You wouldn’t believe how quick they grew —
Our babies were men now. Lifting bags of concrete
they rebuilt cities, slab by slab, reinforcing cracks.

I’d asked for this not to be recorded;
this failure on my part, to be a good
parent; 

monkey mathematics

A monkey grabs one nut here, one nut
there, and two more over there.
He counts them with care.

I find six errors in the proofreading manual & the irony doesn’t tickle me.
I am enraged by typos, poor formatting, missing commas. This is my Big Girl Job,
the one I always wanted —

What seems to be the problem ? He asks
in that slightly condescending tone.
Seems,     I think,      Seems.
It seems, I say,
that I have a problem with my inner fish,

My Dad once dismissed a friend as a hypocrite,
which I took to be an induction to the truth.
Lately though, I think the things I love in you
I love because they’re grossly inconsistent.

We are eating dessert when the urge overcomes her
to scrawl mathematics, the night ticks on

Tom Giles once asked me if I had tools and at that
time I didn’t because I was fifteen maybe sixteen

I count:

four cows in the meadows. Made
friends with them this Spring.