A Nothing Dreams Nothing of the Nothing, Nowhere, Utah, 10 April 2019

The years have not flown. They have piled up
In drifts, sometimes like leaves, sometimes snow,
Sometimes dust. They accumulate faster
Than they disperse. The year of disastering,
Of marrying, gestating, nursing, toddling,
Career changing, taxing, long summering.
The dooming, the doom, the recovering.
The unknown. That’s this one. There’s a distinction
Worth making between being a nothing, by which
We mean something very like nothing much,
And seeing the nothing, the genesis at the end
That we may never actually experience, can never be,
But toward which we tend, as we incline toward delight.
A nothing cannot dream of the nothing, which is
Fact and is alright. Has no other option. We don’t have
To dream of the nothing. We get to dream nothing.
The balcony recessed in the air of nowhere,
The ornamental railing between air and nothing
Is a perfect place to wait and count the years
On a warm and windy desert spring night.
Li Bai mistook the moonlight for hoarfrost
And mistook loneliness for longing for home.
Daughter mistook a cloud of dust the wind
Whipped up for darkness outside her window.
Once we mistook nothing for nothing much,
But now we have been given so much, so much
The drifts have piled up, we mistake nothing.