Glass: A Journal of Poetry Volume One Issue Two       

Allan Peterson

My Math
 
Two egrets and three gulls are five,
ten with shadows, doubles of the night in daylight,
plus two for the red hawks watching.
This is my math, just as I was multiplied by the bear
and her cubs crossing at Chama,
by the swarm of winged ants and the warblers
that came frenzied for them.
If I wait for the fall migration, if I am my integer
while being stalked by bacteria,
I might calculate an uneasiness of earth, including
the skink that hides in the dryer vent,
a continent about to shift in its chair, but I am impatient,
still counting deliberately on my fingers and stars.