Two Pieces
William Doreski
Asking the Big Questions
The iridescent days bowl past,
tracing the space-time continuum
to its origin beyond the stars.
We ask the big questions: why
is there something rather than nothing,
who invented gods and why,
who inhabits other galaxies
and do they know that we exist?
You weed the garden so carefully
the bare earth you expose shivers
in the early gusts of autumn.
I read books no one else reads
unless scholarship requires them.
Together we count for nothing
in the rush of daily errands. Kids
bubble off to school, lawyers
nod over difficult cases,
masons build walls of local stone.
The big questions linger with hands
thrust deep into pockets, hats
perched on balding heads, beards
poorly trimmed in the mirror
this morning while crows stammered
and dogs barked, eager for breakfast.
We ask, but not even silence responds,
the wording of those questions
angled to blind themselves with sun.
Horsehead Nebula
The gaps between stars expand
in all directions at once.
You claim the night sky is only
black paper punched with holes.
Someone holds a flashlight behind it
to scare us with eternal visions.
Who would practice such deceit?
You picture a droopy old man
placing his dentures in a glass
of water, his marble eyes rolling.
He wields his flashlight until the sun
his favorite pet, rolls out of bed,
wagging its short but ferocious tail.
Nothing godly about this fellow.
You laugh at religious people
and also at the astronomers
who have fallen for this flimsy ruse.
But you can’t explain the photos
of nebulas and distant galaxies
from deep-space telescopes soaring
through dimensions we can’t embrace.
And when you gaze at an image
of the horsehead nebula you cringe
like the rest of us, starstruck
by this expression of the dark.
William’s favorite constellation is Capricorn, and he has seven cats. He’s been published in many forgettable venues. Nobody cares.