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)
Posts Tagged ‘nothing’
Eternity in an Hour
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Joi Sharp, love, nothing, peace on February 16, 2023| 13 Comments »
One Cleaning the Closet of the Mind
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cleaning, clothes, mindfulness, nothing, thoughts on January 8, 2023| 6 Comments »
how threadbare these thoughts
I’ve chosen to wear every day—
replacing them with nothing
Fill in the Blank
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged blank, nothing, Wendy Videlock 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.
The Price of Nothing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, Art, nothing, space 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
Self-Portrait in Marble
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aging, nothing, sculpture, self-portrait on January 28, 2021| 2 Comments »
With its tiny claw chisel
Thursday has chipped
and carved, made cross hatches
and striations in who I thought I was
on Wednesday. Every day
there is less of me, and
every day I am fashioned
more into who I am, this
diminishing work in progress
in which the sculptor never
stops—once I thought
it would take forever to make
me, now there’s so little
left of the block I understand
that only what is not here
will be forever.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer970-729-1838 wordwoman.com
Watch my TEDx talk The Art of Changing Metaphors: TEDX Rosemerry Trommer
Nada
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged music, nothing, silence, stillness on February 29, 2020| 4 Comments »
written at the Carmelite Monastery in Crestone, CO
It holds everything, silence,
offers itself as a blank staff
on which every song is written—
the tiny hymn of insect wings,
the baritone of the jet as it flies
from one measure of sky to the next,
the dry requiem of rustling grass,
the emphatic chorus of crow.
How generous, silence,
am I willing to know it?
How it includes even the cough,
the belch, retching, the wailing,
the snarl, the scream, the shatter,
and scores these in concert with the hum,
the lush purr, the whisper of the lover,
the ecstatic tremulo of sigh.
There is no sound it refuses to hold.
Its patience is infinite.
So when we, like weary pilgrims,
tired of hearing the percussion
of our own footsteps, arrive at its doors,
silence receives us, welcomes us home.
Colette Suggests I Sit for Five Minutes Five Times a Day
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged meditation, nothing, poem, poetry, sitting still on December 13, 2018| Leave a Comment »
And do nothing, she says.
I think about that as
I shuffle the kids and
make doctor appointments
and edit the pages and
drop off the gifts and reply
to emails and shovel the drive
and read to my daughter
and peel the carrots
and hang up the coats
and all that time, I imagine
sitting for five minutes.
Doing nothing.
Yeah, I should add that
to my list, I think,
as I open the cat food
and stack the bowls.
And there, on the shelf,
between the bowls
and the salad plates,
I feel the nothing
waiting for me, feel
its infinite patience,
feel how it is always here
supporting all this everything.
How generous it is,
I think, suddenly unable
to feel anything
but a longing for nothing,
a longing that lasts at least
fourteen seconds
before I remember
that call I am supposed
to make, that plant desperate
for a drink.
Eating Dinner with
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged absence, nothing, poem, poetry, zero on January 9, 2018| 3 Comments »
What gave numbers their power was the very act of naming them and writing them down.
—Amir Aczel, “The Origin of the Number Zero,” Smithsonian Magazine, December, 2014
Imagine, says my friend, before 700
there was no zero, which means
before that there was no concept
of nothing. In my bowl,
there is only a bit of squash soup left.
I add some salt, take a small bite.
There is less. I remember reading
that numbers exist outside
the human mind. Not like
a John Deere tractor that’s invented.
Not like a sonata that’s composed.
I take another bite of soup.
it is warm and tastes of apple
and thyme. I try to imagine it,
not knowing of nothing.
What would I have said
was in my bowl now that
the soup is gone? What
would I have thought
was in the chair beside me
here where you are not?
How would it change this
all that is, not comprehending
this all that is not?
One Undoing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged nothing, poem, poetry, wish on February 3, 2016| 2 Comments »