Poem: In Reality'

"According to astronomersthe universe is 14 billion years old,a fact that makes the long scroll of my life its fine brushstrokes of autumn leaves, incliningover a mountain pool; the quick,inscrutable characters that saysomething wise & eternal but look to me like long-legged insects so infinitesimally shortthat, in reality, I cannot be said to have lived at all;"

"not to mention this day,starting as usual with coffee & a glanceat the shocking headlines, with their promise of a dire year ahead, which cosmologically speaking,is less than a mole on the cheek of the smallestunnamed particle skating in an atom of oxygen exhaled from a single breath of Time; much less the hour I've satpondering this strangeness, while the earthstill a pudgy adolescent in quantum terms turned a little on its axis"

The universe spans roughly 14 billion years, rendering individual human lives cosmically minute. Personal life is compared to fine brushstrokes of autumn leaves and to inscrutable, fleeting figures like long‑legged insects. Contemporary headlines and predictions appear trivial when measured against atom‑scale processes and cosmic time. A quiet morning — coffee, an orange on a saucer, sunlight that took eight minutes to arrive — anchors present experience amid vast timescales. A subscription appeal urges support for science journalism and Scientific American, noting 180 years of advocacy and the need for subscriptions to sustain reporting and protect research and laboratories.

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