Nothing Makes Sense
A trillion stars glistening like white salt crystals on black velvet;
The Milky Way a band of circling smoke;
A mind to witness the majestic impossibility;
A mind to ponder all possibility;
A sea of questions to founder in;
Answers like driftwood to cling to;
Facts that are a mirage in a desert of emptiness;
Delight in the wonder and the awe.
Sitting on a warm rock with feet dangling in space,
Staring out to sea as the very last hues of the day’s sun fade on the horizon,
What does it matter?
Suspended here between the breath-taking imponderables of macrocosm and microcosm,
Both of whose mysteries lie beyond our comprehension,
Incompatible in their weirdness,
We bask in the glory of our reality
And breathe its beauty.
Yet still we dare to fathom the reality of quarks, quasars and black holes –
As if any of it mattered.
We dare to stretch back through time to the beginning –
Enshrouded in mystery, like Merlin in his mist, we seek to understand.
With senses limited, experience restricted and minds constrained,
Nothing marries, nothing cleaves and nothing makes sense.
All that’s left is to enjoy the moment of being
And cherish our existence
And cling to the warmth of the rock for as long as we are able.
9.8.2017
I like this poem, Opher. It puts the wonder we feel and the unanswered questions that we have into a good perspective. It is more important to appreciate and luxuriate in the wonder than to understand it.
That’s what I think too, John. There is something awe-inspiring about the mystery and vastness of it.
There is. I wonder if we’d lose some of that wonder if we were given all the answers.
Probably. It is that spectacular vastness that astounds me. I remember the day I first really grappled with the idea of infinity while lying in a meadow looking up at the sky. I felt as if I was falling up into it.