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