NOLO SEGUNDO

NOLO SEGUNDO Poems

NOLO SEGUNDO Biography

'Nolo Segundo' is the pen name of L.J. Carber,73, a retired teacher. He only began submitting his poems at 70 but has since been published online/in print in 32 literary magazines and anthologies in the US, UK, Canada, Romania, and India; and in late 2020 a trade publisher brought out a collection of his poems titled 'The Enormity of Existence' [ISBN: 978-93-90202-98-0]. The title came from the realization he has had for 50 years since having in 1971 what came to be called an NDE [near-death experience] whilst almost drowning in a Vermont river: that he has a consciousness that predates birth (conception, really) and survives death. He went from being a young man who saw only matter as real, death as absolute, and--logically--therefore life as meaningless to understanding that our sentient lives are so replete with meaning that even the best of us can only understand 'bits and pieces' of it.)

The Best Poem Of NOLO SEGUNDO

The Eternal Moment

As a child I thought of eternity as endless,
days and months and years and centuries,
then millennia and billions and trillions
of boring, boring years-- what would I do
with all the time in the Universe...?

But as an old man I know time is a big liar,
itself unreal, an illusion born of sweat, fear,
the loneliness of spirit in a material world.

I see now eternity is always here, next to us,
within us, the moment none can grasp nor
measure nor repeat, the endless moment,
that indistinguishable point between past
and future, between what was, what will be--
the soul's singularity, its alpha and omega.

And all our fears of extinction
are like wasted breath,
for we are real and time
is not...
WE are the eternal moments.

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