I once fell for a woman who liked to say:
There are no accidents--
Her way of assuring me I’d live and be well
without waiting for her 
to stumble into my arms.
 
But now the Governor, surely wise
and of a practical bent assures the public:  
Sometimes there will be accidents at railroad crossings, 
and with them will come death and great loss.
Hence, we need not speculate as to their cause.
But sometimes life hands us such purposelessness,
even in Valhalla--what ought to be this little slice of heaven,
but with schools and hospitals, cemeteries and railroad crossings,
so many signals we should have heeded of impending misery,
and of gods meddling willy-nilly in men’s affairs. 
 
This was the same Valhalla where, when I was a kid, 
I was sure I killed a bunch of strangers in a car, 
quite by accident, at the very moment I learned I was in love--
and my life would be over,
just as it was readying to start.
 
Then the other day, it was here in Valhalla, I picked up a shovel,
dug into the mountain of cold winter dirt, assembled with such care,
to bury a friend: This, a good deed, I was assured.
O, praise be a life that can bear the weight 
of one sad intention after another.