Endless Abacus

My daughter has a toy with beads

That zoom along a spiral wire,

An M.C. Escher abacus

That allows for no accounting.



I watch her push the beads around.

I push the beads around myself,

Convinced I'm entertaining her

But really entertaining me.



The beads that go around come back,

But never in the same sequence,

And no one cluster can be forced

To go all the way together.



A stupid trope occurs to me

One bleary-eyed dawn play session,

That this is the true wheel of fate,

Contorted, asymmetrical,



Arriving at no summation,

But as with energy and mass

Constantly coming up the same,

Defying the dichotomy



Of argumentative humans

Who seem to prefer to believe

In the gods of Would, Could, and Should,

Or the God of It-Is-Written.



Here twirls the law of nothing lost,

Nothing to be gained: decisions

Can only move things along,

As good either way, right or wrong.