"Patches of Non-Existence"

Are we here as a way
for the universe to know itself,
or does it already know and
we are just an incidental
evolvement on a blue rock
on the outskirts of a run of the mill
galaxy, in a humdrum part of the
cosmos, or does any of it matter
at all, when there's no answer to
why is there anything, why not nothing?
Maybe it is the matrix, an odd
form of Maya, where all is an
illusion and we're only concerned
with living forever, becoming the
very deities that we worship, or
are we just a simple organism
become too aware of itself
unable to imagine the heavens
without us to recognize it and
we're just fooling ourselves into
thinking we are more important
than seventy or so years of light
in between two dark and infinite
patches of non-existence.

J. B. Hogan is a poet, fiction writer, and local historian. He has been published in a number of journals including the Blue Lake Review, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Well Read Magazine, and Aphelion. His twelve books include Bar Harbor, Losing Cotton, and Somebody Ought to Be Crying (humor/memoir). He was recently selected as the 2025 inductee into the Arkansas Writers Hall of Fame. He lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

Find more by J. B. Hogan in the Author Index.