Watching the evening news on TV,  I saw floods in Louisiana and fires in California and there was that 5-year-old child in Allepo pulled out of a bombed building in Syria, and so I went to my notebook and found a poem I wrote on June 7, 1990. I don't know any more now than I did then about why some folks get slammed while others seem not to be hit at all.

What Is It In the Scheme of Things

What is it in the scheme of things

determines who will be happy and who won’t be?

Is there some game played by the gods.

(surely we want to think in greater numbers than one

to void offense for wondering if one deity alone

might be the author of such misery

as can be found within a ten minute walk

in any direction you choose from anywhere)

or is something else built into the universe quite by accident.

I prefer to think there is no intelligence behind it,

this dreadful disease that sweeps across the face of earth

dropping dismal despair on whole families

leaving others untouched and laughing all around.

Even Adam had a little trouble with his boys,

and for that matter, Jesus’ family

had more than a little confusion in it,

seeing as how there isn’t any such thing as a joyful pieta.

Tolstoy was on to something he didn’t finish telling

either because he didn’t have more information

or something or someone cautioned him to say no more

about how all happy families are alike

but unhappy ones are unhappy in their own way.