98. Puzzle [100 poems challenge]

98.          Puzzle

The universe—
Wonderful, strange and mysterious—
Hiding its secrets
Quirky and serious;
Answers come slowly
For questions perplexing;
But one puzzle lingers,
Perpetually vexing—
Enigma, a cipher,
That no one can master:
How come, as we age,
Do weeks pass ever faster?

2 August 2013

Comments: This was the second last poem to be written, and I hadn’t had any inspiration for an angle for the 14 weeks I’ve had this list (not that I was paying much attention to the end for the first couple of months). I brainstormed puzzles in an attempt to find something I could work with: the Rubik’s cube, maths problems, and mystery novels (which I rarely read, although I had just observed the work of an online community pretty much solving the date and location of Randall Munroe’s xkcd comic #1190, which was set 11000 years in the future in a world where the Mediterranean had dried up), and then I thought about all the scientific problems that had been solved as theories have been tested and extended. But then I realised there was an even greater mystery that is, as yet, unsolved …

Themes to come: 99. Solitude; 100. Relaxation

Explanation about the 100 poems challenge here.