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# Ode to the Last Dollop
- URL: https://www.andyposner.org/ode-to-toothpaste/
- Published: 2024-09-15T23:17:55.000Z
- Updated: 2026-07-18T20:59:07.000Z
- Description: You may think it inconsequential that an empty tube of toothpaste is not, if pressed, empty, but has more to give of itself. You may prefer odes to lofty ideas, or nature, or love...
- Author: Andy
- Tags: Be The Change, poetry, #Migrated-1784090317409, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-07-15 04:39

You may think it inconsequential that an empty  
tube of toothpaste is not, if pressed, empty,  
but has more to give of itself. You may prefer  
odes to lofty ideas, or nature, or love. You may  
have studied Shakespeare, Bayesian probability,  
Goethe and Shelley, Darwin and Einstein.  
Perhaps your idea of perfect relaxation is sipping  
tea on a rainy day as film noir plays on the TV  
and the pitter-patter of rain tickles your eardrums.  
Perhaps, at this moment, you feel too tired, too  
cynical, too important, too old or too young  
to marvel at such banalities. I have been in  
your place and more. Yet this morning the gravity  
of this war-torn epoch hit me square in the throat;  
and would you believe, my friend, that what saved  
me was that very last dollop of toothpaste—rinsing  
away the residue of yesterday’s ghastly failures?