Double on that Negative

It should not have been a perfect day.

You were gone, all of you,
the sun was too high, and
the new basil stubbornly insisted on refusing to leaf in time for the evening's meal.

Conjunctions muddied every sentence with
their same-old, same-old-boring routine.
Nothing clicked or sprang or popped, buzzed or bubbled;
nothing sparked. Nothing rang.

No bells, no whistles. No catcalls, no heady perfumes.
No windfalls and no beginner's luck, no accolades,
no recognition, no requests for more, none of the

shim-sham of endless epiphanies I've begun, of late,
to equate with summer -- and yet,
( ).