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 1^st.

Or else they’d be 2^nd.

Or n^th.

Before a beginning, there must be nothing.

Absolute zero.

But endings will always be ambiguous.