It’s All in How You Choose to Count

Forms that pause on the way
From the phrase to the book,

Are they whole lines, whole poems,
Whole parts, parts of a whole,

Hours, days, weeks, months, years, lives,
Rocks, clouds, stars, clouds of stars?

You have to start, have to
Say these two are the same

In some way. You have to choose
What’s the not the same you won’t

Count; what’s the same you will.
To cast your net to catch

Flesh of the world you want,
Make next more than a guess,

You have to knit that net,
You have to weave that weir.

Fine tight weave, strong thick knots—
You know there must be gaps

For you to catch your fish
But sieve the silt and wet.

It’s all real—what you get,
What you let slip, what breaks

Through the net of your names.
You want to know? Then don’t

Try to catch all the waves.
There’s no math that maps it

All, what was as what’s next.
No count counts all the ways.