BOOM!

By Michael Estabrook

Documentary on theoretical physics
(giving me a headache) trying to explain
(to us laypersons) where The Big Bang came from.
How, in the very beginning
could the universe have gone from nothing
to everything – trillions of stars in billions of galaxies –
in one sudden momentous explosion! BOOM!

Esteemed physicists are explaining
that space is a vacuum
but contrary to popular understanding
(and data from our 5 senses)
nothing really isn’t nothing:
fluctuations in the vacuum of space
ripples in the nothingness if you will
produced sub-sub-atomic particles of matter
and antimatter (Yikes!)
which instantly paired off
wiping each other out. But after millions
of these tiny evaporations
(my head is spinning) a few of them
a few of the positive electron particles remained
(didn’t get wiped out) and then BOOM!
There it was the huge explosion
(the famous Big Bang) which ripped the invisible fabric
of the vacuum to shreds expanding in a mere
nao-nanosecond into billions of stars
in trillions of galaxies
(or maybe it was trillions of stars in billions of galaxies)
(I am so frikkin confused)

All this was neatly, carefully, logically, thoroughly
detailed by brilliant physicists from all over the world
and as I listened all about
the fundamental nature of Quantum Field Theory
Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle
the Dirac Equation
the Schrödinger Equation
and of course Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity
(the famous E=MC2 we have all come to know and love)
I began to realize that explaining how everything
can appear out of nothing is more believable
by simply saying – God did it.

Michael Estabrook small press poet since the 1980s striving always for greater clarity and concision rendering language more succinct and precise more accessible and appealing a Sisyphean adventure for sure. Retired now writing more and working more outside just noticed two Cooper’s hawks staked out in the yard or rather above it which explains the nerve-wracked chipmunks. The Poet’s Curse, A Miscellany is a recent collection (The Poetry Box, 2019).