Lucky

Today I add ten drops of essential Happiness
—an oil with concentrates derived from ylang-
    ylang and the bitter orange tree— to a flask 

of reed diffuser sticks in water. We are 
halfway through the month, soon halfway 
    through another year, and I know the old

longings that wash over me all over again: 
for rest and love, the kind rubbed deep into 
     the bones of the body; for words 

I can strike together for visible light.  I'm told 
I should regard my existence as nothing
     short of a miracle—here, today, at my desk 

by a window overlooking the boulevard.
I'm in the same building where last night, 
     in a class on literary form, flashing alarms 

warned us to stay in place until the all 
clear sounded, after a shooting at the student 
      center. There are scientists who have 

supposedly managed to calculate 
the number of probable times a human being 
     with specific traits and gene makeup could be 

born (1 in 400 trillion), instead of becoming 
just another anonymous, missed connection; 
      a serif, a trace disappearing in the thick

alphabet soup of time. Or imagine millions 
and millions of tiny spiders slinging their ropes 
      and carabiners, descending through an opening 

in the trees—You might feel only a movement 
slighter than a hair on your arm; but what chance 
     one of them lands on the cheek of someone 

who'll experience a massive allergic 
reaction from contact with an arachnid, then  
      die before anyone can figure out why?

Hong Kong, 1988: hundreds of women 
near full term begged their doctors to induce 
     labor, so their babies could be born on the 8th 

day of the 8th month of that most auspicious year, 
according to fortune tellers— which goes to show
     we put as much store in chance and magic 

as we do in science and numbers. Go ahead,
play those five combinations in the lottery.  
      Join another contest. Crack the fortune

cookie open and read what the future
has already brought: Destiny awaits!
       but first, you must nap or snack.