My Buddhism teaches me that I
should be in this moment,
present in an infinitesimally small
bit of time, always here, never staying.
This morning my back had an issue
with me, and made its displeasure known.
Pain fills moments, elongates them
and time ever moving appears to slow,
to grind along, almost to a halt.
Would that pleasure might do the same
but it lives a faster life, compressing time,
collapsing it as if entering the event
horizon of a temporal black hole.
I still experience pleasure and pain,
more of the former if I am lucky,
but there is always another moment
that I ought to be in, and another.
I know that my time is finite, measured out
by a timekeeper who remains always
out of sight, always unapproachable.
I should fear the margins time allots me,
the limit of my temporal universe
for I know I am approaching it and there
is nothing beyond its boundary.
But that fear is bridled by the recognition
that I, each atom of me, of us all,
has been here since the instant we call
the Big Bang, and everyone, everything
that has gone before is an atomic part
of me as I will be for all that follow
me, us, everyone, everything, ad infinitum.