and the woman at the counter streaked a tremoring fluorescent off the laminate of my driver's license — but how many days seem to stain my face now?

at 17 when in west springfield we lost the car, swallowed it up in midnight entire (too high to cut from cloth the landmarks, everything changed already, razed & remade, by our second circuit; and was that my cousin in the bowling alley?), turned on sidewalks under street lamps of sodium vapor, the bomber jacket with a patch tacked to it he pointed at — an eagle, an arrow, a radio headset — then thru the grates of his teeth, swept out thick of a seal brown mustache, "not a day over thirteen" — thus the recipient of a private wire not even intended for broadcast

at 21 the man in the lot in the broad sun with everything he owned, laughing at the boy of fifteen, appeared here, surely absent elsewhere

a divergence, an acceleration: dull shell of the seed of a fable

shown now, a glare, a black light, a tentative concession to tests of authenticity. . . then, finally, resolution amongst the symbols and how remarkable!

'so we have the same birthday!', yes i said to her

'just a different year', yes she laughed

'just a lot of years, a lot a lot of years'

and coffee grounds & whiskey for the balance

yes a fable: 'the old woman & boy split coffee grounds & whiskey at the counter of a rite-aid and became then the same age exactly'

(and which age? the variants abound)

then told to children stirred by numbers, children gauged by numbers, children trusting in the measure of things, in any of measure whatsoever of things — the mercury bulb or the bimetal strip, the meter or the league; the brush & its colors, tongue & its flavors:

every instrument a new sense testifying, a reduplication of the senses:

any part of a thing the surface of the thing, to the sense shaped for the thing:

a fable today, a pencil mark on the door frame

a look, a pointing, a pointing to nowhere so long it becomes remarkable, a point instated

& the point appointing: a date, a chore, a fable — light painted by the prism, light pouring from the cell, pulp strained, lumped punctuation