Scalable Importance

The bathroom scale sits collecting
Dust as its owner grows too sick
To care what it might register.

The far-flung tools of the empire
Of hegemonic measurement
Often come to this. Quantities

Invented to coordinate
Are never stably important.
Who cares how many cups of beer

You need to produce per diem
Per laborer when you’re finished
Overseeing the pyramids?

Measurement never goes away.
It just moves on to something else.
One day, the gods have souls to weigh,

The next, doctors count your blood cells.
The point of scales at any scale
Is to synchronize those details.