“There’s no such thing as free will…But we’re better off believing in it anyway.” – Stephen Cave, The Atlantic

Thirty-four years after a family friend
proclaimed me, still in diapers, a poet,
I wonder what would have happened
had she prophesied me an athlete or
doctor—Would I be making the rounds,
perhaps, or nursing a sprained ankle?

Instead, I work on my poetry, tending to
all the wounds that pile up over time:
regrets, mistakes, paths not taken. Oh,
what does it matter, in the end? I breathe
in the air that happens to make it through
my screen door and imagine what the

particles contain—mist from Katmandu,
Dead Sea salt, dust of meteors, blood of
martyrs, stale exhalations of political
prisoners, spark of life that forges coins
and islands and poets. Did our friend
light the match? How did she find such

power? If I try hard enough, what chain
reaction might I unleash? Closing my eyes,
I disintegrate in the atomic froth that everywhere
abounds, the universe a vibrating string and me
a ripple among ripples…What do I care how I
chanced upon this particular patch of sunshine?