poem

Time

Some days I want to make time slow down

Like the time you beat me in ping pong

Or the night the amber light of the hotel bar

Filtered through your wind swept hair

And caught the completeness of your essence

As we held hands and laughed

And listened to old jazz songs.

Time is relative like everything else,

Contingent on one’s perspective.

Blast into space and hit the hyperdrive

Or spiral around the outer cone of a black hole

And, from someone else’s vantage point,

Time seems to slow to a crawl.

I’ll never approach the speed of light

So I’ve been looking for something heavy,

An object of infinite mass

That we can circle at our leisure.

Each step will seem to take a thousand years

Each kiss will last a hundred kalpas.

But for us, it will be as before:

After maybe a minute has elapsed

Our lungs will burn and ache

And our lips will have to break

And we’ll return to a world that has long since passed:

The extinguished sun, this frozen dead earth.

Alas, the obstinate constancy of relativity.

12/17/20