Great Idea by Kat Magendie

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. - Carl Sagan

The sky is a perfect clear blue. Overhead, a big fat crow caws. I tip back my head, stare at him; he stares at me. My dogs lift their heads. We stand, animals listening, living, being. We are great ideas.

Long ago and far away, a tiny atom Exploded—Big Bang—and hurled matter out and beyond. Some of that matter became our galaxy. Not an infinite universe? But an infinite idea. Dark Matter surrounds invisibly, yet one can see the dark. No energy, but mass. Could right now dark matter hover near, over, above, through us? Would we feel it? Know it? Sense it? The universe’s density: ratio of visible light to mass. Density mass is low—much of matter in universe is dark. The universe: with a beginning, a middle, an end—just like any story, just like any living being. The universe—a great idea.

I feel my feet upon the ground. The ground is real. I am real. My dogs are real. I breathe in the air. I let out the air. The sun touches the top of my head, heats it. There is a bird’s nest, abandoned, in the Poplar tree. On the ground, a dead worm, and underneath my foot, live ones I cannot see, but I know are there. A chipmunk scurries. Great ideas.

In my imagination, I fly. I look down upon the cities with their lights on and their lights off. I see the sleepless man toss his sheets into knots. I see the woman who cried herself to sleep. I see the little boy sleeping peacefully with his teddy bear under his arm. I see the teenage girl reading a book she loved as a child. I see the wolf howl. I see the other side of daylight. Dark matter surrounds. Dark Energy pulls. I accept this. I accept the ways of life and of death. I had a beginning. I have middle. I will have an end…then a beginning and a middle and an end, and then round and round, outward and outward, faster and faster, until all is torn apart, until I am nothing but atoms swirling in a madness of other atoms. What an idea.

The mysteries surround me. I accept them. I am grateful for the idea. We are all a great idea.