Why have meteorologists such difficulty
                      in predicting the weather with any certainty?

                                  —Henri Poincaré

He got himself fired for a dream today,
or was he dream fired? Heat’s out now, anyway.
And deadweight fear, and grams of hope?
Scattered both from all the open doors

to rust, bad breath, cold—
and no sunrise behind this morning’s mountain
the look of it sheepish and black decay.

Too bad it’s not safer to gamble with inevitability.
Accumulating debts got to be paid
and time is an arrow in motion—
What mean you then? What then, Smart Boy?
Chance? Better odds favor better people.

And if he threw the loose leaves of ten thousand days
into the air? There’d still be a chance (pathetic, though)
that in falling each page might assume its rightful place in the procession.