Love at First Sight

You always hear about it— 
a waitress serves a man two eggs 
over easy and she says to the cashier, 
That is the man I'm going to marry, 
and she does. Or a man spies a woman 
at a baseball game; she is blond 
and wearing a blue headband, 
and, being a man, he doesn't say this 
or even think it, but his heart is a homing bird 
winging to her perch, and next thing you know 
they're building birdhouses in the garage. 
How do they know, these auspicious lovers? 
They are like passengers on a yellow 
bus painted with the dreams 
of innumerable lifetimes, a packet 
of sepia postcards in their pocket. 
And who's to say they haven't traveled
backward for centuries through borderless 
lands, only to arrive at this roadside attraction 
where Chance meets Necessity and says, 
What time do you get off? 


  —Jennifer Maier