Three Poems
William Cullen Jr.


 
A Mountain Reprieve
 
Just the shadow of a fly
cast too far over the still stream
gets a brook trout leaping up
high enough to let its image reform
before falling back into itself
caught again in that wonder
of just living on.




Epitaph for a Preacher’s Son

Predication was never his forte.
He could bank an eight ball
expertly smooth as the velvet
it rolled over.
A metaphor for his life
he was good with single shots
connecting each hour to the next
but had no grand design
no thought of tomorrow
much less any after life.
When they found him dead
in the gutter
he had his pool cue with him
pointing north where he always
said he would go.
And maybe he did.




Finding Out His Old Man Died
 
He did not weep
but lit his father’s pipe
and settling back in his porch chair
every once in awhile
when the clouds gave way
he blew a smoke ring
at the moon.
  


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About the Author:  William Cullen Jr. is a veteran and was born in Petersburg, Virginia. He lived in Alabama, Georgia and Germany before settling down in Brooklyn, New York, where he works at a social services non-profit. His work has appeared in Canary, Concis, Farming Magazine, Gulf Stream, Heartwood, Pouch, Spillway and Written River: A Journal of Eco-Poetics.

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