When Anstapa Banhus Went Searching for an Old Friend and Found Only an Obituary, 6 January 2019

Everyone gets a number, from zero
To a hundred and twenty, although few
Get anything over ninety. My late wife, Paula,
Got 45. My good friend James recently drew 53.
One grandfather was handed 85, the other 44.
My father ended up with 67, mother 84.
I will not get anything lower than 56, for sure.
Jeanne Calment got 122, although she’s viewed
With some suspicion. Maybe she drew 99.
Not everyone gets a number, actually. Numbers
Are fantasies, carefully monitored, liberally strewn
About, like seeds, but really only faeries
That happen to appear to inhere in everything.
Still, since we’re counting, since we’ve been
Counting for countable centuries, admit we’ve learned
That the numbers we used to favor for heroes
And ancestors, numbers like 900 or more,
Weren’t ever really meant for us. If we want
Bigger numbers, we need smaller units,
Littler divisions, arbitrary as months or weeks,
Oscilatory as moons or days, embodied
As moments or breaths. You can get a billion
Or two heartbeats, maybe three, not a great feat.
The more you get, of course, the less you might
Get yet, and so you look back, in the very idea
Of you that you are a you, a body of ideas,
An idea of a body, in celebration and mourning
Of those you knew like you who got all already
That they’ll ever get and are gone as you keep on.
You’ll get there. You’ll get there. You’ll get one
When you become one, nothing more than story
And number, then, having escaped all counting,
All the human mania for social details. And then,
There is love as well, the temporal doubleness
Of all experience, whose march is for desolation.
There is love, old friend. Go ahead, take a number.