Sign

^{After Rumi, After Terrance Hayes}

What aren’t you willing to believe. A heart  
graffitied fuchsia on the street, a missive from another life.
Remember the stem of lavender you found
in a used copy of Bishop’s poems, a verse underlined:  
The world is a mist. And then the world is
minute and vast and clear. Suddenly, across the aisle  
a woman with your mother’s bracelets, her left wrist  
all shimmer and gold, you almost winced.  
Coincidence is the great mystery of the human mind
but so is the trans-oceanic reach of Shah Rukh Khan’s  
slow blink. Each of us wants a hint, a song
that dares us to look inside. True, it takes whimsy  
and ego to believe the universe will tap your shoulder  
in the middle of a random afternoon. That t-shirt  
on a stranger’s chest, a bumper sticker on the highway upstate.  
Truth isn’t going anywhere. It’s your eyes passing by.