The universe is strange:
mathematical, moving, evolving,
time and space entangled,
expanding and diminishing,
but imbued with mystery,
knowable and unknowable,
just out of our grasp,
resisting vain (and vein) attempts
to finalise meaning,
and connected across vastness and closeness.

And we are strange:
sitting in the middle somewhere and nowhere
on a planet significant and insignificant,
grappling as ever with scale and place,
god and the void,
what will be and what has already come,
a synapse in the cosmos
caught up in petty concerns,
like what shall we have for dinner,
in a present that is no present,
but then sitting, grappling, wondering,
in a single, fleeting, fragile thought,
as all humans have ever done,
about where we fit,
comfortable and uncomfortably present
in this grand order,
surrounded by the falseness of starlight,
as we fly in vastness at speed incomprehensible,
and yet we hardly notice.

 

8/2/2026