"numerology" poems - Hello Poetry

I remember the jelly bean jar perched next to the owlish librarian in my school when I was younger. One lucky soul would win a prize for pulling the right number of jelly beans out of an air still filled with fancy. I can’t remember who won the prize, and I can’t remember what the prize was. But I guess as selfish minds are wont to do, I remember the act of guessing. It was a childhood of guessing, and I wonder if any of those guesses were truly wrong? When the engine of innocence toils away, any solution, however fanciful, can’t be false in a world that finds falsity in far more veritable places. I digress back to that jelly bean jar, packed full of sugar, and to a young mind, full of promise. To a mind such as mine, a mind akin to my classmates who shared my sugary desire for that jar, any guess was as good as the other, as long as any guess was your own. We clutched ordinary pencils scribbled on ordinary paper with our own extraordinary numbers. In the basket went these figures most accurate. Days during the week passed with those store brand jelly beans mashed against each other, childhood memories turned ordinary pages wrote with ordinary pencils until that singular, self-sure number mashed against pages turned against it. However strong that memory of numerology in a room full of words is etched in my mind; no trace of the end of the jellybean contest remains in my ledger. No trace of the disappointment of losing out on such a treasure trove of tooth decay. But I guess this is the way of the mind, it tends to trace out the positives while it remains filled with youthful levity, no weight is imbued in innocent minds, and so tragedy, loss, and disappointment float away past untroubled eyes. But time rolls on and much like the crushed growth under an ever-rolling stone, our lives start to fall harder on softened memories. Our lives harden with our heads, and those days of living out short-lived fantasies fade with jelly bean guesses. So as we mature and feign to seek the truth, a small part of me keeps a singular page earmarked for a time when the truth no longer weighs down the air with half-true deceit, and a mind long abandoned will return to grasp fanciful ideas out of an air that’s still light enough to evade our youthful fingertips.

0

Jul 26, 2012

Jul 26, 2012 at 5:34 PM UTC

paul-r-mott

Jelly Bean Guesses

I remember the jelly bean jar perched next to the owlish librarian in my school when I was younger. One lucky soul would win a prize for pulling the right number of jelly beans out of an air still filled with fancy. I can’t remember who won the prize, and I can’t remember what the prize was. But I guess as selfish minds are wont to do, I remember the act of guessing. It was a childhood of guessing, and I wonder if any of those guesses were truly wrong? When the engine of innocence toils away, any solution, however fanciful, can’t be false in a world that finds falsity in far more veritable places. I digress back to that jelly bean jar, packed full of sugar, and to a young mind, full of promise. To a mind such as mine, a mind akin to my classmates who shared my sugary desire for that jar, any guess was as good as the other, as long as any guess was your own. We clutched ordinary pencils scribbled on ordinary paper with our own extraordinary numbers. In the basket went these figures most accurate. Days during the week passed with those store brand jelly beans mashed against each other, childhood memories turned ordinary pages wrote with ordinary pencils until that singular, self-sure number mashed against pages turned against it. However strong that memory of numerology in a room full of words is etched in my mind; no trace of the end of the jellybean contest remains in my ledger. No trace of the disappointment of losing out on such a treasure trove of tooth decay. But I guess this is the way of the mind, it tends to trace out the positives while it remains filled with youthful levity, no weight is imbued in innocent minds, and so tragedy, loss, and disappointment float away past untroubled eyes. But time rolls on and much like the crushed growth under an ever-rolling stone, our lives start to fall harder on softened memories. Our lives harden with our heads, and those days of living out short-lived fantasies fade with jelly bean guesses. So as we mature and feign to seek the truth, a small part of me keeps a singular page earmarked for a time when the truth no longer weighs down the air with half-true deceit, and a mind long abandoned will return to grasp fanciful ideas out of an air that’s still light enough to evade our youthful fingertips.