rounds unpetal – a poem by JBMulligan

rounds unpetal

Into the Fall, and the Insect Orchestra
still plays through the night, rasping and chirping, soft
and persistent as hope, as bats tumble aloft
through brevities of feasting, throbbing with hunger
like song beneath the silent music of stars,
the rush and stumble of lost beginnings swift
as desire to fill what is not, till nothing is left
of nothing, and emptiness, voided, disappears.
The urgencies of moment, the lazy sprawl
of time; one point in space that spread to all:
watching the spin and rattle, the shiny ball
that chases the wheel to fall into its slot,
to racket and hop and hiss, and finally stop
while songs continue that sound like what is not.

JBMulligan has published more than 1100 poems and stories in various magazines over the past 45 years, and has had two chapbooks: The Stations of the Cross and THIS WAY TO THE EGRESS, as well as 2 e-books: The City of Now and Then, and A Book of Psalms (a loose translation). He has appeared in more than a dozen anthologies, and was recently nominated for the Pushcart Prize anthology.