Counting Cards

No great concern now
to win, lose or advise,
as I look towards you
rolling dice over a towel;

No madness adequate
to replace myself with you,
nor time to achieve the madness,

though then you would be sitting with yourself,

you and you, grandmother,

and I would have the drive you claim for me.

We both saw the transmutation
of your regrets into my hopes;
You hoped I would never regret, never forget
that few people have choices, and that having them,
I must turn down my right road quickly,
the single one I can dance down,
that you dreamed along,
the unpaved path of flowers and a gleaming sky,
art, music, drama: incongruously
medicine.

You spoke as though you pulled
your words from a rift in the earth or a veil
in the air, you spoke startlingly
as though your whole existence were past tense,
flimsy as dust scattered from an urn,
decayed as a parent in the grave,
or the broken windows of yesterday’s home.

From careers the conversation moved
to gambling naturally; your metaphor was brilliant;
You had lost out a bit in the game,
you were counseling that I had better odds.
You found the addiction to dice and slots mysterious,
the intensity ridiculous,
the ups and downs drastic and dramatic.

So I am counting cards subconsciously, grandma,
in the game that you encourage and I love,
beside the sky, blue as the Virgin’s robes,
blue as Blanche’s blouse
In A Streetcar Named Desire.

I am counting cards beside the flowers

flox, magnolia and anything
that brushes my ankles,
poison oak and ivy;

What suits my memory,
hearts, clubs,
I remember:

Outbursts of poetry,
year-old scraps of insignificant
Treasure; other people’s words,
theories out of nowhere,
with all echoes of voided chaos
traded for a wild mix of threads
invented, contradictory,
grasped as literature, art, religion.

I am counting towards infinity, grandma,
counting out of order,
inventing new suits and numbers,
and I have counted you into my mind.