Question of That First Winter

Will someone please remind the deep lake
It’s old friend wants to come home again?
How to get by on less than nothing

Much on the long approach to nothing,
The penultimate conundrum
Of the hermit longing for far woods,

Worries my grey head, desert mornings.
Right now I have nothing much, which is
Always much too much of everything,

And I am trying to keep nothing
For when nothing is required of me.
Finding a seam between those extremes,

Between the everything world of dust
And the afterword world, Never Was,
Is like finding a way to the north.

Could I fit into almost nothing
Without falling for nothing at all?
Tell me, lake that would float or drown me

As soon as look at me, all friendly
And green waves gleaming effortlessly,
Either way, is there a hermitage

Anywhere near you to shelter me
With next to nothing, hibernating,
Through to the end of that first winter?