The hairs on your head...
I’ve been thinking about poems on the subject of counting. Sounds random but that is the theme of the National Poetry Competition and also the Poetry Society Stanza competition. I’m a member of a Stanza in Mole Valley Poets so eligible for both. These competitions are good for making you think, quite apart from anything else. My initial response was to muse on the Bible verse which says that the hairs on our heads are numbered. I ended up with a poem which amused me but is probably not what the competition judges will be looking for - so I’m sharing it here…
Numbering hairs The hairs on my head are numbered or so I’m told- it’s meant to reassure. My hair thins as I grow old there goes number nine hundred and four. I imagine some divine stock-keeping system, a cherub doing daily entry (I lost three hairs today, but he missed them, messing up the whole inventory). Maybe it’s a spreadsheet, a page per person, feeding into a totalled whole, a weekly report on a summarised version presented to the boss and when some guy loses all his hair there’s joy among the angels – no need to count him, a head this bare, to them it’s gain, not loss and there’s relief they’re only counting head hair not arms or legs or hair elsewhere in places we’d not want to share. No, head hair counting’s plenty as till a bald pate starts to shine the numbers are changing all the time. Even while I wrote these lines I lost another twenty.