VARIATIONS ON AN ENIGMA

Great mathematicians peering down
from the roof might be able

to compute in their heads
how many steps it’d take me

to cross the street while bleeding,
and if they cared and weren’t

constantly being accosted
by counterfeit pleas from near hysterics,

they’d be as surprised as I am
that my beard is coming in gray

and add a few more zeroes,
for I was told – no, assured –

the sutures would dissolve,
the eye eventually grow back,

only to arrive early this morning
to an unwashed chalkboard,

empty desks,
a note blown on the floor,

the ink still damp.




Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of six poetry chapbooks, including the e-book Police and Questions (Right Hand Pointing, 2008), available free at http://www.righthandpointing.com/howiegood/