There is no such thing as a real void

There is no such thing as a real void.

I just read this

in ‘seven brief lessons on physics’.

No thing is ever really empty.

The glass, or the bucket,

before it is filled,

swarms with the tiniest of particles –

invisible forces that leap and bump,

disperse and collect, like a

flock of finches in the midst of flight

gliding across the vast and open sky

as if inseparably, one.

There is no such thing as a real void

so when you tell me you are empty

or lost to yourself, when you say

hope has dried up and left

behind only a hollow husk

I know we are blinded by sight.

There is no such thing as a real void.

You contain multitudes

and I am determined to leer

beyond the first glance

beyond the grime that lurks at the surface

beyond the reach of my arm

and its inability to grasp air, space, time

and loss. I am determined

to leer into the void

where all that is born

is of the same celestial seed,

where snails and turtles,

butterflies and humans

all share one ancient ancestor

and where, in the darkest and loneliest

and bleakest of holes,

all we know

is that when a star collapses

a universe is born.

2017 Incantation

A call to spaciousness, to
space that looms between – 
opening outward and upward
like the lotus and the lily,

a hand written invitation
to all of love’s names
in its fluid multiplicitous 

roaming in the forlorn emptiness
between the luminous stars, 
the planets and all of the un-named
spheres of plasma and gold – 

breathing, in the soft exhale
that meets the gasp 
of your inhalation –

flying, on those imperceptible gusts
that guide the monarch
to unforseen landings – 

hiding, in the hypen – 
that line that joins
and separates the noise
from the silence –

each, the space that holds
the possibility of the other,

and finally, living – 
in the body’s razed desires
to inhabit the world 
and to be inhabited
by nothing less than
the infinite promise of
the ellipsis…

an indwelling of it all,
of the and, and, and,
of a lively and radiant universe
that never stands still.