st. john’s abacus

counts each step:
a walk along the brook stone

family leather bound black book
la guardia sweeps my hovel

trembles, clear at last
daylight skyline thirteen point

thirty one hundred ‘self-transcendent’
lapse—

I check for a pulse,

miles east northeast of home
sick ward bound on a friday

afternoon starts before
the sack lunch disaster or,

or even a continental breakfast table-
side reunion of sorts

maybe the night before we don’t
notice the fifteen in bold