Beetlebung and Kettlehole--April Poems

Losing Count

I've taken a thousand turns
on a thousand twisting roads
to figure out this frail world
but always failed the count
except through books
surfaced the numbers

The Catch-22 of it was
A Thousand Splendid Suns
The Tale of Two Cities
with 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
The House of Seven Gables
or Twelfth Night by the Bard
numbers in books, a delight

yet, at times,
with the hand they are dealt
numbers line up like ruins
in miserable shadows of sorrow
with people perishing
in ghettos or on the road to Terezin
or by chemical warfare…
number of broken hearts, worldwide
number of things to regret, infinite

----------

Prompt: use number/s in some way