Nine Ways of Looking at Nothing

1
All things have a hollow center
so secret and sacred it can’t be entered—
the heart of a blooming rose,
air caught inside a floating soap bubble,
a hunch-backed ring of smoke.  

2
The human body is composed in the airy balance
of cobweb, cake batter, universe—
ten percent matter and ninety vacuous space.
Flesh is a flimsy nylon stocking covering the soul.

3
The firmament stretches like a circus tent—
as if anyone could pull sunlight tassels
and push aside the curtain.

4
Is the cosmos God’s skin draped
across God’s bones, skeleton
of fundamental geometry?

Does math restrict matter
like a corset flesh, or do the two untie
like hook from eye?

5
How can the present be unwrapped?
That would be like trying to undress the sea—
her gray silk skirts, the surf’s endless frills
of lace-trimmed crinoline.

6
Imagine seeing far into the bones of swans,
tracing the double helix of DNA corkscrewed
inside the curvature of delicate neck—
a bird’s maze-like, dizzying architectures—
pockets of nothingness waiting within
the cathedral arches of folded wings
where see-through rachis balance breath
between barbules and barbicels
of snow-white feathers.

7
One twig’s tap on a pond’s surface
spreads into concentric rings,
each ripple widening until it reaches
shore and moves no more—
while the center is still
beyond end or beginning.  

8                 
All things draw toward a common core
the way a wild goose soars
below the cloud deck in a gray sky,
wing beats like metronome clicks
measuring time’s longing
inside the chest of space.

9
All things pledge themselves to the secret
of origin—the way a swan mates
for life, taking a pristinely white vow
with only an inkling, without
thinking, without rings.

—Published as part of artist Ken Dubin’s Poetry Project, “Field of All Possibilities, 2014

Painting: Ken Dubin, “Field of All Possibilities”