For my sambear
Love at First Sight
–Jennifer Maier
From Dark Alphabet
You always hear about it—
a waitress serves a man two eggs
over easy and she says to the cashier,
That is the man I’m going to marry,
and she does. Or a man spies a woman
at a baseball game; she is blond
and wearing a blue headband,
and, being a man, he doesn’t say this
or even think it, but his heart is a homing bird
winging to her perch, and next thing you know
they’re building birdhouses in the garage.
How do they know, these auspicious lovers?
They are like passengers on a yellow
bus painted with the dreams
of innumerable lifetimes, a packet
of sepia postcards in their pocket.
And who’s to say they haven’t traveled
backward for centuries through borderless
lands, only to arrive at this roadside attraction
where Chance meets Necessity and says,
What time do you get off?
