Absolute zero
Cold slithers down
from the far side of 60 degrees, latitude.
When it’s that cold,
when tears turn into salt hailstones
when spit ricochets,
the scale doesn’t matter.
But even a polar vortex
retains measurable warmth.
Heat itself ceases
at absolute zero —
on the Kelvin scale, minus 273.15 Celsius —
a temperature beyond which
there is no beyond.
Do other things also have
an absolute zero?
A mile underground in a mine, zero light —
absolute darkness, impenetrable
as the hard rock overhead.
In the outerness of space, zero sound.
With no atoms
to bounce vibration along — absolute silence.
And if time and space both
began at the Big Bang
then there can be no before, before.
And no where
beyond there.
All beginnings must be absolute.
Before I was, I was not.
I couldn’t be.
Nothing can convince me
that some pre-existing immortal soul knew
which wriggling sperm, out of millions
frantic for my mother’s uterus,
would first reach a random ovum
to make a me
who had always been there.
No, firsts must be 1st.
Or else they’d be 2nd.
Or nth.
Before a beginning, there must be nothing.
Absolute zero.
But endings will always be ambiguous.