Nothing



"There are twelve hours in the day, and above fifty in the night."

        Marie de Rubutin-Chantal

Nothing knew the time as she did,

but that was all she knew.

She stood at the window and watched

as snow clouds stole past like heavy-laden thieves

through a sky where nothing could hide

or be hidden,

where light steps accumulated through the hours

to vanish later in the sun.

She looked in on the sleeping children

and found them grown,

their heads and feet leagues apart,

their comforters thrown off

in their wild thrashing rest.

For each light that died, two lit up,

yet darkness endured.

So much labor led nowhere. So many words

led only to silence.

Nothing could be done at such an hour

but even that was more than she could do.

Connie Wanek has been writing poems since childhood. She is the author of three books of poetry, most recently On Speaking Terms from Copper Canyon Press, and she has been the recipient of several awards, including the Willow Poetry Prize and the Jane Kenyon Poetry Prize. She was named a Witter Bynner Fellow of the Library of Congress by United States Poet Laureate Ted Kooser. In 2009 Wanek was named the George Morrison Artist of the Year, an honor given to a northern Minnesotan for contributions to the arts over many years. She lives in the country outside Duluth, Minnesota, but often finds herself in a green tent somewhere in the Boundary Waters wilderness.

"Every instinct strikes me as worthy of envy, but one most of all: It's called the instinct for withholding blows. Animals often fight within the bounds of their own species, but their battles as a rule end bloodlessly. At a given moment one opponent backs down, and that's the end of it."
-Wislawa Szymborska