Michael Estabrook writes

Dentophobia

She’s always had

a fear of dentists

so today I take her

over for her root canal

supporting her the best

I can by sitting in the waiting room

fiddling with my iPhone

and trying to write

but too distracted by the dreadful drilling

and grinding noises emanating

from the torture devices

in the next room.

Fortunately the oral surgeon

is a woman so now I’m not pressured

to storm back there and beat the crap

out of the guy

for hurting my girl.

 [17th century statue]

 

 Saint Apollonia, Patron Saint of Dentistry -- Karen Rexrode

Michael Estabrook writes

From Nothing

Physicists, astrophysicists, geophysicists, astrobiologists,

astronomers, cosmologists . . . all of them

state it like it’s clear, obvious,

irrefutable – in the beginning

of the universe there was nothing, nothing at all,

no space, no time, no matter, no energy, only emptiness.

Then suddenly out of the darkness

out of nowhere for no reason

like someone flipping a switch

an infinitesimally small speck of something-or-other

appeared then immediately exploded

into the Big Bang BOOM!!!

And the universe – everything there is

or was or ever shall be –

spiral galaxies, dwarf stars, planets, comets, asteroids,

black holes, quasars, quarks, dark matter, neutrinos,

gravitons, photons, mesons, and the Higgs Boson –

was formed just like that, from nothing,

absolutely nothing.

Seriously?

The Big Bang Theory -- Dana Wodak