You Like to Count by Linda Martin

September 9, 2022
Poet name: Linda Martin Poem title: You Like to Count Poem: You like to count. Number of inches from the teacup to the edge of the table. Number of miles covered and speed reached on your bicycle. Time it takes to solve the hardest Hamsbridge puzzle. Number of years before our sun burns out. Your numerical world is a foreign land, a dark place in my consciousness. Its precision threatens like the ticking of a clock near the end of a life. Yet I know measurement matters. Blood pressure, cholesterol, heart rate. Tablespoons of salt Total taxes to be paid Converting dollars to euros. Each digit you see as part of a rainbow, 8 blue, 6 yellow, 4 green. Is it this quantity with these coded colours that makes you who you are? Or the fact that you can be quantified by carefully computing a total. The universe with its endless intricate formulas home to you. I envy your ease of summing up while I search in vain for a yardstick, my cosmos incalculable. End of poem. Credits and bio: Copyright © Linda Martin Linda Martin is the co-author of six non-fiction books including Women in Comedy. Her poetry collection The Colour of Clouds, focused on the greater Toronto area and explored the loss of links to our past and how development threatens the beauty of our heritage both built and natural. It was published by Inanna in 2019. Linda has also written and directed two documentary films: Hands on Farms about organic farming in southern Ontario and Behind the Light about an independent movie complex in cottage country Ontario.