Our gods have been shuffled 
like old playing cards,
greasy and secretly marked.
My small circle of friends & family
contains a myriad of divine beings
who each have their own way
of butting in or leaving us alone.
I dare name none of them.

But it does seem that they all play
the game of chance with the old “What If”
conundrum. What if when my papa
was running numbers in ‘30s Brooklyn
the longshoremen’s double hadn’t hit
and left him holding the bag?
In a story too long to tell it was
either go to Nazi Europe, marry
my mom and sneak her out to America
or die. God’s lucky number turned up for papa
and I exist. What are the odds of that?