Monday, February 1, 2016

will? grace? luck?




the rightness which calls to us

fate. . . ?
will . . . ?
whose will?
God’s,
one’s own?

as my thoughts spiral in the vortex
that assaults us every day,
I keep being drawn to the enigma of grace,
that sense of beneficent power 
with which we can hope to align ourselves,
more like a divine suggestion,
subject to the random and the glitch,
than a great determiner,

there is so much random in the world
that it makes no sense to imagine
that we can earn and deserve outcomes,
I work hard to do the right thing,
and thus increase my probabilities
to avoid the dissolution that bad choices reach toward:
I exercise and my aerobic conditioning helps me,
yet being out in the sun has given me skin cancer,
so far, annoying and quite manageable,
aerobics, however, can’t stop a drunken driver smashing me,

the only way I can understand my wife loving me 
is luck, I found her, and she me,
I found a job, a house, a career, that work for me, and for us,
just as I found parents and a place in the mountains,
both before I was born,

so my only answer for such goodness
is a potential rightness in the universe,
that, if we’re lucky,
with which we can align ourselves,
a grace of God that luck can help us find.

by Henry H. Walker
January 29, ‘16

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