On the Death of An Infant

What purpose --
so brief life
with wealth of love
invested?

We cannot understand
(only hope for fate's design;
that it has one, points
in some direction)

nor accept
the awful resonance
of the implication:

randomness,
the death of everything
(yet each at the center
of his web -- each web
touching the next . . . )

A cosmos is woven to catch the pattern,
if only to say,
life cannot be held in this net;
control evades us,
eludes the shaping
of action
and desire. Thus,

a cosmos that calls its own shots
yet holds the all in its embrace,
as once a mother
held this child.
Les Reed poems