Mind the gap — Summary

Dave BontaCheerful

My Zen is about difference: a way to make it up. I have hopes to burn. I have seen the Queen of Bohemia.

Show the whole poemHide the poem

Learn Poems app

Try the Learn Poems app

Everything from the website trainer, and more: new exercises, voice recording and sharing, reminders, quick review.

The speaker offers a quick, slightly mischievous definition of their Zen. It isn't about calm or emptiness, as you might expect, but about "difference": noticing the gap between how things are and how we'd like them to be, and then making something up to fill it. "A way to make it up" works two ways. It can mean inventing, and it can mean making amends, as in making up after a quarrel. The speaker seems to hold both ideas at once.

The last lines turn playful and odd. "Hopes to burn" suggests a surplus of optimism, more than anyone could use. Then comes the claim to have "seen the Queen of Bohemia," a grand and unlikely figure that sounds like something from a fairy tale. It's hard to take literally, and that seems to be the point. The title, "Mind the gap," ties it together: imagination is how the speaker crosses the space between reality and wish. The mood is light, wry, and quietly hopeful.

Read also

More by Dave Bonta

All poems
ContemplativeDave Bonta

Plea bargain

I hear half a beat of drum to serve time have half a hope in the meantime praise God
DreamyDave Bonta

Cibola 3

I awake in the dark and shake free of sheets & blankets, of down-filled quilt. The rituals of waking– the long, hot shower, the coffee–give
ContemplativeDave Bonta

In good light

On a maple’s pale bark, a zigzag ladder—old tooth-marks from a wandering snail? Green islands of moss