Circle of Perfection

By Robert King

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Let the cycle return

skeletons of stars

and faces of the dead,

show the past as the next step.

 

Let spiderwebs of galaxies

tangle in arms of light.

There in the mirror, circles

show the future behind us.

 

For a cycle’s nanosecond,

the short life of perfection

arrives where it began,

leaves where it ended

to seek itself again.

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Robert S. King lives in Athens, GA. He is a cofounder of FutureCycle Press. His poems have appeared in hundreds of magazines, including Atlanta Review, California Quarterly, Chariton Review, Hollins Critic, Kenyon Review, Midwest Quarterly, Southern Poetry Review, and Spoon River Poetry Review. He has published nine poetry collections, most recently Developing a Photograph of God (2014), Messages from Multiverses (2020), and Selected Poems (2023). His personal website is www.leftypoet.online.