random as sequences of light winking 
on water; arbitrary as a cell mutating 
to deadly in someone while another cell 
divides again and again within a woman 
who’s waited years for a child. It’s possible 
the same instant we met, a female lion 
brought down a wildebeest and tore 
at its throat and someone in Nova Scotia 
opened a notecard saying only
I was wrong, so wrong. Please come,
and a man alone on a pier caught his first 
supper in two days; that a million events 
chained together that evening in September 
we said hello to the rest of our lives.