Amy Miller
In the Century When Nothing Happened
They measured the pumpkins, let them swell
to the size of stars in the constellation
of their field. They washed the murals
off the walls—the prepossessing horses,
the post-apocalypse swords erected
in the air. They ran them over
with yellow paint. They didn’t know
where to go, their ships
idle in the harbor, their wheels
grinding the boring grain. At first,
that kind of freedom
was a burden. The scholars sat and wrote
nothing and nothing, how many nothings
dance in the forest, nothing pinned
in the nothing eye of the nothing—
a song and a slim dictionary
and a new religion—nothing.
It was the summer of nothing.
And they learned it and they ate it
and it was nothing good, it was sweet
nothing, a way to watch
the hours, and the pumpkins
filled the days with orange
possibility, and nothing became like dirt,
warm hands pushing the seeds in
and everything growing out
into the astonished air.
