Tiny Points of Light - Jan 27 2026

 

Tiny Points of Light

Jan 27 2026

I stir the embers

and the fire come alive,

resurrected

as tiny points of light

amidst the cinders, slag, and soot.

Add oxygen, and fuel will burn.

It’s in the nature of wood

to consume itself,

all the way down to grey-black ash

inert as regolith.

Matter to the simplest state

reduced to its elements. 

Just as all things 

eventually dwindle, wither, ebb.

As orbits decay

and water seeks its level.

As ambition turns complacent

and morality is compromised,

lust wanes

and we resign ourselves to settling.

But even as the residue cools

the room has warmed

and light persists,

radiating out into the void

at a million metres a second

as far as it can go.

Thinning out, but conserved;

because frugal nature doesn’t waste.

So what becomes of me, in the fullness of time?

The fire of cremation?

The slow burn

in earth’s living soil?

Decomposition 

and the cycle of rebirth?

And my light?

They say that photons are born and die

in the same exact instant;

that time

doesn’t exist for them.

So both the fullness of time

and none at all.

I stir the embers

and some tiny points of light

shows there’s still life left.

Light that briefly flares

steadily wanes

and soon expires.

Because even the fiercest fire

goes cold and dark;

nothing is forever,

and no amount of stirring

can counter entropy

and rescue it from death.

Interesting what can come from simply stirring the remains of a fire.

For someone who had only a cursory understanding of physics, and who finds that a lot it hurts his head to even consider, why does it appear so often in my poetry?

Perhaps because physics and poetry are both mysterious:  the existence of counter-intuitive worlds on immeasurably small and large scales, and the mystery of how poetry gets written. From where does that voice in my head whose words I dutifully transcribe come? And in both, things are often not what they appear: the hidden worlds of physics that seem to contradict our everyday one; and the ambiguity of poetry, which can mean different things to different people. Yet while they both may appear lawless, they have their rules and constraints.

On the other hand, science is iterative, collective, and subject to correction. While poetry is one-off, individualistic, and neither right nor wrong. You’re free to break its laws and the universe won’t explode!