To Boldly Bogart Poem by Tony Jolley

'Of all the gin-joints….'

Sounds 'big'.
Sounds Bogart.
Sounds improbable,
Unbelievable.
But what of you and me –
Is it really that impossible…?

Hominids, latterly humans,
So the anthropologists say,
Arrived on the scene
Some 70,000 years before today:
A whole continuum of space and time
To have missed each other in
By kilometres and minutes,
Yards and years,
Countries and centuries.
Any miss is as good as
A million miles or lifetimes.

But we didn't miss, did we?
Our trajectories intersected
The cross-hairs of probability
And our love leaped out of mere theory
And into daily reality:
A history inconsequential to History,
Maybe,
But indispensable to you and me.

Is it too preposterous or pretentious
To purpose
That somehow the world didn't
Want to do without us? .....
Probably;
But then we'll never know, will we?

Does the ripple know the pebble?
Does the shadow know the light?
Does the winter know the summer?
Does the left hand know the right?

Can beginning know its ending?
Can tomorrow know today?
Can morning know the evening?
Only Love may know its way.