Shell

.

To have
(what we need)

Space to the horizon
(invitation out)

Songbird
(reminder there are more things in
heaven and earth . . .)

The hawk that stalks it
(a taste of temporal)

A rock upon which to sit when sweat comes
(place to rest and consider the horizon)

Wild blueberries whose blueness tantalizes
(whose juice is blood)

Sun at zenith being warm
(comfort, mother of blueberries,
builder of lungs)

Sweet suckable breeze
(cool answer to a smothering other,
bringer of invisible stuff from
respiring trees)

Path underfoot between rocks and roots
(incline to a bare ridge that appears and
disappears behind hemlock and pine,
hovers over laurel,
is lost behind sharp outcrops,
is sometimes clear as the glint of sun
in the depths of a well)

A curling, troubled stream
(bubbling cache of rain)

Cupped hands to pull it in
(this beholding shell)

.Jim Culleny
5/21/11