Advice for Quantum Sorrows

One should shoot for the average
Of around three expressions

Concerned with death or sadness,
Mean, per poem. Much more than that

Becomes merely lachrymose,
Much less becomes foolishness.

Bear in mind that by nightfall
Numbers may transform themselves

Back into spirits, spirits
That will collapse back to words

If you measure them at dawn.
Statistics evaporate,

But they’re pleasant to collect
Anyway. They’re so quiet.

They lie still, those little points,
So neatly, so tightly packed.

Soak them in twilight shadows
And watch ghosts blossom from them,

The decline of the empire
After a brief rebellion,

The rise of superstition,
The collapse of the old faiths,

Demons, spirits, bones, blood, tombs,
All that fun stuff known to brood

In the absence of numbers.
They are what numbers become.