by Leon Fedolfi

I cannot see my ancestors in the mirror, though I imagine I do.

Others argue we are within a simulation. Which would posit whatever rules

in our programming trick us into consciousness originate

from alien Tina’s basement. Turtles all the way down.

 

A trick of entropy, that is what I say. Disorder running with time,

occasionally back rippling into brief structures of order.

 

The briefest being the smallest inversion of time, conscious us.

 

That is why planets last so much longer than birds or humans.

Why large-scale ripples like neutron stars beacon for billions of years.

And why this typing — right now — will cease to exist now.

Frame dragged, somewhere on the skin

of the trunk of an elephant

the size of our universe.