J.B. Mulligan

drinks at the mirage

Chance is neither random nor predestined.
The ship that sinks, the plane that tumbles down
the runway like a flaming, loaded die:
survivors grin and grimace, sure to find
that "there, but for the grace of"—what? "go I."
A God? Dumb luck? Some force that sees each one

as part of all, not merely part of all;
that sees events as purposeful or blind—
as if the rings that spread across the lake
created, by collision or design,
the watcher on the shore. All push and pull
is glaze upon the eye, thick and opaque.

The mystery the minds distorts is this:
it is, because it is, because it is.

in parallel parade

Midnight glimpses of cruel and wondrous beasts:
our other lives, in parallel parade
as in a mirrored hallway, stride for stride—
and each perhaps convinced he isn't cast?
These brothers of our uncommitted deeds,
or actions taken when we should have ceased...
where are their smiles? Their frowns? They are defaced,
a palimpestic past I cannot read.

The veins of possibility are rude
with unmined ore: our wealth can't be increased,
but the debts of failure, casually accrued,
mound to bankrupt fortunes we could have seized.
Mildly, we curse the mere sufficient food.
Tame dogs plunder spillage from the feast.

the mountain is hidden

The mountain is hidden in green, muscled clouds.
Below them, a scatter of red and white homes
are mute confirmation of human incursion,
a gaunt archeologist's freshly dug bones.

A hawk circles, vigilant, over the trees,
a car leaves a driveway, but nothing else moves.
All part of a harmony, calm orchestration
of melody changelessly shifting and new.

A current runs through this. A stream and a bolt.
Both lightning and water are blood in the veins
of a universe locally spread through all space-time.
The hawk and the houses explode and are gone.
The sun and the mountain explode and are gone.
But nothing else moves, and all changing, remains.

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