Writer, Writer, finding stories
in every twitch of every eye ---
there are no chance encounters here!
Coincidence is banned from us,
for it does not make good books.

Cause-and-effect makes the world go round,
thus questions by millions unanswered:
why thatword, why that look,
and what crucial subtext
was inferred by that three-second pause?

Does the world work like this,
like a well-crafted novel?
Are we characters moving
to preprescribed endings?

In short, I suppose, my question is this:
            are we Writers so cursed to live in this illusion,
            or cursed to see how the world actually works?