I set upon one moonless night

a reckless quest for inspiration.

I found it as I so often do

in the most unlikely of places.

"On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies"

A paper published over a century in our past

by an office clerk of no notoriety.

It rattled the foundations of our presumptions

and brought generations of giants

down to their knees, and back to their drawing boards.

While the mathematics appear complex,

it's assertion is simple,

penned with incomparable elegance.

You all know of it, through the simple equation it birthed

E=MC²

Astonished and delighted

that the mathematics were not yet lost

from a youth spent pouring over such matters.

I drew inspiration here in a brand new way.

It set me on to evaluate my own Relativity.

To a newborn child,

I am as yet undefined

as the whole of existence

is from that perspective

unspoiled.

To my sixteen year old son,

I am a cartographer

displaying the lands as I have seen them

scrutinizing the topography

helping him select a path for his journey.

To a person of middle age,

I am a companion

wandering alongside

as we attempt to regain sight

of the paths given to us by our fathers.

To an elder,

I am but a toddler

taking my first steps

not upon the ground

but into the realm of wisdom.

To the earth,

I am an annoyance

I consume without recompense

I leave wounds that do not heal

I am a mosquito it has thankfully chosen not yet to swat

To the cosmos,

I am infinitesimally small

a fragment of a splinter

of a fraction of an instant

in an utterly incomprehensible expanse of space and time.

To God,

I dare not say

for to presume to know the mind

of an almighty

is true folly indeed.

I set out on a quest for inspiration

instead I found an immutable truth.

I am relative to all things

and clutching to that truth

I carry on.