He keeps pace with his early times as though
he had it in him to outrun his age,
stomping down the towpath, crunching snow.
He must have some last fantasy to wage
against such mists as muster in the sky,
less like an army than a cataract
spread white across the universe’s eye,
which is already blind to him in fact.
He runs as if the place to which he ran
were all (the pain within parentheses)
but he’ll end back at home where he began,
to edge around all night on gimpy knees
complaining to the walls of hip and heel,
but not defeat (the harder thing to feel).
Terence Culleton lives and teaches in Bucks County, PA. He has published poems in The Amherst Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, The Cumberland Review, Edge City Review, Janus, The Schuylkill Valley Journal, and various other magazines and journals. His recent books of poems include A Communion of Saints (Anaphora Literary Press, 2011) and Eternal Life (Anaphora Literary Press, 2015).
