3/03/03

like 47+74, and its sum, 121:

the same read backwards as forwards.

I saw the day coming

and remembered what I’d read

about palindromes: our generation

the first in a thousand years to live

aibophobia: fear of palindromes

through two palindromic years,

1991 and 2002.  The expert

in superstition says

we’re crazy for patterns,

stitch meaning to numbers,

find threads of God or ghosts.

Do geese see God?

Easy to make your own, add two digits

and their reverse. Take any big number,

divisible by 11 --

that awkward number, the china

after one plate breaks, the disciples

once Judas had fled.

Never odd or even

Going to church, early morning,

I saw parallel tracks

pressed in fresh snow

leading out of a neighbor’s garage

and down the alley, thought only,

Charlie went to work early today.

Live not on evil

never imagining he would not

drive back up those same tracks

again that night.  It’s true,

what the expert says, that we want to believe

the rare event is more significant

than the everyday.  That we crave

symmetry.  Massive, they said,

a heart forty percent larger

than normal.  53, just like his father.

Palindrome, from the Greek, meaning

running back again

SUSAN STEGER WELSH is a native Minnesotan who was awarded a 2008 Minnesota State Arts Board fellowship.  Her first poetry collection, Rafting on the Water Table, (New Rivers Press, 2000) was a finalist for a Minnesota Book Award.  Her essay, “My Good Bad Luck”, appears in Riding Shotgun: Women Write About Their Mothers, (Borealis Books 2008).