Word Problems Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

they imagined that numbers were beautiful
and in imagination, they were
and lines intersected the arcs of cloudy

stars and exponential were the rains.
then the rolled up shades on the windows
of the wall paper measured walls

came up short and we stood embarrassed at chalk boards
the last of our kind:
never solving the right equations

veering off into hopscotched equivalents
wearing all the colours at once
and making our memories out of little stories

so we got no dessert and we had no retorts
who weren't heading out for the Space Program;
who had no projects for the Science Fairs

but went about the house declaiming with a dreamy stare:
'Heard melodies are sweet but those unheard are sweeter...'*

till words huddled under no roofs and we, their vagabonds,
gold and silver with the fairytales disdained
tried our best to remain with no remainders

while numbers jeered or tried to lacking words:
aw come in out of the rain.

mary angela douglas 6,14 february 2016

*from Ode to a Greecian Urn, by John Keats.