title inspired by Jen Soong’s poem of the same name
Two thousand eleven. That’s what it all adds up to
when we add my great nephew’s birth year with his older
brother’s birth year, plus my daughter’s birth year,
plus my own. Two thousand eleven. This number
relates to my daughter’s ease in the world and
my great nephew’s joy in making art out of acorns
and my own thrill in writing and my other great nephew’s
pleasure in finding numbers to add together. We are,
of course, much more than the sum of our parts.
But we are, also, of course, shaped by such numbers—
how many times we have walked by the sea together,
how many times we have circled the kitchen island playing chase,
how many bounces we have done on the trampoline
and how many pie day races we’ve completed together.
There is this equation in which tag and I Spy and tickling
and peregrine falcons and the tears in my eyes equal
fierce and wild love. There is this piece of paper covered
in carefully shaped numbers. There are the parabolic curves
of our smiles. There is this scent of woodsmoke
still clinging to my hair.
Posts Tagged ‘math’
And in the End, What Does A Life Add Up To?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged family, love, math, numbers on November 30, 2025| 4 Comments »
Love, Like Math
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, math, wave on July 14, 2024| 4 Comments »
People think it’s a moment of Eureka!
But it’s more like a wave,
said the mathematician,
and though he was speaking
of inventing new math,
I thought of discovering new love,
a wave of startling amplitude,
the thrill of energy passing through,
a trough of fear and a crest
of yes. A whole lotta blue.
I don’t remember much
of physics, but I recall
the surge, the crash,
the holding my breath.
I remember the certainty
I would drown, the equal terror
of finding myself on dry land.
It’s not just a flash of insight, he said.
I thought of how long I’ve been
solving for love.
Yeah, I said. I understand.
On Pi Day, I Remember Baking Pies with My Son
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged baking, constant, love, math, mother, pi, pie, son on March 14, 2022| 4 Comments »
3.14.22
Tonight, instead of serving pie,
I serve the memory of pie—
serve the memory of pumpkins
we grew in the garden
then processed into custard.
Serve the memory of years
we made gluten-free crusts.
Serve the memory of your rhubarb plant
that will rise more robust this spring,
memory of thinly sliced apples,
key limes, lemon merengue,
and all those tart cherries
we harvested together.
I serve the joy we shared
in celebrating a constant
necessary to the geometry of the world.
I serve the thrill in knowing
there is something
both transcendental and infinite,
something death can never touch,
something ubiquitous that defines
the world we inhabit.
And though it is math,
it is no less love,
something that helps us
understand our universe,
something that hints
at the grand design
that amidst great catastrophe
continues to hold it all together.
Reconciling
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, loss, math, mother, reconciling, son on October 12, 2021| 18 Comments »
And there on the statement,
between the hardware store expense
and the do-it-yourself car wash,
was the charge
for Henderson and Sons Funeral Home.
How to reconcile this tide of loss?
Nowhere in my books
is a column for devastation.
No account for anguish,
for the loss of a slender young man
who loved ice cream
and cherries and helped me
roast pumpkins for pie.
There’s no way this number
on the statement can equate
to the boy who threw rocks in the river,
who snuggled with me
on the couch before school,
who built cars out of cardboard
and shish kebob sticks.
I can’t make it equal the seventeen years
we swam and hiked and baked
and sang—nor the years
he wept and raged and ached,
those years I learned how to pray.
In these unmoored days,
when I am more driftwood than boat,
I float through the churning wreckage of hope
and beg myself, stay open.
I lack the callous math
for such reconciliations.
I sob into the columns,
and the heart takes the lead—
it knows nothing of counting, of sums.
It knows only to love, to love.
Code
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged binary, code, love, math, uncertainty on July 18, 2020| 2 Comments »
inspired by Wayne Muller
I do not love you in 0s and 1s,
some straightforward proposition—
our love, my dear, is gray, is .772,
refuses to be simplified, reduced.
There is maybe in us. And perhaps.
Wouldn’t it be easier if love were like math—
a logical answer we could arrive at,
with binary digits to map it all out.
Instead, a word, a tone, a should
makes what is certain slip off its string
and the bits and values keep changing.
Somewhere between the 0 and 1
is a meadow where we might watch the moon,
a garden where outlandish fruits still grow,
a mountain we will never stop climbing.
Wanting a Fractal Love
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Corona Virus, fibonacci sequence, golden spiral, humanity, love, math, nature, pattern on April 5, 2020| 7 Comments »
Eadem mutata resurgo
Latin motto: Changed, I rise again
Sometimes in spring
I can still find the dried seeds
of the mountain mahogany
clinging to the ends
of the branches—
feathery golden spirals,
logarithmic and light.
How the universe
loves a pattern,
an elegant mathematics—
this same spiral is found
in spider webs, sunflowers,
snail shells, cyclones, the arms
of galaxies, the human ear,
even in the nerves of my cornea
that help me to see
the very pattern that
gives me the ability to see.
I want to find the self-similar spiral curve
that informs kindness and strength
as it spreads through a people. I want
to find the equation that calculates
an exponentially growing radius of love.
I want to find the dynamic beauty in us
that amplifies as it moves out
with ever increasing speed
from the infinite center.
I want to embody the trustworthy constant
that inspires our species to be better,
want to know the recursive courage that drives us
to thrive in difficult times.
Our potential, endless, yet humble
as last year’s seed in my hand, ready
to be planted, to sprout, to grow.
One Innovation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged curve, innovation, line, math on March 3, 2020| 2 Comments »
Poet’s Respond in Rattle!
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged math, numbers, poem, poetry, poets respond, Rattle, space, Voyager 2 on December 14, 2018| 2 Comments »
Hi friends,
the poem from a few days ago about the Voyager 2 leaving our heliosphere, “By the Numbers,” was accepted last night by Rattle.com for their series Poets Respond, poems about the news. Here is a link to the text and audio!
One on the Floor
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged frustration, math, poem, poetry on November 26, 2018| 1 Comment »
After Playing on the Parent Team in the Mathlete Olympiad
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged certainty, math, poem, poetry on June 2, 2017| Leave a Comment »
Odd joy in the pink eraser rubbings,
joy in the silence just after the timer says start,
joy in the turning of the inner cogs
and the way that the numbers
sprint across the page,
joy in the scratch of the pencil, the stumble
of confidence, in the scrapping of the route
so that a new route can emerge,
joy in arriving at an answer,
an answer so certain you can label it
with units and circle it and know
that tomorrow it would turn out
the same way again, not like any
other part of your life.