Euclid’s Expertise

I’m no expert in subjects like geometry, people or what we call space,
but I am open to learning
about any thing
And I have discovered that even when nobody is looking
the sun will shine somewhere
and no body around will notice
the disarray.
No(round)body wants to believe that rounding up or down
is the same,
or that this terra Nuevo is solid and
stretches flat out
beyond sight.
It is easier to focus on what you know.

It is most difficult to sift dirt for gold nuggets
while wearing white gloves.
I wish I had known we needed phosphorus.

Look at the moon! Soak in the sun. between the two,
the eclipse begins.
From this angle the tone is clear.

Between an apple and an orange,
orchard and grove,
notch and needle, I cannot sew,
so I make more pi.

Good shoes, firmly planted, back then
we did not notice we were stuck.
We bury the dead, cover up our dreams, hide our private parts,
and keep our hands to ourselves without a second thought.
We skim across surfaces,
as if buoyancy was our gift,
it could be.

I am no biologist, but I insist on using my senses
to read lines
left in the sand
that glisten like gold and contain
everything we need to know about measuring up
to the given space
for a square peg on a plane.

We needed to make an
impression
that would resonate further than a single dimension.

Naturally, perfect shapes are quite rare
in nature.
Fractals occur nearly everywhere,
proving patterns are purely
people problems.




Painting by Jusepe de Ribero (1591-1692) in Getty Center [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

A line meant...

Look at that desk, he said, five-hundred-page shuffle,

Don’t tell me that is the sign of busy,

Don’t give me some stupid story.

Obviously, to the untrained eye, the olio of font shapes, ink colors,

mixed mediums, led, lead, led to rushed conclusions-false starts-

See the red? I pled. This shows a state of flux.

Minus. He said, Excuses. I use that color too.

What do you do all day? Rotate sheets-scribble letters-

And he was a numbers guy, a math man, a counter of beans,

so the only way to balance

our opposing views was to speak strict geometry,

and stepping outside on  that crisp clear night I said,

See the equilateral triangle up there-look up-

Venus on the bottom right, Mars atop and the

Crescent moon? He smiled at me like the moon.

And said, I see, but what does that have to do with you,

You haven’t shown me anything new.

The next night, the same time, the book keeper asked

the book collector, Red anything today? She denied doing any further editing.

He preferred being in black himself.

There is no less of a mess on that desk. Tell me, Sweetie,

Have you gotten somewhere today? We still needed to reconcile.

So I took him back outside and told him to look up at the scalene now,

Venus sinking, the moon smirking, Mars winking wide and weak,

and asked him what does it mean?

He could not figure out the answer I was looking for,

So I helped him a bit and filled the space in with the correct operators,

Operate-hers, Calculate-hers and Compute-hers

were all aptly named for gender roles.

Without needing further proof,

he understood the expansion and rotation,

All at once he said

Read me one of your poems, Please. 

Image credit By Smithsonian Institution from United States [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons.