King Of All Numbers Why Would Who Want To Be

[to e.e. cummings]

king of all numbers why would who want to be

subscripting in code subsisting on...

I CAN'T even finish the sentence that way

who wept at word problems every day in schools

vowing never (as a rule) on Christmas vacations

to think about speeding trains coming from

opposite directions and to leave the wallpaper

right there on the wall no matter how much it peeled

when I grew up and it is turned out that way
I laughed, in my own ballet, that I 

never did have to measure it for windows

just as I suspected.

I am not Chief Herder of numbers and I like it

that way I DON'T care if the earth is flat or

round I'm sure God did His best when he made it

I don't need to ask: what is all this shining for?

when I feel it

and the Great Conversation I would like to have

is the one you don't get graded on or judged for

in the box store break rooms (after you leave)

the one that winds through roses as if the wind

were a trellis held up on either side  by opposing angels.

mary angela douglas 1 april 2015

Note on the poem: Of course I care how the world is, of course I know there are beautiful harmonies of numbers, synchronicites of numbers, there is a golden mean, there is a music of the spheres and God blessed and blesses those good with numbers. I am just expressing the feeling I had especially in junior high and high school math of being force fed numbers without understanding at all what they represented and the frustration of being asked to solve problems I knew were not, would not and could not be my own.