KISMET
As the cribbage game comes to an end
She wonders about Bev’s maiden name.
“What?” she exclaims. “Is that who you are?
I knew you in high school. Your friends were mine.
We often sailed on your husband’s boat.
How did I come to find you here?”
Ah, that is the mystery Kurt Vonnegut
Called “Karma”. Who does Fate arrange
To saunter in and out of our affairs?
As once we ferried down Lake Ullswater
Where Wordsworth saw his daffodils,
We saw, on landing at the ferry dock
A friendly and familiar figure calling out,
A welcome face so far from kith and kin
That last we’d seen afloat on Big Moose Lake,
A fellow paddler in the Adirondacks.
And once on a remote Montana trail
To Cracker Lake in Glacier National Park,
We recognized a couple by a rock
Who greeted us with an astonished hail:
Friends we had made on Elderhostel treks.
And how did you and I manage to meet?
On such encounters do our fortunes rest.
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