.
our house has left the family,
which was as poignant and sure an event
as when the house on route 15 also went
leaving the ghosts of Minnie and Frank
to haunt the yard and wetland behind
until dozers came to lay it low
along with its barn and the shed that stood
on the two-lane’s shoulder scented with oil,
innards patinaed with grease,
its antiquated gas-pump sentinel at its door,
its impotent hose hung at its side
useless against the gale of progress
that blew from the east to plunk
a supermarket where uncles and aunts,
Velma, Howard, Gladys, Frank, Roy, Jim,
Leo, Jack, Ruth, and Pat, the lot of them,
used to play and sleep before the spells
of work and love took them
to be men and women of the world,
as happened too with the lot of us
within the enclosure of our small house
a short walk from the small river
as we came to understand the larger
way of things, as we came to
finally hear the clock’s tick and feel
the suck & push of an implacable
sweet & sour breeze
Jim Culleny
8/26/20
Blink 