Monday Poem

“Despite its mystic chic the square root of pi is indeterminate
and senseless, like many other things.”  –Roshi Bob

On the Difficult Terminal Illness of a Beloved:

Black holes, Big Bang, Bada Bing,
quantum space, worm holes, theory of strings;
space is a smorgasbord of metaphors of things

Inside out, upside down, left and right,
geometry, calculus, depth and height;
Pythagoras’ spheres all sing in the dead of night

Who went where? What was what? Which was when?
Fortune and fame, persecution and plot, since time began
history alliterates again and again

Two plus two, four less four, nine times nine,
the square root of pi, theorems and proofs, the curve of a sine;
math is a simile for the shape of time

Bacteria, wisteria, DNA,
diphtheria, alstroemeria, the end of days;
biology’s an accident of come-what-mays
…………………………

Jim Culleny, 7/31/10