Infinite Loop

my first memory was sunlight
falling through motes of dust
patterns merging from shadows
inside reaching out

if time is seamlessly round
then it could just be

my last memory will be starlight
rising though desert air
transparence touching spirit
outside reaching in


© 2008 by WEb

Photo Credit: Galaxy HUDF-JD2 From the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (NASA,ESA)

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I wrote this poem for Memorial Day, and it's mostly about wonder and growth. The poem is about our past and future memories as we grow from childhood toward an understanding of the universe.

My first fuzzy memories are mostly about "sunlight" -- which, of course, is also "starlight" (since the sun is a star). I was probably not more than three. As one grows older, one tries to make sense of the greater universe.

As adults, we now know that the starlight arriving at the Earth today has actually been traveling for a very very long time -- and we can actually see backward in time. Some of the photos from the Hubble Ultra Deep Field originates from 13 billion years ago. Our observational evidence and understanding of physics currently points to a "Big Bang" where the universe was born in an explosion and expanded outward 13.7 billion years ago.

There's a lot of speculation on what may happen next, and one can wonder about it. Will the Big Bang be followed by a Big Crunch? An "infinite loop" (title of the poem) is sequence of instructions in a computer program that loops endlessly forever. Could old age be like becoming new again?