JBMulligan
midnight thunderstorm
The storm rumbles and fires its arrows,
light erupts and fades, the wind shoves
at trees, over and over, the night goes on.
People seem more hidden somehow
in houses invisible and near, in lives
that the weather should mimic,
but some are in sunshine and some
in floods only the ocean could summon
in replica.
Rain settles into a rhythm
like breathing slow and steady,
as if a life were pausing to hold
the past up, to measure the heft
and firmness, the night goes on.
Whispers without words
keep pouring over the world
in benediction. The blessings
as common as raindrops
gather in the unseen pools
that will seem gone tomorrow,
stains on asphalt and lawn
that daylight will cover up
slowly, with a different sweetness.
the tree implies the wind
In the autumn night, the tree
rustles with leaves of possibility
while whispers of history
clot on the dirt below.
Equations are everywhere --
the skin of principle -- and the cold air
is alive with what will be there,
the future's incessant wings.
The stars hang on the black.
The light that's past will never come back.
The train runs down its moonlit track
with a voice that's long and low,
a song as sweet and brief as a life
among so much. Just to be is belief
in what will come, almost as if
god were in ceaseless arrivings.
the path
Lost in
the garden, I
wander toward the day
when one petal embraces all
roses.
Page One
Continue to Page Two
Back to Table of Contents