On Nothing, Sonnet #401

It’s my favorite word and the most frightening.

A self-negating word, not even a ghostly

Idea, or an empty round, a noose tightening

Around itself, and a stern critic of “mostly.”

We use it mostly in a soft, relative sense,

As if it were a verb in more than the past tense,

Existing by not, to describe what isn’t there.

I had a cupboard, but the cupboard was bare.

We think we know variable interstices —

Between Andromeda and the Milky Way,

And between different but similar species —

Such nothings are nothing but what’s lost in decay.

Real nothing, if it exists, should freeze the soul.

In death we’ll dive into light or a rimless hole.