Insignificance

Feeling insignificant is something that obviously everyone has felt. It's funny, though, because we've been talking about insignificance in terms of the universe and how small we are and how we're just a blip in the vast expanse of infinite, but that's not where I find insignificance. In fact, I feel quite the opposite. The fact that I'm still here and living and breathing while there is so much more kind of gives me meaning and makes me feel important. There must be a reason for it all.

However, I find my insignificance in the little things. A forgotten toy. A lonely park bench. Falling leaves. I find it in the forgotten things and the unnoticed.

I see this in the poetry of Wallace Stevens. I thought about this today after I recited my poem and we watched that planets movie.

Vacancy in the Park

March... Someone has walked across the snow
Someone looking for he knows not what.

It is like a boat that has pulled away
From a shore at night and disappeared.

It is like a guitar left on a table
By a woman who has forgotten it.

It is like the feeling of a man
Come back to see a certain house.

The four winds blow through the rustic arbor,
Under its mattresses of vines.

It's poems like this that make me feel insignificant. The image of a boat disappearing. A forgotten guitar. A man searching for something he lost a long time ago.

The last stanza serves as a reminder that man is fleeting, but nature will remain forever. The line "mattresses of vines" makes me think of those post-apocalyptic movies where they show  cities taken over by trees and nature, where everything made by man is slowly decaying.

This poem reminds me that I am fleeting. It reminds me that it is so easy to be forgotten. It reminds me that loneliness is just around the corner. It reminds me that I am nothing but a small girl lost in the bustle of the world, and that I will soon be gone, forgotten.

This poem is about insignificance.