Sharing our antecedents, we discover
two photos in our various albums
taken at different angles by different authors,
of the same monument and the same day.
There you are and there I am, a
shadow in each other’s past, a
figure out of focus in the frame, long
before we spun into this elliptical orbit
of love, or what passes for it. Coincidences?
The universe doesn’t care for us.
When our lucky number seems to find us,
that’s a kind of statistical bias,
a romantic ignorance of all the other
inconsistent results. So why do I look up
to see you approaching with a smile?
No scent or movement, just a sense
that one I love is near again.
Some inverse square law? Satellite
to satellite in orbiting applications of force.
If that’s true, then it’s a law of desire: if
the stars move us, we move the stars too.
Damen O'Brien is a Queensland Poet. In 2020, Damen has won the Moth Poetry Prize, the Newcastle International Poetry Competition (UK), received 3rd Prize in the ACU Poetry Competition and was shortlisted in the Montreal International Poetry Prize. In 2020, Damen has been published in Peril, Rabbit, The Atlanta Review and Cordite. (www.dameno.org)(@damen_o)