by Uche Ogbuji

Note: Chi is the traditional Igbo concept of the god of each person, of each individual

When those two fighters met at the horizon
Half pregnant with the yellow sun, which rose
And fell at once in Schrödinger decree,
They spun so much imperfection of soul
And circumstance into their tumbled dice
That its sum could be none other than me,
Quantum twin unleashed from the black hole’s edge–
I am perfected fortune of my Chi.

Some randomized permutation of genes
Spelled these very left and right brain cortices–
Spotlight nerves on sheer possibility;
Some Mendel melody conjured these eyes,
These muscles, grafted these veins under this skin;
I am too many pin-point faults to be
By design yet I crown my own life’s fitness:
I am perfected fortune of my Chi.

But that same line some call the thread of fates
To which I fit my mind and body’s curve
In its degrees is certainly not free;
Somewhere along its future lies a point
Where my close arrival is luck of the draw
Passed onward in a rightful symmetry;
I am the series that evolves to that embrace:
I am perfected fortune of my Chi.

Uche Ogbuji was born in Calabar, Nigeria, and has lived, among other places, in Egypt, England and the U.S., where he now makes a home near Boulder Colorado with his wife and four children. He’s a computer engineer and entrepreneur whose abiding passion is poetry. His poems have appeared in sundry journals, and he is poetry editor at The Nervous Breakdown. Poem first appeared at Soundzine.