muggins
for GW
You say a people lived who counted not
by peaks but by the valleys of their hands:
eight passes in between the knuckles, see,
and clever bastards, even did their math
that way. What would they make of this whole pack
of nonsense we call “playing cards”? I think
they’d count sixteen two, sixteen four,
and take the extra point at thirty-two.
For only landed English gentry with
ten fingers, too much time on hand, and God!
a poet too could make up all these rules
that add up nowhere else but on this board.
At least when we play, taking points off one
another, we don’t play for petty cash —
just honor: who, when it’s late, can best keep score.