Space-Time

It's when two things coincide, he wrote,

at the same place at the same time. 

Then he said a whole lot of stuff

on the time it takes for information

to pass between different places,

and how the speed of time

depends how fast you move,

and that once upon a time, time

was only local, but earth is small

so it turns out time is universal –

now that we've developed the right

measuring instruments to prove

what any child could tell us....

Or something like that.

He lost me round about the time

he said that Meet me on the corner

at 3 is a space-time coordinate ... or 

was it before that, when he mentioned

(casually, as if it was fact)

that time only flows in one direction?

Once again I decide

to skip physics and stick to magic –

really, so much easier and clearer.

However, he did give one demonstration.

In the middle of the page, I could tell,

he'd meant to post a picture.

Something must have gone very wrong

with those coordinates. There was no image,

only a whole lot of space – 

at least at the present time.

(I'm watching now 

to see him back-track, 

and fix it.)

For Day 5 of April Poetry Month, Bjorn at 'imaginary garden with real toads invites us to consider Space-Time and the special theory of relativity. Alas, I'm no Einstein.