Shower Song in Primes

One twist, a gasp of metal hiss.

Three seconds, then a stumble
knees against tile, body braced
for the first hard shock of falling heat.

Five drips, six, seven, fingers spread,
water crashes against the cup of palm,
rolling, leaping, shattering into rivulets
that chase each other down the wrist.

Eleven streams, eleven paths,
racing over shoulder, hip, heel
some dart like minnows, others linger,
curling, coiling, whispering against skin.

Thirteen pulses of liquid weight,
a river uncaged, unthinking,
battering scalp, tracing spine,
gathering in eddies at the ankles.

Seventeen beads trail down the wall,
slow, reluctant, silver against ceramic,
hesitant to abandon their smooth descent.

Nineteen breaths, no, gulps,
lungs greedy for thickened air,
soap streaking an arm in pale ribbons,
lather foaming in uneven, giddy waves.

Twenty-three more heartbeats,
steady under the drum of falling streams,
each second swallowed by the rush,
each muscle drunk on the weightlessness.

Twenty-nine moments before the chill
before the drain pulls its last offering,
before the handle creaks backward,
before the mist begins to break.
y with a loose shoelace stops, kneels, ties,
and somewhere, a window overlooks them all, a cat blinks.

Had she held tighter,
had the driver left a breath sooner,
had the boy ignored the droop in his lace,
had the window been curtained
what constellations of consequence unravel?

The accident that does not happen,
the stranger never met,
the news unreported,
the orbit unbroken,
the war unfought,
the silence untouched.

Everything must sum to one.
One choice, then another, then another still,
folding into the next, multiplied, unfurling,
like Pascal’s steps through time
the weighted curve of inevitability mistaken for free will.

We do what we do because we must,
because we cannot want anything else,
because our hands, our thoughts, our breath
fall precisely where they were always meant to land.

And yet, when a poet stops to watch
a leaf, curling, sienna-edged, descending
why does he not count its rotations,
measure its rate of fall,
compute the air resistance,
but instead –

Finds himself caught

And why?

What sum could name the reticence between a falling leaf
and the ground that waits to catch it?
What theorem accounts for the way his breath
catches – not in calculation, but in awe?

He could chart its course, plot resistance,
reduce its motion to numbers and force,
but no equation writes the way it turns,
hesitates, wavers as though deciding,
then lands – graceful, aimless, precise.

So he watches.

Not to solve, but to see.

Not to measure, but to know.

Not to predict, but to wonder.

And wonder

for all its immeasurable weight

is the only thing that will not sum.