-- TO BE NOTHING --

By John Herlihy

Many efforts useless or abandoned,

Many chances lost or plans gone awry,

But I am still alive, the least that can be said.

Still in one piece, still kicking, still breathing,

Not much of a reward for what I’ve been through.

The worst now has happened, hasn’t it?

When all said and done, I finally know,

What I have accomplished and who I am.

I worked hard, had an identify, was something.

After my long labors, I now end up as nothing.

Still to be nothing raises the specter to be anything.

If you look upon it from a different angle of vision.

Not nothing then, but anything.

Not necessarily lost, but possibly free,

Not consumed by doubt but a lingering certainty.

In a sense, faith has its way with us.

It glosses over all that wicked mystery we endure.

To be faithless will only make a day of us,

Rudderless, anchorless, driftwood on the shore.

There is a crude harmony to nothing,

Like the hollow sounding rhythms of a drum.

There is a symmetry to the emptiness of nothing

That adds up to one single, undivided sum.

In the end, we can walk forth with impunity,

Basking in the glow of life as a unity.

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(c) John Herlihy 7 February 2019