Every Day’s a Fresh Chance!

There’s no non-gambler among us.
Every human, every word risks
Something just by being other

Than something being nothing much
And nothing more. Living signage,
That’s the combination package

Of beasts with syntactic language,
And that’s at least a clutch of bones
To be rolling, life and meaning.

Distinctions among the gamblers
Are mostly in stakes, styles, and odds.
Some of you play so carefully,

You convince yourselves that breathing
Isn’t a risk without breathing
A word. That’s one kind of gamble,

That you’ll be able to get by,
Maybe even play best, without
Gambling much at all. Another

Extreme is the long-odds dreamer
Who doesn’t care to win unless
Some tiny bet rakes in the world.

This kind stands in lottery lines
When the prize gets ridiculous,
Billion-to-one odds for a buck.

The souls with gambling addictions
Have migrated to the middle,
Equatorial to those poles,

Centered, though it hardly seems so,
Consciously staking everything
Just to keep playing and playing.

Most people, most art, most ideas
Reside in risk’s temperate zones,
Gamblers only seasonably,

Able to tell a loss from what
They planned for. But none of us know,
Which means none of us can agree,

What really constitutes winning.
Everyone rolls the dice again,
Some while grumbling gambling’s a sin.