Kathryn Jacobs

ON THE SPECTRUM

Listen to Audio Version read by Melissa Cotter.

"Oops! Just a fox" (voice chanting). "Try again –
now this one is a number! " And its clear
how much more satisfying numbers are
than ordinary things like foxes, though

at three, you have to wonder. If it's us
he's imitating – grown-ups so blasé Option #8
we hardly notice neon foxes, though
we're obviously obsessed with counting – then

perhaps they feel like runes to him. So young,
too young for our abstractions. Yet he knows
there must be something in the block-print shape
that matters, so he chants them ("one-two-three… ")

and at the playground, stops where three paths meet
to stare at asphalt choices. Swings and forts
recede into the background, filtered out:
a small boy frozen, eyes glazed, asks "which way? "

Kathryn Jacobs is the editor of The Road Not Taken, A Journal of Formal Poetry. She is also a professor, a poet, the author of five volumes of poetry and numerous individually published poems (including Wordgathering). She is also the mother of Raymond Jacobs, 1987-2005. The following poems are written (as always) in his memory. But they are also written for a new member of our circle: Dan –