Quantification Of Quality Poem by Sonny Rainshine

How many feathers has the fan?
he once asked me as we watched the peacocks
shashay on the grass.
Feathers? That’s absurd; it is the beauty of the bird
that brings me here.

Might not a specimen of 40 feathers
exceed the loveliness of one with only 39?
he went on. Does not a palette of 14 colors
make a prettier landscape than 4?

The pleasure of nature and of arts
is not found in quantification, I replied,
or enumeration but in the whole and its parts,
not in atomic tables and charts.

As he attempted time and again
to sneak upon the birds to count
their feathers, the sunset and its countless colors,
the trees and their chaotic symmetry,
the immeasurable vault of the sky
encompassed the two of us,
and I knew that tonight
I just might count the stars.