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?