Issue 7 - George Ovitt

Luck


There’s the dodging a bullet kind,

As when you swerve to miss the dog

And do—and the luck encoded in you,

Limbs properly attached, brain functioning,

Ten thousand congenital diseases dodged

For now—then there’s moral luck of the

Sort that guides you home when the weather

Gets dicey—as when you could have cheated

On your wife or taken the cash or spoken the lie

And didn’t—and why you didn’t wasn’t character

Or your good heart, since you lack it and it isn’t,

But circumstance—as when, the fatal crash looming,

Your errant mind, that flapping thing, all at once

Settles down safely—but the best luck of all

Is the one that put you here to begin with—

The prerequisite to the dogs you haven’t run over,

To the face you sometimes can bear to look at,

The luck whose grace lets you cheat or not,

The one that, with luck, brings you home at last.

--George Ovitt

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