On Wings

So my dear, toss the coin and pray its heads you win.

Playing Brag or Vingt-et-un?
Cross your fingers and just maybe you'll get the cards you want.
Oh yes, my dear, Fate will deal a winning hand - if it's on your side.
So study hard what it wants and how you can provide it.
Ensure you never tempt it, though, nor ever disregard it.
Observe, my dear, the many rules Fate lays down and wants obeyed
before you get its blessing.

The storm waves came across the sea,
whipped to foam by the wind, and dark with frenzied fury.
We would be drowned, our boat capsized or smashed against the rocks,
and shouting loud, "Good Lord!" we prayed, "save us! Save us! Save us!"

The child lay dying by the road,
and gathered all around, her brothers, sisters,
mum and dad and passing sympathisers.
How could, some asked, so terrible a thing have happened at that hour
when the world had seemed so measured and so normal?

I went with a rifle into the garden,
and seeing an apple at some distance swelling on a branch,
for amusement shot at it,
and unwittingly sent a speeding bullet
to make a deadly assignation with a hare,
lurking unseen by me,
beyond the hedge and in the ditch,
its sudden scream quite startling me.

How far into our pasts stretched the paths that brought us both to this sad coincidence?
Was it always to be, since time begun, our fates to meet that day?

And what of the child dying by the road and the driver whose car had struck her?

What of the storm? What of the waves that swamped the boat and sent it to the bottom?

Did Fate deal the cards we hold in our hands
minutes or hours or eons before we get to play them?

Is it ever on our side? Does it even care?