the moment

the needle looms forward, its arched poise splitting the vast indistinct space. motionless, it awaits the culmination of its existence - when it bursts forth a spew of light and turns dark the next, never to be relived again and lost in the incomprehensibility that surrounds it. eye burning bright. how yearned and unfulfilling is the light. fleeting and periodic. the soreness of repetition is lost in the inconsequence of the minute moment. but when does one needle stop and the other begin. when did the first one start and when does the last one end. individually detached from memory, collectively forming it, living it and losing it. rows and rows of them. do they already know their fate. if so, why wait then, why not burn at once, rise and fall in a single cadence, together burn and forever be extinguished. does not the last one already realize he is the last, and the one before him that he is the one before the last? does that not signify to them their fate? but unconscious, are they not, for the most part at least. lost to memory and spurned by consciousness, their souless eyes never blink - not before its tryst with time, not in its radiance, not even after the passage of the moment.