Beyond the Papery, Lined Realms of the Manifold Pages of My Triadic Notebooks
A silly superstition enwraps and grips me,
It holds me and will not loosen its vile, crushing deathgrip:
It is a numerical one, this foolish superstition to which I have my subscription,
For this is the numerological sorcerous fallacy to which I've subscribed:
That, as I have yet published a baker's dozen of poems hereon,
(Though this poem or that preceding it, might have in fact made it fourteen),
I must exceed the number somewhat, and do for today the writing of
Four poems, yet the dilemma in which I currently awash,
This quandary, this conundrum, this balk and qualm of mine,
Is as follows:
In my troika of notebooks and journals and leather diaries I've earmarked
For poetic use, the tally of poetries I've written therein today is but two,
Thus I would not reach the somehow sacred number,
That numerical goal I've set for myself of seventeen,
Unless I were to write two more poems, extra-notebooked ones:
Being ones beyond and without the notebook,
Beyond the papery, lined realms of the manifold pages of my
Threefold notebooks.
So to solve the insoluble, and resolve it, what was I to do?
I tasked myself with reaching the putative goal of seventeen,
But how would this devoir I achieve?
Only by the conception and composition of a pair of extra poems,
Thus, to accomplish that total, this poem and the one that preceded it.
So, have I paragraphed this page thus, in the manner most befitting
That of the poem.
And now this emptiest and most filler-like of my poems yet, it be done.
Copyright ©
Douglas Cate
|