By Carolyn Pinet
I have no idea why
my mother always ended
her notes and cards
with 13 kisses.
Was she defying "unlucky"
or simply convinced,
against all odds,
that she could magic a negative
into a positive?
During the war she sat with me
on a beach in Wales,
while bombs pounded near and far,
and she waited for my flying father
to return home.
She sang to me, two in 1945,
about blackbirds in a pie,
all twenty-four of them,
alive and twittering away,
when it was cut open
and set before the king.
Numbers are funny, remarkable things.
Stevenson immortalized 13 in one whole poem,
the Bible conjures Three in One,
and, all these years later,
each of my mother's letters
still sports 13 exes
It's intriguing what figures and crosses can do,
how birds and kisses can elude us,
spread wings and fly away,
then come back down to earth,
break into song
and simply astonish us.