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aubade for gradation

david sharp

i will miss you, my numerology,
like i will miss the digits of my hands.

i will miss the ticking of your clocks and the rolling over of your odometric      wheels,
counting out change against the counter and setting the temperature of the      oven.
i will miss your experimental replicability.

perhaps most i will miss your zero, your absence marker, your symmetric      emptiness;
top to bottom, side to side and all the way around—
i could cut you in half with a mirror over and over and over
and you will still add up to nothing. all ways.

i will not drive against your limits anymore,
or measure myself against percentile understandings of perfection—
this is the dawn, my lover, my abacus, and you are a cat. an owl.
i am a herald lark, a day lily,
the granite face of a cliff and the rotation of the spheres in space;

i am turning over slowly, marking my revolutions by light and the aging of      my skin.
i am no longer your calendar, your accounting.
i am sorry, my heart, my calculator,
but this is dawn, and it’s time to count the sparrows by colors,
to add up my name with memories,
to mark the missing of you in ache and ritual.