And if you lost the composition
Of a minute, an hour, a day, a week,
Of an entire year or a lifetime,

What could you do to begin again
Other than to begin again?
The future holds nothing—no change

Waits, lurking, for its assigned time
To happen. Change is as it’s happened,
Happening, and should be so by definition.

The most trivial detail shows more details,
Blossoms with them, and they with more,
The more closely examined. Lines also.

But what was lost altogether was neither
Energy (conserved), nor mass (conserved),
Nor even information (claimed conserved).

It was the meaning of the thing, the thing
That was meaning itself, was itself meaning.
Meaning can join and leave existence.

Only meaning gives itself and vanishes,
And was never out there and will never be
Again. Funny little jot of nothing. Meaning.

We think it is discovered in the details,
As a child thinks the coin was discovered
By the magician, behind the child’s own ear.

Information’s discovered. Meaning must be
Made. And if it goes away, it goes, never
To return ever again, much less the same.

And that is what we mean when we name
Loss and ruin. New things keep happening,
New changes, new balances exchanged.

But the meaning made and erased remains
Erased. Only other meanings, related or not
But never the same, can take its place.

Meaning is the only actual magic, then,
Which is exactly what the term magic
Means. Out of nothing, like no other thing.