In Time

Does the day begin with the dawn?

Is it only the strike of Midnight that heralds time’s next immutable step?

For we know that though tomorrow is never promised, it is inevitable.

Whether we are present to bear witness to the Sun’s journey through the heavens, it occurs.

 

Archeoastronomy may show this has been so since man took tools to stone

and first described the concourse of time.

Yet, it is meaningless.

We can view a Universe that spans distances only measured by the passing of light.

 

Real, “Ten to the power of x ” time.

 

We bandy about the idea as though we can even conceive of it.

Certain our flashbulb existences allow us a chance to fathom such vastness

and yet, we somehow imbue meaning into our metrics and give life to strings of data,

hoping that it will lend our little light a bit more intensity.

 

To make our time here feel important.

 

Perhaps the meaning that we seek is not a vision grandiose as Hubble,

for the heat of the heart burns as hot as any star.

Times of loneliness feel compressed,

as if each agonizing moment were spent perched on an Event Horizon; forever falling inward.

 

Conversely, a lifetime spent with a lover passes as quickly as the day.

From it’s dawn, to dusk in an instant.

The experience brief;

the half life of an unstable isotope, decaying quickly.

 

Into this sudden and insufferable day, we must fit one whole life,

every experience, however transient.

A cascading shudder of emotions.

All physical sensation, psychological brilliance and spiritual revelation – in one life.

 

No one commutes along this orbit in seclusion.

Every external stimulus also engages the receptors of another’s skin.

Every breath we breathe is harvested by the lungs of another, to be aspirated again, and again,

and again…

7.1 Billion people, each trying to fit the universe into 1500 grams of grey matter.

 

One day awake, to feel it all;

consciously, or not.

 

Vicariously, we experience everything through each other,

even things we don’t believe in.

Even things we didn’t know were real.

 

Like Love.

 

An immeasurable force, goading an organism to feats and follies beyond reason.

One hundred trillion cells, hijacked by mysterious neurochemical terrorists.

Driven to merely be in the presence of another,

for a day,

an hour,

a moment.

 

Regardless of the duration, it will be too short a time.

If there were one dearth in our existence, it would be that the sun must set on love.

With the executioner’s languid footsteps to the end,

those who are fortunate enough to have found their other hundred trillion cells,

must cling to each other like rocks in a tempest;

for time is unkind to lovers.

 

Yet, we consistently agree to share our time together.

Tomorrow; it may never come, but today can be promised.

A gift – sacrificing that most precious asset;

that which cannot be manufactured, or synthesized.

The ultimate non-renewable resource.

 

All for another.

 

If we could give our time to extend theirs, we would

and the universe be damned if love does not conform

to laws like Thermodynamics, Gravity, or Entropy.

It gives meaning to the brilliance of the firmament

and breathes life into the very numbers that calculate the certitude of Love’s inevitable end.

 

It is the horn of herald angels announcing the dawn,

the promise of a glow on the horizon to banish the night;

a guiding light back home and the distant star for which all intrepid ships set sail.

It is the crucible of Creation, the very mechanism of the universe,

replicating until it exists everywhere and is everything.

Where it is not – it will be…

… eventually.

 

In time.

 

HG – 2014