Of Nothing That Can Be Named

All motions involve changes,
And so it follows change has

Innumerable motions.
Nonetheless, change moves mostly

In two manners, the rhythmic
And the disruptive. The first

Is predictable, is time,
A measure, not a substance.

The second is chaotic,
Novel in every instance,

Strange and unpredictable.
Both remove some of the same,

While some of the same remains,
But time is what takes the same

Away in similar bits,
Bit by bit, repeatedly,

Days and seasons and orbits,
Regular atomic clicks.

When we say night is coming,
We mean ordinary ends,

Another winter, a moon,
A sleep, a hibernation.

But what comes down from nowhere—
Not without antecedent,

Not without precedent, but—
In the manner it appears,

Removing chunks of the known,
Tearing out ragged amounts

Of what we thought we could keep,
Never thought we’d lose—is loss.

We study time. We debate
The importance and nature

Of time’s existence. Chaos,
On the other hand, isn’t

Even the right word for change
That arrives as novelty.

Chaos we can theorize,
With its dizygotic twin

Called randomness. The breaking
And gouging of the remains

Time’s nibbles shaped from the same,
The frenzies that tear the world

Into before and after,
Then never return again,

Such motions are eruptions
Of nothing that can be named.