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Edward Hynes Dec 2024
I don’t think there’s a God except
  I’ve sometimes felt Transcendence.

I might believe in God except
  When we’re alone, we’re wired to project,

To think that someone’s over there
  Somewhere that we can’t see. Except:

We don’t see sound and we don’t hear light
  However loud, however bright,
 
So maybe it’s perception,
  Not projection,

One more connection,
   Outside of space and time,

One more direction,
  At right angles to the rest.

And when we turn down light and sound,
  And wait with no one else around,

Then reach out with a quiet mind,
  Perhaps it’s really God we find.
Edward Hynes Dec 2024
The thought I meant to write
was lovely and serene, but gone
before I found the words to make it stay.

Perhaps it had the wrong address, was meant
for someone else and fled, embarrassed to be seen
instead by me;

Or maybe it was floating free
And somehow blundered into me
But barely made a dent and didn’t stay;

Or it could have been a wayward dream
Stranded on this side of sleep
Waiting for the night to slip away;

Most likely just a thought of mine,
But one I couldn’t grasp in time,
And remember as the thought that got away.
Edward Hynes Dec 2024
I’m told that I’m a dream produced
by time and space and DNA, that’s organized in such a way
that chemistry and physics are enough to make it dream,
so let’s accept that really there’s no ghost in the machine.

But still it seems that I exist, and isn’t it amazing dreams
can interact with other dreams,
do calculus and higher math,
gaze at the stars, make art, make love,
investigate it all and find
we’re just another accident of chemistry and space and time.
Really?

“The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility…The fact that it is comprehensible is a miracle.” Albert Einstein, 1936.
Edward Hynes Dec 2024
Time
The present carries you along, the past
Unwinds behind, time’s arrow
Keeps the future up ahead.  
That’s how it’s always been, but now
The present slips away, leaves the future in the past,
  and disappears.
You’d follow but the present’s gone, moved on,
Left you behind,
In a future that’s already out of date,
But still enough to knock you down.

Change
Things change without you—
What seemed stable disappears,
Your horizon shrinks to nothing,
The future surrounds you,
And everything is stranger than you imagined.

Keeping up
You hesitate along the way,
Say that’s enough to this and that
But keep up with the rest,
Until you say to what remains
This far but no farther
This much but no more.
            
Memory        
When asked—
You find your reasons are in the past,
With gaps and pages missing,      
And certainties uncertain,
Planets in motion, pulled loose from their stars,
Leave you in silence.

— The End —