In Defense of Nothing
By Peter Gizzi
I guess these trailers lined up in the lot off the highway will do.
I guess that crooked eucalyptus tree also.
I guess this highway will have to do and the cars
and the people in them on their way.
The present is always coming up to us, surrounding us.
It's hard to imagine atoms, hard to imagine
hydrogen & oxygen binding, it'll have to do.
This sky with its macular clouds also
and that electric tower to the left, one line broken free.
Copyright Credit: Peter Gizzi, "In Defense of Nothing" from In Defense of Nothing: Selected Poems, 1987-2011. Copyright © 2014 by Peter Gizzi. Reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.
Source: In Defense of Nothing: Selected Poems, 1987-2011 (Wesleyan University Press, 2014)