#144 Kevin Brophy 'Counting'

#144 ‘Counting’

They look up out of their childhoods

and we are the world as they’ve found it.

They count to one hundred by fives

and arrive at its plenty, but just for a visit.

My mother stood in her wifely kitchen

and said she could count on her fingers

by fives the times she’d bandaged our knees.

We took from her eyes their tinsel and cinders.

The smallest numbers are kept in pockets

to spend at the shop. The hundreds upon

thousands are the roads of kilometres

out of here or in the air that goes beyond.  

My father went into his study to count the days

that were left to him, hundreds and thousands,

dotted like postcards sent home from a storm.

He’s in there reading of fogs in the mountains.

The children look up out of their minds at the world

as they’ve found it and here they are counting,

agreeing to go to a hundred or more in an hour

and do it by fives, by tens, no end to this dividing.