No Connection With Numbers

I have no connection with numbers.
Sixty-five or fifty-five, seventy, and suddenly
A person’s dead
And I am swayed
To thinking , “Gee, she was too young to pass,
At least these days”.
Lost track of what should, should not be,
It being all the same to me.
As teen, numbers relevant,
Forty ancient,
Frames of reference clear and few.

Digits now,
Are passcodes, pin codes, bank-cards, passcards.
As for age: eighty’s  the new forty, forty twenty;
Size eighteen is now size fourteen, thirteen now size zero;
Uni- multi- verses more and many; numbers leer,
And so unclear
That only new words suit.

Still unconnected and to boot,
It doesn’t matter – not to me, in any case.
I’m free, unfettered by the race, the chase.
In fact, it is a grace I [almost] note.
Glad I can vote,
De-vote my time to stumbling through
Without connecting numbers to
A thing
(except perhaps those few
I mentioned.)
Poems start out with one intention,
End up, well,
A tolling bell,
Telling all and nothing,
Ring! Ring!

No Connection With Numbers 6.10.2016
Numbers Book; A Sense Of The Ridiculous II;
Arlene Corwin