On knowing nothing
ipse se nihil scire id unum sciat – Cicero

And I said: nothing will come of nothing.
Then I tried to examine my life
through notebooks, pencil sketches, a drawing,
lines scribbled over. I’m supposed to strive
for high ideals. That poem on the wall,
that creased, yellowed, clichéd observation
half-way up the stairs: a beautiful world.
Stodgy stanzas and then the frustration:
not knowing any “proper” poetry.
Subsistence, to stumble on or to climb
down, or up, to the (multi)verse. Well, try,
be that poet in that tree, on a limb,
watch the day shed in leaves then shade to blue.
There’s still a lot of nothing left to know.