The Rolling Dead: Inestimable

Inestimable:

I've played in my head
at guesses.

How many baseballs
would fill this room?
How many people would it take
to lift a bus?
What portion of my expected lifed
do I spend at red lights?
What percentage of the world's population
will attend my funeral?

There is time on the train
for this dither.
Time and plenty.
I haven't worked out just how much time it has eaten,
this commute,
how much it leaves on the plate,
because that would turn the distraction
back on itself, a train mouthing its own tail,
swallowing, swallowing,
until the steel ring crumples and rends
and leaves an epic of tin,
me at the center.

I learned there is an App for that.
You can ask your phone
"How many inches to the moon?" and
a woman's calm voice
will take away your uncertainty,
mathematical, metaphysical.

They named this woman,
who is not real,
with the same name as my daughter,
who is, from what I recall.
I see her on the fleeting stops
between the train doors closing.

Today she smiled at me, newly awake,
touseled, eyes barely cracked.
I remember looking at the clock,
train schedules playing in my head,
trying to gauge the regret
of the twenty minutes it would cost me
against the worth of five to
lay there and hold her
against the pry of time.

I wasn't even out the door
before I knew I'd weighed wrongly.
The minutes of life
do not all
demand the same measure.