GAS Featured Poet: William Doreski

William Doreski lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire. He has taught at several colleges and universities. His most recent book of poetry is Cloud Mountain (2024).  He has published three critical studies, including Robert Lowell’s Shifting Colors.  His essays, poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in various journals.

Astronomically 

 

Space contains us, but what space

contains space? Galaxies flirt

with our sense of great distance.

Whirling pools of silvery rage,

they tease us through telescopes,

 

daring us to imagine the void

into which the universe expands.

Hard to believe it began

as particles crushed together,

plotting to fill every corner

 

of the solid, absolute ether.

Dark matter whispers secrets

huge radio dishes strain to hear.

We try to place ourselves close

to the core of everything known,

 

but science puts us near an edge,

far from the primal explosion site.

You believe an entity did this,

but we are the entity, the mind

projecting brain waves further

 

than the laws of physics allow.

The night sky winks at us

but doesn’t see us winking back,

its absolute energy dispersing

more rapidly than we can think.

 

 

Forsaken For Good

 

The ruined church still mutters

blasphemous but heartfelt prayers.

These rise in gusts of oily smoke

but can’t penetrate the atmosphere

 

to reach the outer galaxies.

I’m afraid to enter that shell

of fallen plaster and broken glass.

The congregation abandoned it

 

when the organ exploded halfway

through everyone’s favorite hymn.

Brass shrapnel killed the organist,

the priest, and two communicants.

 

Their ghosts still pray for healing  

but no palpable entity hears.

If I entered and walked boldly

down the rubble-strewn main aisle 

 

the ghosts would probably hide

from my heavy atheist step.

But what if they appeared in raw

daylight and confronted me?

 

Someone said it’s impossible

to see a ghost and live. I fear

that I’d explode like the organ,

scattering bits of bone and flesh.

 

Better stand outside in the snow

and listen to garbled prayers

that might be the titter of mice

rummaging through the wreckage.