Nothing by David K. Bean

I have nothing to write...

I've never been mugged or lived

through a World War,

survived a fight with cancer

or taken morphine.

When I was young, my father didn't beat me

or send me out to beg in the street.

When I see a sunset, all I see is a sunset.

I’ve never looked at a butterfly

and had it remind me of the Milky Way,

or the fluttering pages of a child’s picture book.

The frost on the window is just frost,

not crystallized flocks of miniscule birds,

or a transitory reincarnation of Jack Frost

about to once more resolve himself to a dew

with the rising of the sun.

And when I close my eyes, I don’t see my dreams

reflected in the glassy pools of childhood.

I don’t hear the symphonies of life

playing their floating melodies of poetry.

I hear my pen scratching in harmony with the mouse in the cupboard.

I am the conductor—

cuing nothing

holding an endless fermata—

waiting...

I have nothing to write.