September 2020

Ode to Nothing

#Wednesday Wisdom #Epiphany

​

In mid-April 2020, in the midst of the corona virus pandemic, as I was preparing to send off some draft poems for review by my editor, I came across a poem he had recently published, entitled “Ode to the Cooronavirus.” He says that he wrote this poem because he was trying to hold tightly to everything in that time of great uncertainty, but realized that of course, nothing can be held in place. The writing of the poem was, for him, a search for the words that he needed to find to get through the days – “to remember how to live.” The poem which follows is a personal comment on his verse which I wrote at the time, but which has wider applicability.

 

"But nothing is mine. And that’s

the lesson you came to teach." 

Jon Davis, Ode to the Coronavirus, in Letter to America, April 6, 2020, Terrain.Org. 

 

It’s true. Nothing is yours and nothing is mine –

Not even the poems you’ve already written or the ones I hope to write.

And yet we keep trying,

Driven by the ephemeral force of the ego-mind

That one day was born and will, on some other day, die,

The ephemeral force without which human life would also be – nothing.