The seventeenth of April
One of those coincidental days
which sets up false connections,
statistics say don’t mean a thing.
But because the seventeenth of April
Was the day of my Dad’s birthday
I noticed and remembered it,
twice incised on a memorial stone
Effie born in eighteen ninety-one in Timaru
Died in childbirth, buried in Ymir
exactly twenty three years later,
The seventeenth of April
[this has been submitted to Jo Prescott, but is also relevant to today so I am including it here]
I often pause at coincidences, they are usually meaningless of course but occasionally we are reminded of something that touches us personally and then we make connections.
ReplyDeleteCoincidences really fascinate me as your example did. They always make me sit up and take notice. Lovely description. Penny
ReplyDeleteThere seemed to be a LOT of things happening in my family history notes, on the seventeenth - my youngest son's birthday, and my paternal grandfather was another who was born and died on the 17th; I counted them once and found some 50+ incidences. But there were also 40+ occasions on the 12th and the 5th (dates my other children were born) so ...
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