I Heard

by Fred Aiken

the worst question I was ever taught

happened to be the quest for why,

while sitting on a rock

going a few hundred, maybe even a thousand,

miles per hour in a void that

constantly expands and moves in an unknowable direction,

pondering the great mystery of why,

while an effervescent string of scenarios

play out without my knowledge or approval,

not that it needed it, nor I it,

yet here I am, occupying a space like any other 

carbon meat sack generalizing the world 

so I can understand everything about some vacuum

or atomic structure composed out of a billion

strains of code randomized into a composition

meant for great things, 

so I hear