Midpoint of Nothing

Stars without conjunction
cross Heaven’s half-world;
only empty space beyond
our orbits and ellipses.

Daybreak recycles night
into this indifferent day.

Today
the sun struggles to rise
holding nothing in its light:
nothing new, nothing old,
no stuttering lips to speak,
no weary eyes to see
nor ears to hear.

At the midpoint of nothing:
the universe rotates elsewhere,
converges somewhere else again,
divides and intersects the stars
as they collide in another place;
there is no hint of reason,
pattern is obscured, locked
inside the clock-less wastes
of eternity.

Struck dumb by unremarkable time,
stalled between boredom and wonder,
no-one moves, no moving finger writes,
nothing remains to be revised nor cancelled,
neither word nor deed.

© BH, 2020

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An old idea, this. I wrote it in a magazine submission that was never published: the third in a series for One Earth magazine of Findhorn. The first two pieces were printed then, as mags do, this one folded. 

So, twenty-seven years later, the phrase resurfaced – from the first paragraph of ‘A Box of Tricks’: 

"Tonight was the mid-point of nothing: the moon was nowhere near full; the wheeling stars had not rotated one single constellation into any point of conjunction; there were no solstices, equinoxes, divine festivals, arcane anniversaries or holy days to celebrate. This wasn’t even a time of dreadful depression or angst. I stood there and stared with total neutrality into the darkness of a completely asymmetrical night."

It has always been a tantalising thought: what is special about a time that is entirely without specialness? Everything and nothing. 

That’s when things really start to happen…