For Jeff Moffat

A metaphysicist met a physicist
Staring up at the sky.
Said the former to the latter,
I often wonder why
The heavens are so filled with stuff,
With galaxies and stars,
Rather than being empty
As the deserts found on Mars.
But then, I guess, there’s lots of nothing
There but empty space,
Light years of absence and entropy,
In which time will be erased.

The physicist smiled and shook his head,
And looked up at the moon.
There’s no such thing as nothing, he said,
Such talk is trop jejeune.
That black you see between the stars
That you call emptiness
Is full of energy and atoms
And things we’ve yet to guess.
There are more dimensions than are dreamt
In your  philosophy –
Or in my science, for that matter.
Come and sit in awe with me.

They sat a while, and neither spoke,
And the moon sank out of sight,
And the sun rose up behind them
And the hills were bathed in light.

© Mark Milner, Vancouver