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Nothing

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on March 26, 2026| 10 Comments »


 
 
Today, for a time, I am more red rock cliff than river. 
I sit and do not do. 
Perhaps some part of me crumbles. 
I do not resist the crumbling. 
I do not resist stillness. 
I am weary of resisting. 
So weary that today 
I promised myself
I would make time for nothingness. 
What pleasure I found in not rushing, 
not rising, not streaming, not traveling to, 
not coming from. 
Why have I put off, again and again,
the chance to be intimate
with nothing? 
Yesterday, when I heard myself 
tell a friend my experience of nothing 
is what I think God is, 
then I wondered why I fill my hours 
with so much everything? 
So today I cliff. I rock wall. 
I sandstone. I canyon. 
I sit still and undo 
and meet the great nothing 
that holds up everything.

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Standing in the Dark on Winter Solstice

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 21, 2025| 2 Comments »

The dark rushes
into my lungs.
With each breath,
I imagine I
become more nothing.
The longer I’m
still, the more
I rhyme with
the vast dark
and know myself
as the mystery
that holds everything.

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For Now

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on June 20, 2025| Leave a Comment »

a solstice song
 
 
Nothing to do but open,
nothing to do but close,
nothing to do but undo,
nothing to do but love.

Self as wind in the forest,
yes, self as both forest and wind,
self as unfolding unself
that closes and opens again.

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Imagining Rose

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on February 20, 2024| 7 Comments »

Red were the leaves
in that Illinois fall,
red was the blood
she did not bleed,
and brittle was the straw
in the hat she did not wear
as she did not walk
to the store. Instead
she sat on the small
metal chair in her room
and did not cry,
my grandmother all those
years ago, and she
thought of the baby
she would have
with the man who
she married but did
not love, and green
were her thoughts
as the child began to grow,
green as the garden
she did not sow.
She did not yet know
how he would learn
to spin all that
nothing she had
into gold.

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Talking to My Son at Night

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on December 13, 2023| 9 Comments »

I miss you, I say to the stars,
   The stars are not you,
     but always they seem to listen,
       as if what I have to say is important.
 
I miss you, I say again.
   The stars never talk back.
     Still, I listen for a response.
       When I say I miss you,
 
I mean I’ve barely begun to understand
   what missing you means.
     Though I live it every day.
       Though missing you infuses every breath.
 
Though missing you shapes me—
   especially at night when I’m alone
     and I find myself talking with stars.
       I miss you, I say to the stars.
 
I hear nothing in response.
   I let myself be cradled
     by that nothing.

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Sitting Quietly in the Night for Twenty Minutes while Nothing Happens

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on September 11, 2023| 8 Comments »


Perhaps I wanted a sign—
an owl call. A meteor.
The brush of an invisible hand.
Instead, I got a sky full of stars
and an ear full of riversong
and the certainty that no matter
what happens or does not happen
in the world outside of me,
there is always, inside me,
a love that grows and changes.
Is it strange now, I am grateful
for nothing—the nothing
that teaches me
the most important thing of all.  

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Eternity in an Hour

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on February 16, 2023| 13 Comments »


            with gratefulness to Joi Sharp
 
 
Not just to know the self
but to know the nothing
that surrounds it, to feel
how vast that nothing is,
how inside that nothing
is more nothing, and
inside that more nothing
is even more nothing.
To know that. To feel
the self held by infinite
nothing, to feel the nothing
held by the self. How quiet
everything is then. How
easy it is to believe
peace is not only possible,
it is already here. How
beautiful to meet this
truth with another.
Sweet paradox: imbued
with all this lavish nothing,
the moment overspills
with love. It’s everything.
 
 
 
(title from “Auguries of Innocence” by William Blake)

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One Cleaning the Closet of the Mind

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 8, 2023| 6 Comments »


 
 
how threadbare these thoughts
I’ve chosen to wear every day—
replacing them with nothing

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Fill in the Blank

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on June 1, 2022| 6 Comments »


            for Wendy


Tonight, the poet with the tendrilled hair
asks us to fill in the blank.
The most important relationship
you cultivate in your life is with _________.
One person says, Love. Says another, Yourself.
And long after the question is gone
from the air, long after the conversation’s
moved on, I think about ways
to fill it in. With time. Mortality.
Uncertainty. Peace. And ultimately,
with nothing. How beautiful
to let what is blank stay blank,
a space holder for pure potential.
What if our relationship with nothing
is the most important relationship we have?
I notice how she never fills in the blank herself.
Now everything is possible.

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The Price of Nothing

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on June 7, 2021| 6 Comments »


for “the lucky buyer” who “went home with a certificate of authenticity” for an “immaterial sculpture” by Salvatore Garau


What could be more valuable
than nothing? The nothing that
frames “The Thinker,” the nothing
that holds every bowl,
every vase, every bust, every thought.
Let others buy the clay, the steel,
the papier-mâché. I will be satisfied
with nothing more than nothing.
Nothing pleases me. Nothing
enchants me. Nothing,
as Heisenberg says,
has a weight. Just think
of the space here beside me
where you are not.
If someone asks me why
I have a five-by-five-foot
empty space taped off in my home
with a plaque that says I Am,
it is because I am so in love
with nothing. Imagine it—
nothing, the color of happiness,
nothing, the size of love,
nothing, the shape of god.

This poem was published in Rattle’s Poet’s Respond on June 13, 2021

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