what I thought when I heard that the world was supposed to end when they turned on the new proton accelerator yesterday

The world as I know it
ended yesterday
and the day before
and the day before.
I am a reconstituted,
reincarnated, re-oxygenated
lump of carbon and water,
and some kind of godlike cellular goo
with the power of recollection.
Every cell, or sub-atomic something,
blindly remembers yesterday
and the day before
and the day before
until I am fooled into thinking
that I am altogether
more solid and lasting
than a gnat or a bloom or a bird.
That I am something
more worthwhile
than whatever I have the power
to kill and eat.
That I am something
so important
that it is right that I
build monuments to myself
on the very heads
of blades of prairie grass,
each of which,
as the Talmud says,
has its angel.
That I am something
so wise and all-knowing
that the days themselves--
today, yesterday,
and the day before
and the day before
--are measured in hours
of my own invention,
marking beginnings and endings
that are neither.