We assembled a modest telescope,
To find what sights there were to see.
I stared, transfixed, at the moon and stars,
In the driveway with all of my family.
I know exactly where I stood,
The moment I would find,
The infinite nature of time and space,
And how it all unwinds.
I asked about the size of the moon,
The distance of its arcing track.
I asked about the space beyond,
The nothing in the black.
I asked my family how big it is.
I asked if anyone knows,
The moon, the stars, and all of it.
I asked how far it goes.
“My son, our curious little one…”,
My parents said to me,
“It has no end”, “It just keeps going”,
“Outward, eternally”.
I stared up into a southern sky,
Ominous, dark as the sea.
And I swear, at that moment,
Looking up,
Something departed from me.
It flew into the dark of space,
And hasn’t slowed in all this time,
As far and as fast as information can.
The speed of light, I hear…
Which is not so much a speed…
Hitched, perhaps, to the Voyager probe…
By these new thoughts inside of my head.
But I digress.
This thing began a journey that,
Must bring it face to face,
With everything that ever was,
Every corner of time and space.
Everything that is yet to come,
Everything that has ever been.
Repeating every history,
It’s trek would never end.
That thought has always stayed with me.
It anchors me, somehow.
A line cast from a sailing ship,
Where I stand upon the bow.
In the oblivion of the infinite,
It grounds me to the “now”.
I could have been eight or nine, but I do remember exactly where I was when this happened and it really was a mix of emotions to learn that the universe is probably _infinite_. I was both terrified and exhilarated; humbled and hugely empowered, all at once. I loved learning more about the cosmos and still feel the same rush to learn new stories from above.
33.60455° N, 83.97471° W
