Ordained

When the poets of old

wrote of star-crossed lovers

they were partly right

and partly wrong

due to a tragedy of scope and scale

and obsession with particular causality,

working backwards

or worse, forwards—

while stars like these ordain the just-rightness

of you and me, it could have been

any other way, any parallel universe—

you with a mandolin-playing mailman,

me with an old dog and three goats and the moon—

Who would have known

the difference, and

who knows

who else

is under here with us

tonight, little fern?