To the Light, Darkly

News that Bill Gates is no longer
the world's richest man shook me.

I was moved to contemplate
man's place in the universe.
God's accordion.

Our tiny mortal minds are hard-
wired for linear time.

Time exists only relative
to constant speed of light.
Einstein's violin.

Mind is a sense.
Like sight, taste, hearing,
smell, and touch.
No more, no less.

Because I think I am?
Am what?

God doesn't meddle in men's affairs.
Minor personal miracles occur:
Deeds of dangling spirits of dead.

In time we die.

Like my neighbor down the hall,
Mrs. Scirghio, said after her husband
died choking on a chicken bone:

"When ya numbuz up, ya numbuz up."

Eternity is a conceit.

Absence of time
is not eternity.

Every breath is.