Per Adventure

Frosts of flame or strange to you,
What is to come. What you will
Go through will have become you,

What you were. Vivam, Ovid
Concluded, and the word did.
About the man, not a fleck

Of identifiable
Ash still floats on the Black Sea,
Daughter of melt ice, mother

Of shipwrecks. Perambulate
The bounds of empires drowned there.
What is left of anyone,

Other than scattered mummies
And inscrutable patterns
Of ochre on cliffs in caves?

One, the person goes for good.
Two, the body carries on
Into a mesh of living

And nonalive existence.
Three, we hang around perhaps,
By happenstance, accident,

Luck, a risk you take with us,
Risk, which has no destiny.
Nothing is to come of you.