missing number

All those years of association
with dome-backed black cats, panic
in passing under rickety ladders,
elevators mysteriously leaping
from twelfth to fourteenth floors –
no intermediary – must have cracked
the glass, leaving only shards of vision
of you:  Transmutation and Magic
to the Mayan elders; Luckiest of All
to Siberian shamans; the Jester; the One
Beyond the Twelve, so sacred you’ve
scared us with your presence, and we
banish you from our numbers, as if
you couldn’t shapeshift back with
blessings so clearly disguised that we
slip right past them, like the missing
floor of an elevator. 

- Patricia Campbell Carlson