Twelve eggs
or roses or cups of yogurt
or loaves
or kisses
is a dozen.

Twelve cents
is a dime and two pennies
a nickel and seven pennies
two nickels and two pennies
but there is no twelve-cent coin
if there was, what would it be called?

There are
twelve months
in one year

There were
twelve tribes of Israel
twelve apostles
twelve days of Christmas

and in my high school orchestra
twelve violinists
bending and swaying
to music shining from their quivering strings

There are
twelve minutes in
one-fifth of an hour, (an absurd amount of time
used by no one,
but quite tidy
--why don’t we
divide our hours this way?)

Twelve squared:
one gross.
an obsolete measurement
of days gone by
--when there were clapboard general stores
that sold pickles.