Equal Pickings

A Poem

Seascape by Vincent van Gogh, painted in 1888

A fisherman knows chance better than a city man
He knows it sweeps with a nylon-netted hand
planes go missing and tankers sink
and carbon monoxide you can’t smell can leak
Cars slip and split apart on jersey barriers
and men jump to see themselves free
He knows that chance hangs in the sterile dead-space
between the people who wait in entryways
where nothing is meant to happen but to consider what may
His ship is yellowwood and he sails a salt sea
Though deep waters rap the hull like men knocking underneath
he knows chance better than a city man
and he will evade death easily

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