math & numbers

Counting up

First four decades time’s a hero
Then stops suddenly all the fun
Forty arrives a stranger new
But life is like a grand old tree
Strong yet flexible at the core
Roots ever deepen to stay alive
At this age there’s no real fix
Just patches is all, ’til heaven
Although it still be not too late
So let the autumn soul shine
Breathe and let thy life go zen

Terri Guillemets

Self-expression

in the desert southwest
doves call themselves out
and say their own names
in self-identifying syllables —
two in “ink-uh” of the little inca
eurasian’s 3-noted “you-ray-zhun”
four of the “white-wingèd dove”
and the unmistakable five notes
of the song “mourning dove i am”

Terri Guillemets

The King’s maths

“What is seven times six?”

Rabbit wondered what to say. “Forty-two” was the right answer. But the King, who could do no wrong, even in arithmetic, might decide, for the purposes, that “fifty-four” was an answer more becoming to the future of the country. Was it, then, safe to say “Forty-two”?

“Your Majesty,” he said, “there are several possible answers to this extraordinarily novel conundrum. At first sight the obvious solution would appear to be ‘forty-two.’  The objection to this solution is that it lacks originality. I have long felt that a progressive country such as ours might well strike out a new line in the matter. Let us agree that in future seven sixes are fifty-four.”

The King scratched his head. “The correct answer,” he said, “is, or will be in the future, fifty-four.”

“Make a note of that,” whispered the Chancellor to the Chief Secretary.

—A. A. Milne, “Prince Rabbit,” 1924, a little altered