20/20 Solution

Coincidence is a convenient
excuse in lieu
of exactitude, like revenge,
directed.
Which explains the
all too common
aversion to poetry,
making many believe
in God,
or a guiding hand
like muse and magic,
where attributions are
misplaced in
disappearing ink and through alchemy.

Ultimately, it seems we see
what we want
based on capacity, like neck rotation,
like breath and lung,
blinking and humidity,
following instructions, under certain conditions
these operate smoothly
without our requisite participation-

Yet when an event occurs
unfathomable and unforeseen,
scaring one's vision deep into the optic
down to the spinal column,
making it more important
to look away,
than move
on
without directions
that is when we say
we knew it, we caused it, we planned it,
it was meant
for the best.


Painting by Aleksander Grodzicki [Public domain] 1893, via Wikimedia Commons. 

Like Life

Life is only understood in reverse order,
philosophically,
we trust the disasters and miracles
as necessary catastrophic shifts
and dramatic scene changes
the curtain drops
the Act is up.

When the world as we knew it
once hovered in equipoise-
disintegrated and crumbled before
our thin-soled shoes,
we thought of tides
and how they rip the earth
from undertow,
and leave us
to balance
less.

As chaos is to entropy,
we stand our ground despite the speed
of orbits and bullets
hoping to break the spell
of wait.

Pen and ink drawing by Henry Fuseli (1741-1845) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.