Open Letter to the Fates
Sorry to bother you again, ladies, but it’s not like
the three of you have much to do besides
spin, measure and cut. As for me, I was
wondering, do you work with eyes open
or shut? It’s that old question of determinism
versus free will that we undergrads argued
in Philosophy 101, where I never spoke
to the girl sitting across from me, the one
with dark brown hair who kept tapping her foot
somewhat disapprovingly whenever the professor
brought up Melville, citing Ahab as the proponent
of “fixed fate,” since after all he knew he would
die in pursuit of the White Whale, just not when
and precisely how. She was right, I suppose,
since that really belonged in Am Lit 240 and
had a prerequisite; but more to the point, what
if I had spoken to her, maybe hinted that I agreed
regarding Melville (or at least Melville in that context),
what then? Might we have dated, but then
quarreled and I took up with her roommate
(a redhead majoring in sociology); parted ways
with her also but only after she convinced me
to take my poetry seriously so I moved to Vermont,
alone, to study for my MFA? Ladies, would that have
been the plan all along, or was each innocent move
a domino and no one knew how each would fall?
When we look back like pundits or analysts
all the precursors line up like little soldiers
marching to a conclusion we think we
always knew was there; what I want to know,
sisters, is could they have marched blindfolded
and ended up at the same place? Could I?
If so, someone is putting us all through a lot
for nothing and Ishmael could just as well
have gone on a river cruise as the Pequod
while I turned a corner and bumped into
the woman who would become my wife,
who decided on two kids who grew up
and went off and – well, you tell me, then:
was that life mine, or as the captain roared,
“rehearsed…a billion years before the ocean rolled”?
______________
Philip Kirsch