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“Of all the gin joints in all the world, you have to walk into this one.”
A billion cold rocks, scarred and pitted,
Hurtle through space. Given the odds,
Aren’t we lucky, so unfathomably, incomprehensibly lucky,
Just to be alive.
A stray beam of light careens from one of these rocks.
Hits something. Bounces to something else
In a thing called my eye.
Behold—a magnolia in full bloom—
hanging like an apparition above the San Francisco Bay—
a lotus field from a Buddhist paradise.
How can I say I am not lucky? When a billion years of intergalactic
accidents have conspired to bring me this gift.
Indecision. Right? Left? Right? Left? I walk through a door
and there is the love of my life.
How lucky, how unfathomably, uncharacteristically lucky, that I just
didn’t blow it.
Her face reddens and strains. She screams. Another minute surely she
shall die. Or I will. Then the baby’s head emerges, tiny tired perfection,
weary as an old man, radiant as an angel.
How can I say that I’m not lucky? Just to be alive.
A doctor walks in. She need say nothing. The answer is etched in her eyes.
Those shadows on your liver are cancer, metastatic cancer.
But how can I say that I’m not lucky?
Just to be alive.
Like you.