What is the Universe?

What is this universe?
We know it’s a place full of stuff,
but what kind of stuff?
We heard about the Creators,
those ancient ones, or Ancient One
who made this universe
from nothing, it is said. But really?
What kind of “nothing” would that be?

As below, so above, I’ve been told
and here’s a place just stuffed with stuff,
all kinds of stuff –– marvelous stuff, smelly stuff,
scary stuff, twisted stuff, recyclable stuff
and stuff that just burns or evaporates
or gets stuffed in black holes…
to re-appear somewhere else as different stuff:
yes, stuff, lots of stuff made of stuff.
But how did all that stuff really get here?

Pretty simple, says my friend:
there’s a place (or places if you will)
out there, way beyond this universe ––
full of people -- yeah, people, he says,
who like us, just love stuff.
So they make it, have it made, buy it;
they play with it, use it, consume it
and when they’re done with it
they dump it –– of course, what else?

And where does all that garbage go,
that stuff they no longer need or want?
To their garbage dump, of course, where else?

Just like on Earth, only more impressive
(from a human perspective, that is)
than our garbage dumps, is theirs’
and just because we grew out of it,
(let’s just say we’re a kind of bacteria)
we think it’s a wonderful thing,
that garbage dump of the “creators”
‘Cause it’s our home after all --
so we give it a superlative name:
Universe! Of course –– what else?
And speaking of black holes, he adds,
they’re just their equivalent of “Glad” garbage bags:
you see, when hot stuff hits the bottom
it melts open and everything sloshes out...

You need to be a bit more observant.
He said laughing and shaking his head
not as if he’d told me a universal joke
but as if I was a bit slow in “getting it”.

Now it’s my turn to laugh --
the amazing simplicity of it all!

Sharran WindWalker

Archived 02/05/2010