Seasons-- yeah, so just getting the seasons right
and just getting an exact notion of what they are.
So I'm going to read an old poem that my dad liked a lot.
He was a big supporter and my mother as well.
This is from my book, Bright Existence.
Poets like nonexistence.
They like not existing, but also making it into poems.
And it's-- and it's really true that nonexistence is as solid
as existence.
So I wrote some poems about waking up at dawn
and not-- realizing that you're nothing,
but that was a very solid thing to wake up.
The not being anything, because you got to be everything else.
"Black Series."
"Then in the scalloped leaves of the plane tree,
a series of short sharp who's; a little owl
had learned to count.
You lay in your bed as usual, not existing,
because of the bright edges pressing in.
All at once the black thick O's of the owl
made the very diagram you needed.
Where there had been two kinds of infinity, now there was one.
The smudged circle around the soul
was the one the Gnostic's saw around the cosmos,
the mathematical toy train, the snake eating its tail.
Relieved by the thought that the owl's O's had changed,
but not you.
That something could change and not be lost in you,
you asked the voice for more existence and the voice said,
'yes, but you must understand, I loved you not despite
your great emptiness, but because of your great
emptiness.'"