Music’s

like running water—
a sea undulating in the afternoon
as if balloons the size of Jupiter
were pushed up, pulled down
from underneath,
swells and bellies pulsing
like sheets of cellophane
oscillating here to horizon
orchestrated by Neptune
whose name appropriately sings,
who scares-up martial seascapes
of battering waves like Beethoven’s 5^th
to blend with the sustained chord
of a Beatles’ Day in the Life, to go
and drift off slight and placid
as Yeats’ Innisfree, whose
lake water laps “with low sounds
by the shore” as if played
by a piccolo

Jim Culleny, 4/9/22