Algebra: A Caricature

24 April 2012

Yesterday I visited the math room

of my Alma mater.

Odd that strangers study 

with the phantoms of my former classmates.

The teacher is not gone,

kindly algebra-enthusiast

who wears the patient scars of years,

indelible chalk stains on her hands

and streaking through her hair

and drawing abstract art on

her loose, long sleeves.

She is forever

the proverbial professor

(not a little odd)

teaching in that room

with one eternal ticking clock

old when I was there- and frozen

In this room

where I bent over figures

with one orange calculator

twisting my being into 

mental acrobatics

not intended ever for mere mortals-

where I learned

frustration, anger, and the very rare

but precious

victory.

A million middle school emotions

mounting the hypotenuse

and cresting at the most acute of points

to slip down the straight edge 

at long last crashing

into the right angle.

A million is a rational number

unlike the end of Pi,

the favorite pleasure

of the dear professor

who marvels daily over

endless mysterious of manipulated sums.

I wonder

now that I recognize

arithmetic

as the abstract algorithms 

of the universe

which were chalked before me every day

the dust choking me

ignorant

believing it was nonsense

or else cruelty-

now that I realize 

that beauty and pain

are reciprocals

of one another

I wish to thank her

for the exercise 

of Truth.