Your expertise I do not doubt

Your algorithms, statistics and precise patterning

I can only marvel at.

Your awards are well deserved 

Your world renowned reputation

is something I myself spread.  

In the cities the Bookmakers concur 

and gleam from your accuracy.

Your prediction of time, of time left,

of how and the how of death. 

No one would argue this

serves a purpose.

Pre-purchase the funeral plan,

Rewrite or write the will.

Complete the ‘bucket list’ for Facebook

Of all the things you will do before D day!  

Smile for the camera and show you are in control.

Though confusion, fear and 

accusations – how do they know?

Swirl inside you like a whirlpool

in a freak storm that never quells.

A storm that weeps at how we try to

sanitize death, 

as we frame our days, our last days,

into their statistical countdowns.   

And yet I cannot help but think of all those 

near misses –

our car pirouetting on ice;

our airplane buffeted by high winds yet guided to safe landing;

the Divine hand that removed a destructive yearning for alcohol

when all else had failed.

And of those haunting anomalies –

Our late brother with everything to live for who jumped off a bridge

Our friend who perished not in dark icy waters – 

His suicide seen by a passing boat who rescued him.   

There’s something fantastic about clinical expertise,

mesmerising even.

But it is not Divine.

There is no statistic for hope,

for faith that can face the storm.

There is no algorithm for the interventions of a Divine power

who said You do not know

the day or the hour.