Nothing Stands Out

a half-poem for two emptinesses

nothing stands out

when everything fits in

of course not.

which of my parts is the whole?

none of them.

when we are near are we one or two?

NO.

yet there is no nothingness involved

each collection fades at the edges into something else

back-and-forth in-between what we can & cannot say

but this is hardly the presence of an absence

it seems shunya bifurcates where only you cannot see it

into two emptinesses

one stream flowing toward a well-praised void

some obscure ideal of self-cancellation

while the other stream blurs into a luminous ambiguity

that you can’t quite put your finger on

look! this photograph of a bench without you upon it

is not an image of your absence

but a full picture in every detail

in fact

only your absence is missing

before the universe there was Nothing else

but do you think it sprang from the void?

i don’t think you CAN think of a void

think of digging with your hands into the dirt

you break through into a hollow space concealed below

where expected resistance gives way

for a moment you cannot tell whether you are grasping

or not

this is the -ness of the hollow not the fact of a space

two ice cubes melt into the same water — now they are not quite gone

interblending two different ways to be the same

the same enough to be different

cross and recross the logical limit until it glows

you pass through the boundary

and the boundary remains

is it a boundary?

only very nearly so

a mind smeared out to its edges

this is the “almost” when you say “i almost didn’t recognize myself”

one emptiness is not necessarily compassionate

another is not all that

it is open, released relationally-blended quasi-interbeing

quite a mouthful for an empty mouth!

so i do not call it empty

i call it indiscernibility