by Ronda Piszk Broatch

 

And by that, I mean I want a day filled with it.

Nothing.

Nothing, like glass of cold water
with ice and a slice of lemon in it.

I mean the kind of nothing where all the lawn
mowers, the cars and the sea planes, the jets

that fly over my house, low
as the crow flies, drowse.

I want the nothing-to-hear of owls in flight.

The nothing of guns stuffed with rust,
the kind that refuses to shoot eight straight

hours on a Sunday from two
different directions behind the nursery

with its fountain and two barrels filled
with petunias.

The nyctinastic quiet of petunias.

I want nothing more than the sleep of stones,
the fall-planted rye grass.

A lamp
with a genie in it

asking in sign language what I want on a day filled
with semis asleep in motel parking lots,

wildflower seeds and books of poetry tucked
in their boxes for the night.

The silence of earthworms.

Maybe the kind of nothing where you know there’s something,
but you can’t see it, and it doesn’t speak in words.

Smaller than point particles.

Nothing,
like an Amazon box chewed to bits by the cat.

Nothing,

and nothing to do about it.

 

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Ronda Piszk Broatch is the author of Chaos Theory for Beginners (MoonPath Press, 2023), and Lake of Fallen Constellations, (MoonPath Press). She is the recipient of an Artist Trust GAP Grant. Ronda’s journal publications include Greensboro Review, Blackbird, 2River, Sycamore Review, Missouri Review, Palette Poetry, and NPR News / KUOW’s All Things Considered. She is a graduate student working toward her MFA at Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writing Workshop.