MATHEMATICS

 

My scalp prickled with tiny beads of anxiety.
Everyone had left school but me and Mr. Heaney,
who hovered like an unwelcome shadow, occasionally
rising from the fortress of his desk,
hands clasped behind his back,
gray New Balance sneakers
all but silent in their slow, deliberate steps.
The blackboard had been wiped clean of equations,
dark and certain as the night sky,
with only
a few ghostly wisps of that other world showing through.
I was trying and failing, trying and failing to master
long division and algebra, the worksheet paper
worn nearly to nothing from my endless revisions.
The universe, he liked to remind us, is made of numbers.
You must know this if you are to know anything.
I did not doubt this, though it was a language
the Creator had clearly chosen to keep from me.
I labored on as the afternoon light gradually shifted,
the blank face of the clock counting out its lengthening
seconds, each with a small sense of finality.
I could imagine the invisible threads connecting
all things, like the elaborate webs of spiders,
glistening, though I gave them neither name nor meaning.
I could hear the voices of what sounded like summer
outside the window, voices rising and falling,
could almost make out the words that elicited their sudden laughter, though it all seemed, in those
strictly measured moments, to be light years away.

MYSTERY LIGHT

 

Sometimes, when I'm in an old building --
marble floors and dark wood smelling of history --
I can't help but press one of the light switches
on the wall, those ancient metal buttons
blackened by the touch of countless fingers,
curious to see if they are still functional.
I did the same as a kid, in church basements
and schools, houses with unfinished attics,
half-expecting someone to storm through the door,
demanding to know who flipped the switch,
the one that controlled the whole neighborhood.
We certainly lived in enough places with wiring
from the turn of the century, lights flickering,
unsure if they wanted to work or not;
some you'd have to flip three times, rapidly,
to wake, or press with just the right force.
Not surprisingly, more than one of those houses
burned to the ground after we had left.
These days -- so many years turned to shadow
in my periphery -- I can't help but wonder,
against my own reason, if I'm turning on the light
in some distant room of the past, my brother
blowing ribbons of cigarette smoke, balanced on
the narrow window ledge, my older sister
curling her hair for a date, telling another corny joke.
There are rooms I would not want to enter --
some known, some forever closed -- but I'd take
my chances to see those faces lit up again.

VISITING AMELIA EARHART'S HOUSE WITH MY DAUGHTER

 

We slow to a stop on Fairmount Avenue, the gentle swaying of summer Ash and Elm rising above us on either side, casting an imperfect net of shadows around our sneakered feet. The tall Victorian house has been well cared for, newly painted, as though lifted from another century and gently placed on this small slope of earth. People still live here, so we are mindful not to step upon the freshly-clipped lawn, or to gawk too long into the small curved windows above; though it's easy to imagine the face of that young girl looking out, dreamy and despondent in this foreign place, a harsh Minnesota winter swirling outside the glass. Was her adolescent mind already in flight, mapping a course amongst the heavens which no one else could see? My daughter and I wonder why some details seem clearer when farther away, ponder whether the sky is the greatest of all distances, or in fact its opposite. We have no schedule to keep, and nowhere in particular to be on this day, which makes such questions come more easily, if not their answers. The earth is tilting, though we cannot tell from where we stand; the afternoon sun is both warm and receding.

STEMS AND VINES

 

I didn't know the names of most,

other than the obvious, but I would take my time in that small corner shop

at Victoria and Grand, as if I had a plan,

pulling together a wild array

of color and design, jagged stars

and spears of shifting green,

delicate faces receding into their

velvety folds, varieties you might not

expect to find side by side,

but that made sense to my willfully

uneducated eye, bringing them

home to surprise you with.

Though you tended to eschew tradition

of all kinds, you allowed me this

bit of old-fashioned courting,

a word I have since grown to love,

the shy earnestness and ritual behind it,

its long, noble history, the eternal doorstep

we eventually come to, hoping for entry.

Those days are long gone,

as are you, and there's nowhere

to bring you flowers now,

no patch of earth or marbled stone,

not even a vase upon this dusty bookshelf.

The shadows here move without shape;

the wind crowded with your absence.

I wish I could remember

the names of those flowers now,

each spectacular species from another world.

They would be my words, as my words

in turn would bloom for you,

dark and glistening with the earth,

declaring, in no small measure,

everything you must already know.