Siccar

We find no vestige of a beginning,

No prospect of an end, Hutton observed

A few lifetimes ago. But people search,

Not only for what they might find, but more

For what their human existences teach

And encourage them to expect. An end

At some horizon, and a beginning

At the other end, time like a hammock

Hung between trunks of birth and death for life,

As human lives appear so simply tied,

A neat summation, a replication

Of the vertebrate body plan in time,

A fore and aft with entrance and exit.

Every person is a god creating

A cosmos in a bodily image,

One span, or perhaps a cycle of spans,

Tied off neatly, segmented as insects,

Still with a fore and aft, but many ends.

It’s the simple honesty of Hutton

Stating the fact of his observation

That’s still stunning, a reminder even

To those speculative cosmologists

Convinced that if one winds the math far back

Enough, where the math end’s the beginning,

While larger-than-expected galaxies

Keep photobombing distant scenes. We find

No vestige of a beginning. The end.