Some things are better than no things (a response, of sort, to Mr. Collins)

You ask why this love for the petty things,
part nat­ural, part affec­ta­tion–
and my answer’s sub­jec­tive, of course.

That morn­ing flower, the fly on my wine­glass–
the mouse turds on my kitchen counter are
proof my kitchen is worth tra­verse by small and large life alike.

I don’t know any­thing about Philip Larkin
or why he’s your death’s head–
I’m just start­ing to learn about poems.

But I do know this much.
The bud­ding for­sythia in early spring,
the sugar I put in my tea to tem­per the bitter.

Those things save me from think­ing about the
howl­ing void in my heart,
and no, I’m not try­ing to be melodramatic.

Some­days, those no things are all I can take, in con­trast to what you sug­gest.
What you sug­gest can’t bear con­tem­pla­tion,
not with­out self-annihilation.

Some of us, dear Mr. Collins, we should not,
can­not all be alone in our rooms,
throw­ing our­selves against the wall of life.

That thrust does not oppose the wall of death–
it is the same thing, because in the throw­ing,
some of us don’t know when to stop.

In hurl­ing at the ques­tion of mean­ing,
the enigma of ori­gins,
we can­not dis­cern our selves– others.

Bet­ter the fire­fly,
the droplet on the green leaf,
the fra­grant soap in the tub that slick­ens and scrubs.

Each small beauty leaves us touched with its grace,
grate­ful and cleansed with the notion of some thing
smaller than some­thing large– existential.

Smaller than some thing that con­tem­plates
whether we are some one or no one,
have accom­plished some thing or no thing at all.

The maul of sense, in those cir­cum­stances,
would be to dwell on those no things
not petty or affected at all.

We solve no great mys­ter­ies, but we are some things rather than no things.

(With apolo­gies and ref­er­ences to Billy Collins’ “No Things” from Bal­lis­tics, 2008.)