers In what seems void are corridors:avenues in nets of gravity between planetssuns moons meteors dust, channelsin nets of love between us ………………We set out through themfirst in flame machinesburning hydrogen and…

The Ghost of the Arrow of Time An hypothetical-resurrected-formerly-dead in a daydream arrived with a scent of dreadwhich I could not put my finger on yet knew that I knew the way I know a déjà vu andyou came as something I ephemerally knewcame as something ephemerally new as a bud for instance at the…

Lucky Again Yesterday todaymight never come butI'm lucky again It did and here you aremy bulwark againsta stark sea In the garden you beganyears ago in our plot of sandwhere little grew but wild strawberriesclose to the ground theirtendrils groping dry earth we now have hibiscuswith blossoms the size ofdinner plates and day lilies in…

I love words and the convolutions of language; how we arrange and rearrange it; how we invent new ways communicate old things; how we nurture its nuances —which is where poetry comes in. Idioms have always intrigued me. They’re short poems. One-liners created to make startling something banal and obvious. Idioms lighten things up. They…

… the “Law of Frequency of Error” … reigns amidst the wildest confusion. The huger the mob, the greater the anarchy, the more perfect is its sway. It is the supreme law of Unreason.………………………………………………………………. —Victorian statistician ­Francis Galton The Frequency of ErrorThe frequency of erroris not a count of radio wavesor of an articulation of…

Sunup to Noon Tonight A constellation ofblack-eyed susansframed in the screenof our kitchen door— each dark peering eyedead center in its radiantgold-fringe petal-collar looksas if it had burstfrom its corean instant before Though each susan keeps stillat the end of her stemas if snapshot-clicked except for a nudging breezethat streams betweenmobs of livid phloxthe color…

…in a curved space, a body can seemingly defy basic physicsand “swim” through a vacuum without needing to push on anythingor be pushed by anything. ………………….–Eduardo Guéron; Scientific American, August 2009 Swimming in Space TimeA short walk from our house2 minutes topsthe river came throughin a bend at the end ofa short street whereon a…

“These are tears of joy. I can die a happy woman. Though I don't feel much like dying today… Think harder. Write faster. Please take your time and hurry if you possibly can.” –from reader F.M. on a previously posted poem: A Politically Incorrect Ode to Whitman Steep Sigh Walt Whitman’s ready nearby tucked humbly…

Hawks East or west down the trail in fogthe bark of a distant dog a meadow rolls off in that cloaka cleft in its breast of a brook deciduous trees to the northa hawk in the fifth or the forth scans for the twitch of a mealnot a stitch of remorse will it feel as…

—Miraculous power and marvelous activity,drawing water and hewing wood. –P’ang Yun Talking With My Guru….#1– Nothing to Lose G: What exactly do you mean by emptiness?Me: Nothing.G: Then why are we wasting timesitting round talking about it? Take your tiny Tao shearsand snip emptiness out of Webster’sand heave it into the void. It’s anotherself-serving euphemism…

As the Minute ClicksJim Culleny A new night(as they always are)and cool —unlike Junein Jersey when I was greenbut June anyway anyway it comesit’s Juneit’s Juneregardless of you June then June now in mid-late evening8:30 by the clock—the night darkalmost in the window the skyglows grey behindsilhouettes of trees slate-skin cloudswhich if seen from a…

Odder StillJim Culleny…………………….. As odd as it is that a moon comes upbehind the inelegant tree behind our houseover the dark mountain, grey-whiteand silver-dollar like –a night eyecrying silver– it’s odder still to thinkof a moon that never was…………………… As odd as spring seems, fresh and greenas the crisp salad before the salmon fillet,as odd…

FigureheadJim Culleny Sometimes a poet will sail the line of a poemlike Leonardo DiCaprio: a figurehead on Titanic, arms spread, embracing the wind, the air, the fabulous future, poised before the next word, only to find it isn’t there: the right word, the one that says it all, the one that pulls the rabbit out…

New ThingJim Culleny I opened a Twitter acccount out of curiosity. I admit it, I was born into a far simpler techno world —pre-TV, prime-time radio, number-please phones on party lines, straight-6 engines with carburetors, 78 records with needles the size of ten-penny spikes —an antiquated world. And although it’s a little murky to me…