Beginner's Luck 

Beginner’s Luck

1. I was a lucky girl.
   unfurled like a flower
   in a safe garden, locked
   by love from trespass
   and trampling. So sweet
   the memories, the perfume of years.
   The life of each of us
   is too brief;
   we are lucky
   to have had
   any of what we had
   that is not punishment
   or tempering
   for an unknown reason.
   Our hope that someone
   will love us
   and lock the gates
   to keep us safe
   for all our days
   while inside us
   Luck is unfurling,
   opening us
   to a long-lived life.
2. I had so many aunts, and so many uncles.
   And one mother, and one father.
   So many sisters and two brothers. In-laws.
   And a plethora of cousins. Nieces and nephews now
   grand or great ones.
   Grandparents. I remember on both sides
   of Time.
   My mother’s father would put one hand
   in his pant’s pocket, touching money he would give
   us for solving his riddle.
   
   Such long, wide sight of memory.
   Sometimes I’ve had friends.
   I was destined to be happy.
   To have all that I have.
   A thousand cowrie shells rattling
   in my pockets.
3. I haven’t always had what I wanted
   and I wanted what I could not have,
   but I have a holding heart
   that keeps people inside. I am
   a lucky woman.
   A thousand cowrie shells rattling
   in my pockets. I was destined
   to be happy in this moment.
   In this immeasurable moment.
4. A while ago I was singing
   about my happiness;
   now I know my summer student is gone,
   not much more than twenty-one.
   He was killed at a party,
   a case of mistaken identity.
   He was unlucky, wasn’t he?
   And the burn of it singes my tongue.
   
   In every cowrie shell
   there is a serrated howl
   in the pockets of many hearts.
5. Someone opened a gate, trespassed, trampled.
6. We are, each, a cowrie shell rattling in God’s pocket.
   What is Luck?
   Who can solve this riddle?
   Who can do it in a minute?
7. He was lucky then. A culinary artist,
   he had a gift. His words danced.
   I remembered him. He was so vividly drawn.
   His words danced irrepressibly, rattling
   on the page in an act of divination.
   
   His luck ran out.
   But a part of him stays inside
   rattling in us,
   keeping me awake this night.