12647. I FIGURE I DON'T FIGURE

I FIGURE I DON'T FIGURE

In this life you make bets; not

always the right ones, but bets

nonetheless.You can run the table

and come up sweet, or every card

you touch can be dead meat. The

long look is the one you need; out,

far out, beyond the near horizon.

Where other things are happening.

Where other people meet. There's

a cord, is there not, connected to

this lifeline?

-

I'm no T. S Eliot, mind you, but

Madame Osiris is on my mind;

gentlemen, time, gentlemen, time.

Or I'm maybe, loathsome me, undone

by death, etherized here upon some

table with my small-town blues and

those melancholy Mables everyone

else knows first. Even my knowledge

is only second-hand. I don't figure;

I don't figure at all.