A poem.

I was flipping through one of my old notebooks—as you do in the wee hours of the morning—and found a poem I wrote in 2021. The poem was written for an assignment in my science and spirituality course, a class I remember fondly as a transformative experience for my soul and perspective on life.

Infinity is a weird and fascinating notion. As a kid I would lie awake at night flying through space, searching for the edge of the universe—a steel-plated sphere as I imagined it. But, I could always break my brain by realizing that there could be something on the other side of the steel. That was the little visual proof I had for myself, that the universe must be infinite because if we found an edge, there must be another side to that edge.

Same goes in the other direction. If you can imagine a grain of sand, then you can imagine the molecules that make up that sand, and the atoms that make up those molecules, and the quarks that make up those atoms, and on and on and on. This is where the idea of my poem comes from—we are truly, by accident, evolution, or design, caught between two incomprehensible infinities, and forced to reconcile an existence at the mercy of scales we can just barely imagine.

So, here it is, with a few edits and additions from its original draft in my notebook:

Here I stand
Ever small
Ever large
Caught between two incomprehensible infinities

A grain of sand in my palm
A planet against my feet
These are the things that mark the bookends to my touchable scale

A hair brought up to the light
A distant galaxy just a few cone cells wide
These are the things that exist on the boundaries of my seeable scale

The drop of a pin
The clap of thunder
These are the things that resonate against the extremes of my hearable scale

The quarks of an atom
The pillows of a nebula
These are the things that stand on the walls of my feeble mind—my feelable scale

This very moment
My life up until now
These are the things that stitch the seams of my time scale

I zoom in further and further
Physical, cellular, molecular, atomic, sub-atomic, quantum
Each stranger, abstracter, fuzzier

I zoom out farther and farther
Geographical, continental, planetary, solar, galactical, universal
Each grander, darker, emptier

I am not caught between
I am of and by these infinities
For the actualization of my flesh and mind are centered on an unending scale
Forever orbiting the incomprehensible

What if the small is really big?
What is the big is really small?
Then what are we?
Small by what criteria?
Big by what standard?

Definitely certain of our reality
Infinitely uncertain of certainty

I give myself to the limitless and unbound
And ask of the infinities a dance