For Four

It’s the only number I’ve befriended. Others see it as sailboat or tree. I see it as a sentinel in the snow, a draftee more lost than zero, more alone than one.

Circular and disorderly, I love nonetheless angles, geometry. I spent summers truing four corners of foundations with my founding father.

Four’s the only number that romanced me; it’s the beat, the measure, the box, the square. Quarter and quarto, quadrangle and corner, a small number always big enough to house itself.