*** 
Embracing the number 22
© 2008 by Richard Bruns 

Twenty-two have gone
missing from the roll
sheets of my high school annual
as we prepare for our 45th
class reunion. 

Twenty-two who will not
respond to the invitation
to renew old acquaintances
and perhaps make new ones,
discovering or rediscovering
those we didn’t know
or thought we did but hadn’t really,
and now wished we had -
and of those Twenty-two
some of these included therein. 

Twenty-two who will not
dance the night away
to old tunes and maybe
some new ones, or will
not stand as I always did
to the side against the bleachers
wishing I had the courage
and the feet to learn to dance. 

Twenty-two who will
not brag on their children
or grandchildren or describe
their own achievements
like warriors counting coups
or perhaps bemoan their failures
or the bad breaks, for each of these

Twenty-two must certainly
had their share of all these points
plotted on the modulated curves of their lives. 
Twenty-two amongst whom one day
but hopefully not too soon
I will add to and
increase that number. 

So I will do my bragging now,
or do so shortly, perhaps in a different poem
but in which I will not
decry my failures, each of which
was merely a part of the whole
picture, not like the proverbial
jig saw puzzle but a painting,
a watercolor perhaps, impressionistically
rich in color with many more numbers
embedded than this powerful but humble Twenty-two. 

Twenty-two amongst primes and non-primes,
decimals carried out to a thousand places
but with all meaning hidden
in the swirl of water and pigment
which includes also the fractions that, like facets
of gemstone that create the jewel‘s symmetry,
populate the numerical spaces in between
the first number and the last. 
Each becomes increasingly important
as each day is sliced between dawn
and dusk, and dusk and dawn again. 
The countdown is underway
and I embrace it like pi
defining a circle, and smile. 


Richard Bruns 
rbnewsnapa@gmail.com