still nothing

Slanted rays of wintry sun,
pale fingers that reach through patchy layers of cloud,
that mix every possible shade of white and grey and blue,
that guide your eyes to slip and slide over miles and miles.
Sounds come like prickles in the landscape, thinned by so much empty space,
that each sound seems wrapped up tin foil, crackles hollow when it reaches your ears.
Tree tops bare in quiet sway, waiting calm through empty wintry days,
where stopping is just a necessary phase,
before leaves will grow again.

Danny said: I am not afraid of death.
I’ve gazed right into nothingness,
and all it is, is nothing less than a long sigh of relief,
a finally fallen leaf,
released from the lifeline branch to float and sink down in the breeze of chance,
and settle somewhere new.

Andi said: the trees look so beautiful today. The soft sunlight. The branches. A movement that delights the eyes.

Danny said: I’ve tried and tried to prove myself;
you won’t believe all that I’ve achieved,
but all the time it haunted me,
the ghost of productivity:
what’ve you done? What’ve you done?
Where you going to?
What you got to show?

Andi said: this seems like a wonderful place to sit for a while.
I know you always want to know what to do.
But I’d love to stay here.
Danny won’t care anyway; they're explaining again.

Danny said: I’ve tried so hard to prove I’m worth
the salt on anybody’s table,
and only after so many years have I finally been able
to see that all my precious salt is worth nothing at all;
that I belong in the end to the sea.
But where before it frightened me,
to wonder what it’s all for,
to drift in space like tumbleweed,
to see that there’s no point at all –
where before it drained my energy,
left it puddled on the floor at my feet,
now it seems to set me free.

Andi said: you seem a bit tense.
Are you worried about something?
Why don’t you come and sit a while?
It’s warm here.
The morning sun has poured into the long grains of this bench’s wood,
and melted scores of moments
where other people sat and stood,
and passed the time here on this spot,
a pew to silent memories
that we can almost touch.
Come and sit.

Danny said: I’m everything and nothing, simultaneously.
All that I touch will disappear,
including you and me.
We’ve never been quite here before,
and it’ll never be again.
We’ll lose it, it’s slipping away:
it’s already begun.

Andi said: look at the way the light catches the needles of the fir trees,
like tongues of fire –
as if the whole tree might go up in flames.
Do you think the birds know?

Danny said: We’ve already lost our entire lives, faded out of reach.
Remember when we were kids,
when we climbed the great old apple tree,
planks of wood, and hammer and nails in hand,
grand plans of what we’d make.
Never the concept that we’d failed,
when our plans took a different shape.
And then life was defined by how many times
we could kick a football back and forth, me to you,
without letting it touch the ground.
Moments that we occupied,
without stopping to think they’d ever end.
Or the time we lay on the living room floor,
when mum had gone away,
listening in the fading evening light after school to radiohead’s the bends,
when listening was the only language we had back then
to share the sadnesss we both felt
at all that had already had to end.
Moments of closeness,
moments of peace.
Moments where something felt in place, against all odds.
All these moments are already lost.

Andi said: sometimes I think that wood can breathe.
Have you ever laid on the forest floor
and watched the trunks of tall pine trees rock to and fro,
as if the strongest things of all
are in the end as fragile as straw?
And how much straw can you grasp in one hand,
as you walk through the fields?
And where will you leave it when you pass back to homeward streets?

Danny said: I’m slowly dying, every day.
There’s a great emptiness that lurks inside,
like a lake that reaches far wider
than my skin could ever hold,
and only rarely have I ever stood
on that shore and looked across,
fear that I always had
of being swallowed up and dragged in whole.
And like everyone else,
I tried to cover it up,
to fill the void with talking and talking and people and things.
But now I know I have to jump in,
that the lake is sorrow and endings and lack,
is sadness at what never was
and what will never come back,
is loss and loss and the pain of you and me and everyone else.
And whenever you stop for long enough
to hear the way you breathe,
there’s a loneliness that you can’t explain and cannot bear,
and you talk and eat and drink and smoke
but it’s always waiting there underneath.
And wherever you are,
you could always be somewhere else.

Andi said: I like it here. I wonder how far we can see right now.
You know, I prefer to face backwards when I travel by train,
to watch the landscape, the sky and everything in between,
as they slowly recede into the distance.
Suddenly appear in your window like out of nowhere,
and then hang there like lamps that gently sway,
and gradually, silently shrink and fade,
and you don’t even notice the moment,
when they’re no longer there anymore,
as if they slip off the edge of the world.

Danny said: you know there’s no point in any of this.
All our little stories and schemes,
all your plans and all your dreams,
everything that lights you up and gets you out of bed each day,
will crumble quicker than you’d ever believe.
But I’m not afraid of nothingness.
I know I need to slow down and rest.
I need to leave more time to digest

the days and days and what you said.
I know if I can be comfortable

with endings and loss and letting go,
then all of my days will be lighter,
and I would be able to choose for now,
and not be quite so weighed down

with trying so hard to grip onto things
that will only last a fraction of the sun.

Andi said: when all is quiet, the quietness grows and fills the sky

as if your eyes could reach way up there,
brush the tops of the trees and spires,
as if your feet follow and settle

on the brow of the farthest hill your eyes can pick out,

and the space between is empty and full,
and you’re here and there,
in ploughed up soil and asphalt street,
and though it might seem to contradict,
this state when you’re split to here and there, far and wide
is when there’s no extra thoughts in your mind.
And those moments seem so rich and full,
I could write about them for days on end.

Danny said: I want to be quiet.

Andi said: … .