What Can be Named in Numbers Reassures

M. Travis Lane
From: Canadian Literature Vol. 145, Summer 1995. Keeping Afloat (Guernica, 2001)

We mostly agree on the forms of math:
2 by 4s to build with, 3 by 5
paper cards, or 7 by 9
tin pans.
What can be named in numbers reassures.

A bug sails past the window, catching light
which, I suppose, flicks on it through the pear tree
whose thick crest
divides and rations summer.
                                                      As if in mind
to choose between the skeins of air, the bug
leaps, zigzags, in a swagger like
the flourish under a signature:
unmeasurable lust.

And poetry,
which measures nothing, spells itself.

But are we needed after all?
Without a noun or numeral the lake
drowns the red sky, is beautiful.

That, also, reassures.

Poem 1 | Poem 2 | Poem 3 | Poem 4 | Poem 5 | Poem 6 | Poem 7 | Poem 8 | Poem 9 | Poem 10 | Poem 11 | Poem 12 | Poem 13

M. Travis Lane's works copyright © to the author.