At dusk, there is nothing but the thin bird’s call
but the fungal, the man who meditates on
the mountain the
woman and the masseuse
There is nothing but
this tree, this green ink
These numbers the
woman chants out
the still windmill in the distance, nothing
draws my attention draws
in a breath. It is
what I have said here.
Nothing is missing in the white space evening
sky bends to fog. Nothing feels like the fuzzy
edge. I run a fingertip along the mountains
and the horizon. Nothing is that color.
Nothing is autumnal. It falls from the gnat’s wing.
Nothing is the retro-red stove burning
in the clunky lodge of awkward wood and
rough sawn people. Nothing repeats
like beans. Nothing
is my center,
my pink sky. Nothing dwells in the gut
with heavy boots. The pachyderm in the womb.
Nothing the cook tells the wife. Nothing
is that bird flat upon the glass
is different
than those bird-droppings.
Nothing is different. Search the hands-the lines
of them-the veins of
them, their soft
wrinkles to find nothing. Lift the telephone
receiver where nothing burns the air
that fire of
white which occupies
the cavities, the
small spaces between toes.
A spoon scrapes nothing from the pot.
There is that singular tree in the distance,
taller and more symmetrical than
other trees. The Tree of Nothing,
no bird nests in its barren metal limbs, no
leaves twirl away from odd branches,
no cell division in its core. Nothing
transmitted, at least. It looks like nothing
to me. About
you, I can
say nothing, nothing at all.
