[Image: “Blink and Go Hungry (L&M Donuts, June 2025),” by John E. Simpson. (Photo shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page at RAMH.)]

From whiskey river’s commonplace book:

There once lived a great warrior. Though quite old, he still was able to defeat any challenger. His reputation extended far and wide throughout the land and many students gathered to study under him.

One day an infamous young warrior arrived at the village, determined to be the first man to defeat the great master. Along with his strength, he had an uncanny ability to spot and exploit any weakness in an opponent. He would wait for his opponent to make the first move, thus revealing a weakness, and then would strike with merciless force and lightning speed.

Much against the advice of his concerned students, the old master gladly accepted the young warrior’s challenge. As the two squared off for battle, the young warrior began to hurl insults at the old master. He threw dirt and spit in his face. For hours he verbally assaulted him with every curse and insult known to man. But the old warrior merely stood there calmly. Finally, the young warrior exhausted himself. Knowing he was defeated, he left feeling ashamed.

Somewhat disappointed that he did not fight the insolent youth, the students gathered around the old master and questioned him. “How could you endure such indignity? How did you drive him away?”

“If someone comes to give you a gift and you do not receive it,” the master replied, “to whom does the gift belong?”

([source: various, including this])

…and:

everything

I went out on the porch. Nothing. Silence. Vast silence of the woods full of fireflies. The stars. Down in the south the huge sign of the Scorpion. The red eye of Regulus. Just stars. Not a light from any house or farm. Only fireflies and stars and silence. A car racing by the road, then more silence. Nothing. Nothing.

When a car goes by you can feel the alien frenzy of it. Someone madly going somewhere for no reason. I am a complete prisoner under these stars. With nothing. Or perhaps with everything.

I sit on the porch and deliberately refuse to rationalize anything, to explain anything or to comment on anything, only on what is there. I am there. Fireflies, stars, darkness, the massive shadows of the woods, the vague dark valley. And nothing, nothing, nothing.

Is she thinking of me? Loving me? Is her heart calling to mine in the dark? I don’t know. I can’t honestly say that I know. I can’t honestly say I know anything except that it is late, that I can’t sleep, that there are fireflies all over the place, and that there is not the remotest possibility of making any poetic statement on this. You don’t write poems about nothing.

And yet somehow this nothing seems to be everything. I look at the south sky, and for some ungodly reason, for which there is no reason, everything is complete. I think of going back to bed in peace without knowing why, a peace that cannot be justified by anything, by any reason, any proof, any argument, by any supposition. There are no suppositions left. Only fireflies.

…I want to tell you something, but I don’t know how to begin to say it. I am afraid that if I start talking and writing, I will confuse everything. Nothing needs to be said.

(Thomas Merton [source])

From elsewhere:

Toward the Verrazano

Up from South Jersey and the low persistent
pines, pollution curls into the sky
like dark cast-off ribbons
and the part of us that’s pure camera,
that loves funnel clouds and blood
on a white dress, is satisfied.
At mile 127, no trace of a tree now,
nothing but concrete and high tension
wires, we hood toward to Outerbridge
past Arthur Kill Road where garbage trucks
work the largest landfill in the world.
The windscreens are littered, gorgeous
with rotogravure sections, torn love
letters mauve once-used tissues. The gulls
dip down like addicts, rise like angels.
Soon we’re in traffic, row houses, a college
we’ve never heard of stark as an asylum.
In the distance there it is, the crown
of this back way in, immense, silvery,
and in no time we’re suspended
out over the Narrows by a logic linked
to faith, so accustomed to the miraculous
we hardly speak, and when we do
it’s with those words found on picture postcards
from polite friends with nothing to say.

(Stephen Dunn [source])

…and:

Regardless of the actual nature of time, we know that our conscious experience doesn’t represent the sequence of events in the world accurately. We have seen that through different processes the brain binds information that arrives at our sense receptors at different times and delivers it to us as a neat, present-moment package. But we can still wonder how conscious experience itself relates to time. Paying close attention to one’s moment-to-moment experience through a concentration exercise like meditation—or simply contemplating the mystery of one’s felt experience in general—leads to many interesting questions pertaining to time: How much time does a moment of consciousness take? Is consciousness continuous or does it somehow flicker in and out (and how would we know the difference)? What is the present moment; is it some sort of illusion? Is time itself an illusion?

(Annaka Harris [source])

…and:

Insomnia

After counting all the sheep in the world
I enumerate the wildebeests, snails,
camels, skylarks, etc.,

then I add up all the zoos and aquariums,
country by country.

By early light I am asleep
in a nightmare about drowning in the Flood,
yelling across the rising water
at preoccupied Noah as his wondrous
ark sails by and begins to grow smaller.

Now a silhouette on the horizon,
the only boat on earth is disappearing.

As I rise and fall on the rocking waves,
I concentrate on the giraffe couple,
their necks craning over the roof,
to keep my life from flashing before me.

After all the animals wink out of sight
I float on my back, eyes closed.
I picture all the fish in creation
leaping a fence in a field of water,
one colorful species after another.

(Billy Collins [source])