Year of birth, dash, year of death,
a duplication of the same
big round number,
and my son, wide-eyed, points
to the problem, a delightfully
simple subtraction
problem.
Mike White is the author of How to Make a Bird with Two Hands (Word Works) and Addendum to a Miracle (Waywiser), recent winner of the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize. His work has appeared previously in Switched-on Gutenberg, and in print journals including The New Republic, Ploughshares, Poetry, and The Yale Review. He lives in Salt Lake City and teaches at the University of Utah.
Copyright 2018, Mike White