Challenging Poetry

chasing numbers

my mind fills with counting—
knit eight, yarn over,
decrease, knit seventeen,
and I haven’t room for
poetry until I look up,
between rows, and start
counting again—nineteen,
twenty-five, one hundred seventy-two
grey hairs, five hundred twenty-eight
books in the mirror behind my head,
and I remember running
to my parent's room when
I was young, screaming
the numbers are chasing me!
and they don't stop . . .
two balls of yarn,
one yawn,
purl seventy-three,
knit eight, yarn over, decrease,
knit seventeen.