npm17 5+6+7

Catch-up time!  After an Armageddon of a week, I am finally on Spring Break and have a little time to relax and think mathematical thoughts again, and as a bonus, starting on Friday, I'm going to be posting a poem for two voices by one of my Diamond Miners each day.

The following are poems I had written earlier for Your Days Are Numbered, so I'm cheating a little, but I do actually want to catch up here!


April 5

The Extra Five Days

Three hundred sixty-five days in a year--

   any year--

   any year but a leap year

   a year like the year I was born

Three hundred sixty degrees in a circle--

   any circle--

   a circle the size of my eye

   a circle the size of the sun

     Five degrees or five days’ difference--

   or maybe six--

five nights of sleeping, five days of being--

doing and being and counting.           

 I         revolve around

     revolve around

     revolve around       and leap

but somehow the wheel of my year

stays five days ahead of a circle

 © HM 2016

April 6

Zero Counts Nothing

Zero is 

the great circle of being,

the all and the nothing, 

the everyone, the all of us.

Zero is 

the navel and the null,

the power and the nought.

Without zero

nothing could not be counted,

but only felt,

a hole in the fabric of things,

the holy gap that

no one can mend,

but everyone must mind.

© HM 2016 

April 7


      Three

3 is the magic number,

          bulging with possibilities.

                   One thing leads to

       another and then another.

Beginning middle end.

      3 has eyes to see and ears to hear.

                   3 purses its lips and blows 

             a kiss to the future.

Promise of wishes fulfilled.

© HM 2016

 
I'm also going to allow that this poem counts for April 8, and later today I'll be working on 9 and 10!