NO SUCH THING AS LUCK
Part 1
GARDENS, WORDS AND HANDS
by Jeffrey Murrell


She called out to me from a garden
of words I had sewn with care,
some flowers of hope, a beacon flashing
out into the darkness of loneliness
I found myself in again.

"Mine is the luckiest of all signs,"
I told her, praising my good fortune.
"There is no such thing as luck,"
she insisted, "only fate and destiny,
because everything happens for a reason."
"True," I could only respond.
But I still believe there's something
that's not too far beyond.

And as I spoke, I gestured,
my hands tracing visual words;
and she watched and listened attentively,
and later confessed that my hands were
what snared her affection for me.
Perhaps it was fate that graced me,
and sent me this woman for whom to care
and to love and to have love me.
Perhaps it had nothing to do with luck,
nor being born under the sign of the hare.

Her garden is green and lush,
and it wraps up her home like a bow.
And she anxiously tends to it,
as if caring for a myriad of tiny souls.
Herbs and spices, flowers and vines,
perfumed buds and blossoms
all growing healthfully in the sunshine
speak well for her respect for life.

And she tends to me now as anxiously,
and that makes me cry sometimes,
with the joy that I am no longer alone,
wondering if it's what comes to those who wait,
like all the good things in life,
wondering if it's what I deserve.

Her hands soothe and cleanse my skin
and rest my wandering heart,
winding warm and delicately
back and forth, caressing my soul sweetly
like novocaine to my worn-out esprit.
They were for a long time empty, holding no one,
needing no chore but to tend her art,
for a long time lingering painfully from it all.
And my hope was great that I could soothe her,
and be a source of strength and calm,
sympathy, support, nurturing and hope.

She said I came in and found her during a sweet song
whose lyrics trace the end of one lover's search for the other,
and she remarked how curious it is that I found her
and how she found me, finally after so very long.
And I cannot attribute it to simple luck,
but to fate instead who had this planned for us all along.
How could we not have fallen in love?
How could I not come to love her with all my heart,
and how could she not eventually come to love me with all of hers?
How could intimacy not gradually be visited on us,
with the intertwining of our bodies and souls into one?
Existence would be perverse and natural laws would be voided
without the caring we felt for one another
for which we both had long traveled
from empty places and narrow minds,
on trails paved with broken promises and fleeting hopes,
lined with deep gullies of fear and despair,
bitterness and cold.