in the nothing...

My own poetry is dead – or at least is dying a slow, meandering death. There are flashes of something I once thought I might try to say, or believe I could say, but the ink never quite finds the page the way I think it should. So, the rest is silence.

And what I cannot say, I say very well – in leaving it alone. In forgetting to remember. In the nothing that will have its way.

Gregory Orr says it as it was always meant to be said.

*

from my anthology of must read (a)merican poems

Gregory Orr

Two Poems About Nothing

          “I’ll write a song about nothing at all . . .”
               —Guillaume IX of Aquataine (1071–1127)


When I was young
I fell in love
with nothing.
Nothing had
my heart.
I was a moody
unpleasant youth;
even my mother
disliked me.
What are you
brooding about?
she’d ask.

                    Nothing
I’d answer.
For once, she
approved.
You’re good
for nothing,
she said, and
nothing is good
enough for you.

*

When I was a child
nothing was everywhere.
It lay thick on leaves
and gathered in pools
under cedar trees.
Nothing filled
our barns
and grazed our pastures.
Nothing was so abundant
we never thought
to praise or prize it.
Those days are gone
forever. Now nothing
is scarce
and we lack for nothing.