Sitting Outside at the End of Autumn

Sitting Outside at the End of Autumn

by Charles Wright

Three years ago, in the afternoons,

                                            I used to sit back here and try

To answer the simple arithmetic of my life,

But never could figure it—

This object and that object

Never contained the landscape

                                                          nor all of its implications,

This tree and that shrub

Never completely satisfied the sum or quotient

I took from or carried to,

                                               nor do they do so now,

Though I'm back here again, looking to calculate,

Looking to see what adds up.

Everything comes from something,

                                           only something comes from nothing,

Lao Tzu says, more or less.

Eminently sensible, I say,

Rubbing this tiny snail shell between my thumb and two fingers.

Delicate as an earring,

                                          it carries its emptiness like a child

It would be rid of.

I rub it clockwise and counterclockwise, hoping for anything

Resplendent in its vocabulary or disguise—

But one and one make nothing, he adds,

                                                                           endless and everywhere,

The shadow that everything casts.