poetry 2017 / 089

For today’s prompt, write a metric poem. Most of the world uses the metric system to measure things out; not so much in the States. But there are meters and liters, and the occasional millimeters. Also, poetry uses metrics (the study of meter in poetry). And metrics, in a general sense, can measure various things by a common denominator–even inches and/or teaspoons.

Travel Metrics

a photograph

of my long dead mother

faded into seventies amber

like the walls of my father's house.

Taken when I was...ten?

Sent off, processed, printed,

sent back by second class mail

(transport, weather and strikes permitting)

admired

stuck in a album

left in a drawer until my father died,

stored in a cardboard box in my sister's cellar.

During a clearout

she scans it, emails it;

a packet of data sent by a path

calculated by router metrics

for path length, bandwidth, load and hop count,

path cost, delay, MTU, reliability and communications cost.

I receive it seconds later.