Beneath the Shadow of Numbers

 Poetics Aside Prompt:

Today’s prompt is a Two-for-Tuesday prompt. For those new to the challenge, you have the option of writing to the first prompt or the second prompt–or even both if you feel so inclined. Here they are:

• Write a bright poem.
• Write a dark poem.

The 'dark' in this poem is a shadow...

I found an old appointment calendar while cleaning out a drawer;
now that busy splattered page is nothing anymore,
but numbers testifying in modest simplicity
the heart's wildest undoing where the present used to be...

In the after-light of day

When toil and turmoil tested fray

Have donned their shrouds of whisper-gray

A digit on Time’s chart

Its nullified numeric stance

Veils the shadow where now we dance

Hungry for laughter and romance

To ravage mortal heart

The dark and light soon coalesce

Upon the parchment-metered tress

Where only you and I caress

Its darling memory

For at the stroke of midnight chime

We render our stuttered rhyme

Into the number-crypt of Time

And past’s eternity

How mute those numbers on the page

Sealing upon its mystic stage

The echo of age upon age

Suffered with hand and heart

The ravaging of Time’s bequeath

The shuddering of heav’n and earth

In the intangible half-breath

Of numbers on a chart

© Janet Martin