According to astronomers
the universe is 14 billion years old,
a fact that makes the long scroll
of my life—
its fine brushstrokes of autumn leaves, inclining
over a mountain pool; the quick,
inscrutable characters that say
something wise & eternal but look
to me like long-legged insects—
so infinitesimally short
that, in reality, I cannot be said
to have lived at all;
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not to mention this day,
starting as usual with coffee & a glance
at the shocking headlines, with their promise
of a dire year ahead, which
cosmologically speaking,
is less than a mole on the cheek of the smallest
unnamed particle skating in an atom of oxygen
exhaled from a single breath of Time;
much less the hour I’ve sat
pondering this strangeness, while the earth—
still a pudgy adolescent in quantum terms—
turned a little on its axis
so that sunlight,
which set out a mere 8 minutes ago
on its singular mission to the kitchen table
could brighten the coiled peel of an orange,
my companion in nothingness,
that has been waiting here
on the saucer beside me
since the beginning.
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