Coincidence

At a lunch gathering, two friends tell
of how their parents knew each other 
from having played tennis doubles. 
They knew each other's parents back 
then, when they were children in 
ruffled socks and patent leather shoes. 
But as with most everything, that part 
of their lives veered off in other directions. 
Then one day, decades later, these two 
(now past middle age, walking the same 
college hallways), saw the faded sports 
logo on a tote or a sweatshirt and froze 
in the instant of recall: the thwack of balls 
bouncing on synthetic turf, sycamore trees 
at the edge of the courts, screams of children 
at a nearby park. We call it chance, but what if 
coincidence is merely the long garment of time 
revealing a secret pocket? What if a ball lobbed 
one long morning ago into the air has been traveling
toward this moment, before falling into the open
hand of recognition? In the Poetics, Aristotle said 
a likely impossibility is preferable to an unlikely
possibility. We shake our heads but smile.
There's no need to explain the complicated 
patterns made by the shadow of leaves 
as sunlight passes through them: how they
will slant toward the south-facing wall 
at dusk, before dissolving into themselves.