Tom Scherer

Number’s Man

A well-meaning remark

disturbed me, as a soldier

hearing gunshots

from a not-too-distant tree line

It was ‘Count the days

until retirement’

that hit me like a Newtonesque

car speeding into a brick wall

I was left in pieces

horrified at the imagined

sight of my own beat down

future self, thirty-seven

years older

and unrecognizable

That puts me at sixty-two

about one-thousand, nine-hundred and twenty-four weeks

from now

or

nine-thousand, six-hundred and twenty

working days

until retirement

Give or take

A great big planetary number—

I had just begun a lonesome walking marathon

to the moon and back

without any hope of seeing

a little green alien

Fourteen-thousand, four-hundred and thirty hours

of driving

just to and from work

Five-hundred-and-nineteen-thousand, four-hundred and eighty

miles

That’s at least two cars

if I’m lucky

And fifty-three-thousand dollars’ worth of gas

I wonder how many times I would blink

in thirty-seven years

How many times would I inhale

and exhale

I assume they would be

balanced in equal amounts

until the beginning of the next

breath

but unless I count,

how would I know?

I could count each step I take

but if I give them up

to addition

one after the other

left foot to right

then it doesn’t matter

what direction they are going

or what surface they’re on

So I won’t count my steps

to preserve the illusion of

freedom

I should begin the numbering

of life

as broad stokes of colors and

frequencies

atomic numbers that are

everything

I count cells of my body

the molecules and atoms

and the spectrums of light

that reflect from my skin

and eyeball lubricant that sees

wavelengths measured in

digits

Time is measured

of course

but not only in numbers

If I stand and walk

and

see the grass as time’s

hands

trees as sundials

they’re always counting

down the days

until their retirement

and I even walk

a six or seven degree

angled gait

along the concrete—

a reminder that

I count more blades of grass

than I do stars in the sky

and what does that say

about me

Breath 1, blink 2, step 3, look 4

drive 5, gas 6, listen 7, day 8

week 9

year 10

meaningless without numbers

I have to assign numbers to have meaning

I would pass a woman with a dog

and she and I would refuse

to meet our eyes

and her gray hair is primary

hex color #808080

and her dachshund’s barking

reaches 750 hertz and

83 decibels

and it made me flinch

Can I assign a number

to a flinch

or a traumatic bodily

response?

1 (for yes) or 2 (for no)

At a certain point I see

that everything would become

just a number

Integers, figures, numerical values

and math and calculations

decimal points

can be made into beautiful

poetry

if placed into skilled enough hands

But for me

more often than not

they are the shiny metallic faces

emotionless

dead-eyed

means of

atrocity

And yet the math of numbers are—

according to some astrophysicists

—both a discovery

and an invention

both scientific law

and synthetic imagination

Are we then inventors or

discoverers of our

prison?

Are numbers our jailers or

just our unassuming tools?

I think numbers are immune

to these rhetoricals

Rusty nail scratched tally

marks don’t care about

how many strong they are

They’re not the ones

that say ‘every day

is a gift’

Sometimes

a day is just a number

And if I ever

reach retirement age

in thirty-seven years

or thirteen-thousand, five-hundred and fourteen days

I will finally get to start counting down

the days until

my death

When my body will

be put out or under

and my headstone will read

two numbers

Year of birth: 2001

and year of death:

for now, XXXX

I have twenty

fingers and toes

So I guess I’ll start counting