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    the bride of autumn

The first scattered whispers
of color in the trees,
the sparks of a rumor
waiting to blaze.
Change is coming.
Eveything you know
will contradict itself
before it changes back.
The truth is the process.
The circle.  The wedding dance
of space and time and pattern.
Then the beloved world
changes into something more
familiar, and you smiled
the last time as well.



    the same wind

The same hills.
The same snow.
The same bird in the same tree.

Beyond, the same firs bristle
by apple blossom trees
naked with loss and desire of green,
of red and white coins falling,
a casual fortune.

The wind touches cracking skin
knowing what will come
will drive it out.



    noise

Someday, you'll write your last poem,
    kiss your last kiss, look
    at a sun that won't return.

You'll be gone between the time
    that a leaf will begin to fall
    like an aimless, intoxicated
    sparrow, and when it will land.

The world will go on, busy
    where you've seen it,
    where somebody else has watched,
    where nobody's ever seen,
    busy, lazy, at all of its speeds,
    seconds and eras intermingled.

The heart is a clock, and yours
    will simply stop, a gear
    will spring off down the hill,
    rolling and shiny, rattling
    to the bottom - then spin,
    then hiss into stillness.

Where your noise was, there will be noise.



JBMulligan has had poems and stories in dozens of magazines, including recently, Bonfire, Contemporary Rhyme, Animus, opossum holler tarot, Red River Review, and Cafe Oleh. He has had two chapbooks:  The Stations of the Cross and THIS WAY TO THE  EGRESS, and appeared in the anthology Inside Out: A Gathering of Poets (http://www.geocities.com/anneyohn2003/index.htm) .



Copyright 2006, JBMulligan. © This work is protected under the U.S. copyright laws.
It may not be reproduced, reprinted, reused, or altered without the expressed written permission of the author.