By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
"Chance" looks across stars and failed crossings and arrives at a triple loss to Christ, Pascal, and the speaker's own hard-won knowledge.
The poem is built from attempted nearness that never quite becomes arrival. Ship, tie, in-between return, and failed holding all suggest a life unable to secure the thing it moves toward. Naming Christ and Pascal together turns the loss philosophical and spiritual at once, as if faith, reason, and personal endurance have all come up short.
Chance: Two and two across the stars, four suns. A loss to Christ, a loss to Pascal, a loss to all that I know now. The tone is accounting.