<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div><span></span></div><div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><p style="line-height: 25.5px;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><strong>Singularity</strong><br><br></span></p><p style="line-height: 25.5px;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> <em>(after Stephen Hawking)</em></span></p><p style="line-height: 25.5px;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Do you sometimes want to wake up to the singularity<br>we once were?</span></p><p style="line-height: 25.5px;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">so compact nobody<br>needed a bed, or food or money — </span></p><p style="line-height: 25.5px;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">nobody hiding in the school bathroom<br>or home alone</span></p><p style="line-height: 25.5px;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">pulling open the drawer<br>where the pills are kept.</span></p><p style="line-height: 25.5px;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><em>For every atom belonging to me as good<br>Belongs to you.</em> Remember?</span></p><p style="line-height: 25.5px;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">There was no <em>Nature</em>. No<br> <em>them</em>. No tests</span></p><p style="line-height: 25.5px;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">to determine if the elephant<br>grieves her calf or if </span></p><p style="line-height: 25.5px;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">the coral reef feels pain. Trashed<br>oceans don’t speak English or Farsi or French;</span></p><p style="line-height: 25.5px;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">would that we could wake up to what we were<br>— when we <em>were</em> ocean and before that </span></p><p style="line-height: 25.5px;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">to when sky was earth, and animal was energy, and rock was<br>liquid and stars were space and space was not</span></p><p style="line-height: 25.5px;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">at all — nothing</span></p><p style="line-height: 25.5px;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">before we came to believe humans were so important<br>before this awful loneliness.</span></p><p style="line-height: 25.5px;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Can molecules recall it?<br>what once was? before anything happened?</span></p><p style="line-height: 25.5px;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">No I, no We, no one. No was<br>No verb no noun<br>only a tiny tiny dot brimming with </span></p><p style="line-height: 25.5px;"><em style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">is is is is is</em></p><p style="line-height: 25.5px;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">All everything home</span></p><p style="line-height: 25.5px;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> - Marie Howe</span></p><br><div id="AppleMailSignature"><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div>"Be joyful though you have considered all the facts."<div> - Wendell Berry</div></div></div></body></html>