Idiot’s Guide to Counting — Blackbird Archive

← v13n2, Fall 2014

How do you become one

with the horse, riding and becoming

the act of riding,

and the horse becoming the self

and the other at exactly

the same second, counting strides,

counting muscle movement,

counting fences, hurtling over

them with the horse, counting

the everything

of one?

How to become one with

the branches of a tree, a grandfather

tree in an apple orchard

that no longer exists?

Separate one

from tree, horse,

counting numbers, counting

the grandfather tree

to find the solution of

one.

Counting trees, leaves, counting

everything as no longer

existing, counting

trees as one with the everything

that no longer exists.

body time aging

MARGO TAFT STEVER

Margo Taft Stever is the author of four poetry collections: The Lunatic Ball (Kattywompus Press, 2015); The Hudson Line (Main Street Rag, 2012); Frozen Spring (Mid-List Press, 2002), which won the First Series Award for Poetry by Mid-List Press; and Reading the Night Sky (Riverstone Press, 1996), which won the Riverstone Poetry Chapbook Competition. Her poems have appeared in Salamander , Prairie Schooner , Rattapallax , Blackbird , New England Review , and elsewhere. She is the founder of The Hudson Valley Writers’ Center and the founding and current coeditor of Slapering Hol Press. Photo by Ben Larrabee