Moments and Points: A Primer
by James B. Nicola

A point does not exist. Remember math?

A dot we make with pen or pencil does,

and represents a point, and we may call

it point, but points in truth have no dimension,

no size, only location. They’re ideas.

Ideas of locations. You recall?

Still, all the points in space, which don’t exist

in space, when put together, make up space.

For, after a certain point, there’s nowhere

in space you can be except at some point.

If there’s a universe, if space exists,

it is the aggregate of what does not

exist except as Someone’s germ of thought.

The same applies to time. We say a moment

to mean some seconds, minutes, or an hour,

but actually a moment in time

lasts no time at all. Though we have to live,

and can live only in the moment, now,

no sooner does the present moment come

than poof it’s in the past. Like points in space,

moments of now do not exist—or may

not. But we need them to become: to be.

When I was a math major, the above

sufficed as proof of God, at least to me.

Today, it’s a poor proof, but helps explain

the moment, back when there was only night

and nothing, how there suddenly was light—

then you and me, which, I am certain, is

the point.

James B. Nicola is the author of eight collections of poetry, the latest three being Fires of Heaven: Poems of Faith and Sense, Turns & Twists, and Natural Tendencies. His nonfiction book Playing the Audience: The Practical Actor’s Guide to Live Performance won a Choice magazine award. A graduate of Yale and returning contributor to Cool Beans Lit, he has received a Dana Literary Award, two Willow Review awards, Storyteller's People's Choice award, one Best of the Net, one Rhysling, and eleven Pushcart nominations—for which he feels stunned and grateful.