Sunday, March 27, 2022

Layouts for Single-Event Genres

Meant to happen or bound to?
Meant suggests a narrative
Or a set of narratives,

Within (each of) which, fate is
Genuinely preordained,
Down to each single event.

Bound-to-happen’s sloppier,
Cumulative, gathering
To a certainty only

Haphazardly. It’s earthquakes,
Death, and sheer desperation
In the aggregate, who knows

If it’ll happen today.
But bound-to-happen’s also
Events so bound they don’t count,

Hardly ever have meaning
Ascribed to them. The sun sets.
Well, surely. Bound to happen.

Would only be exciting
If something went wrong with it,
Likely your last excitement.

But was it meant to happen?
If you can believe meaning
And a fateful storyline

Inhere in your daily deeds,
The dawn today must have been
Meant to happen. Why is it

Then that the surest things seem
Not particularly meant?
Chance happens in fate’s background.

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