Thomas Carlyle said
the present is the living sum total
of the whole past.

Now, when I look back
over the history
that is the sum total
of my life,
there are aspects
that are hard to
fathom.

There are black holes
where one might expect
to encounter
a white hole’s event horizon,
while other events
have apparently failed
to intersect
my preferred boundaries.

Arithmetic’s never been my strength
and I suspect that
at one stage or another
I may have
put a decimal point in
the wrong place.