A Math Puzzle
Carol Coffee Reposa
November 28, 2021
Grat.i.tude: Nine letters, five consonants, four vowels;
Middle English, from Old French and Late Latin.
One: A full lunar eclipse
That reconfigures the heavens.
One: A solitary Monarch
Magically materializing in my garden.
Two: Glasses of champagne
I savor at a surprise birthday party.
Three: Doses of vaccine in clear glass vials
That neutralize millions of losses.
Four: Wobbly first steps
Taken by my newest grandchild.
Twelve: Fragrant red long-stems
A neighbor leaves on my porch.
Twenty: The number of 500-milligram aquamarine capsules
That keep me out of the hospital.
Infinity: Watching the sun slowly rise
On Thanksgiving morning.
The poems, reviews, and essays of Carol Coffee Reposa have appeared or are forthcoming in The Atlanta Review, The Evansville Review, The Texas Observer, Southwestern American Literature, The Valparaiso Review, and other journals and anthologies. Author of five books of poetry—At the Border: Winter Lights, The Green Room, Facts of Life, Underground Musicians, and New and Selected Poems 2018—Reposa was a finalist in The Malahat Review Long Poem Contest (1988), winner of the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center Poetry Contest (1992), and winner of the San Antonio Public Library Arts & Letters Award (2015). She also has received five Pushcart Prize nominations in addition to three Fulbright-Hays Fellowships for study in Russia, Peru, Ecuador, and Mexico. A member of the Texas Institute of Letters and of the editorial staff at Voices de la Luna, she is the 2018 Texas Poet Laureate.
