A Game of Bingo

Number one ("Kelly's eye" / "At the beginning"):
undisputed with me, the apple of your eye
that filled the pastry-baking flour-white Sundays.

Number four ("Knock at the door"):
it's Mrs Wisner ready to go
and hurrying you all a flurry

to find that lucky marker, your felt-tip
rabbit's foot paw-printing circler of hope
heart-beating your way to a full house.

Off you go number eighty-eight ("two fat ladies")
waddling their gossip to the Community Centre;
their heels clickety-click like number sixty-six;

and I am calling the numbers tonight:
my memories go round and wait their turn.
Number twenty-three ("Thee and me/The Lord is my Shepherd")

I call out seventy-eight at ("Heaven's gate")
to hear your number twenty-one ("Key of the door")
or your number four ("Knock at the door")

for number seventy-nine ("One last time").
I cannot call lucky seven ("God's in his heaven");
I cannot call number eighty-five ("Staying Alive").

All I can do is mark a line for you tonight:
O mother of certain love in random life
whose "full house" still calls in clamorous time.