Incredible Math

( the series - with pictures by Kirk)


Evolution (is) a theory universally accepted, not because it can be proven by logical coherent evidence to be true, but because its only alternative, special creation is clearly incredible.
D.M.S. Watson - "Adaptation", Nature, No. 3119, Vol. 124, August 10, 1929, pp.231-234).


Part 1 - Branch (2/24/02)



Everywhere I look,
I see such incredible math:
The grip of “two-below”
squeezing water from the wind
and casting
chicken-down gems
upon the glass,


.
.
while up above the frosted branches break
like slow-motion crystal; Hackberry atoms
splitting to reveal
parameters encoded
in the seed.






Part 2 - In the groove (2/25/02)



Everywhere I look I see
such incredible math:
Orion, the “triple-dot”
tracing a path – like a giant
3-D Spirograph, bobbing
through the seasons as
the bow of Terra rocks
to the tock of anticipated waves.


Brother Sun slicing
though grooved heavens like a bobsled,
down a track of rigid “nothingness”,
ever pushed and pulled by pulsars
and the stellar winds
of the mighty Milky Way, but still
He smashes the horizon
exactly where, and when
he should.






The grass too explodes,
like clockwork, with the mud.
We see it every year, about this time:
The felting of the branches and the buds,
the irony of ice, soon to come
and daffodils against the tawny muck.


I have chased these rhythms with my lens
‘til I know now the basic parts:
A warming
monolithic snow
dipping maple wood wet-black and casting snowmen,
followed by the polyrhythm drip and the ever receiving earth.
Next, a needlework of shoots against the boggy browns,
Kelley-tuffs, amidst the straw, random Robin,
Bartlett pair,
cataracts of blossom pouring cream into
newspaper-colored skies,
and one day pouring “wedding-white”
piercing on deep blue.


 

Next, the Dogwood barking at the heals of Red-bud
even as the Oak fluoresce (unseen) in floral brown.
Two weeks later, catkins line the gutters.


Two days later and the world is pollen purgatory
anchored in our eyes and throat.
Two blinks later, and the world
is garden salad

dressed in tulips for tomatoes.

Every year
to the spear,
Right on time,
like the charting
of a beating heart,


Part 2.5



Over time
we find
ten trillion human noses:
each, a variation on a theme
of bridge, and bone, and the double-barreled
orifice.





Some are wide and some are thin
some are pointed at the chin …
Some are noble, some are cute
some are angled like a chute …

But if I push mine up
to imitate a pig
and somehow left it there,
would anyone’ve married me?

Oh, what incredible math!


Part 3 – Bell Curve 2/26/02



Everywhere I look, I see
such incredible math:


The hyperbolic curve
of a swelling shell














a dewy web, a falling ball, the Brooklyn Bridge or
the measure of my Honey
stepping from the bath,
throwing righteous angles…


Everywhere,
the glory in the
tangent and the slope,
the axis, the freeze, 

the grid-work, the T’s
the patterns, the spiral,
the thick form of trunk.


Everywhere the grand
addition and subtraction,
refraction and reflection,
the changing direction
and the scatter of the form.


Oh,
I am in love with noses and with roses
and with trees.
Give me a heaven stuffed with chins,
or a day before her breasts
to fathom line.
(Ain’t it sublime)


Indeed, I’ve never met a line
I did not like-
be it wedded to a kite or mountain… or a fountain
or a cloud, or the loudness
splitting in my ears.










part 4 - Binary Rhapsody - February 27, 2002



Everywhere I turn
I hear such incredible math:
A sonic tapestry of
reconstructed voices
woven from my car doors in a blessed
trigonometry.


Could it be that this,
THIS
chorus in my ears is just
a big fat code?


I turn the “vessel” in my eye,
break the sun across
the grooves: spy an oil slick
made crisp and round,
captured in blonde vinyl.
If I understand,
this Compact Disk,
is daughter of the Long-play
minus the terrain.


A kind of blinking number – frozen thunder,
a static line of Yes and NO,
batting light back in the face
of a needled eye.


Oh MY!


Each timbre bears its own special mark:
0000010100101000011101010100010001111
or
1010001000010001000010000
or
010001010111010010000100000110101001001000100010100100000000001010101010010101010010010000010100100000000000010101010001000101001000000000001111001010010101111111111111101010010010000100101110101010101011001010010111


Could it be ones and zeros
hold a wafting flute,
a crashing drum
or -- a cacophony of sound?


(And how do speakers play the note
of more than any one wave at once?)


Will you tell me:
sound is found in sun, or
the slap of shadow as I drive past a picket-fence of early morning trees
and the slats of red-light bat through my lids?






Will you tell me that a digit
takes my soul to heaven as another spreads its leaven,
even as that Manson guy
adds numbers from Hell?


Oh,
Play me the math of birds and bells,
of siren voices cutting swerves.
Show me the adding of a Schubert,
or a Keaggy or a Cole.






Flash the lights of angels singing--
Tell me that the phone is ringing…
in my head.


Oh Dear,
Could this next step really be --
that all this audio in me
is more of “On and Off?”


I understand the basic thing.
I am decked in Pinna wings,
(ear flaps if you will).
I sight the tunnel and the coil,
the cochlea or foil stretched across the drum--
Then hum till the mini bones break loose.


So … the mini-bones are shaking, the stirrups are’a quaking
even as some tympanic membrane trills like
taunt cellophane.


But then?


All this grand libretto
ringing down the shafts
is meaningless to me apart from chemistry and nerve--
I’ve got headphones in my head, and
microphones like rods and cones
that take a hit and send a dot.
Hit me with the right vibration,
I am dashing in elation,
sending an equation to some neuron deeper still
till all the math of out ear
is made the math of inner.


On and Off,
Yes or no, light or night,
blood or bite
acid, base,
ion trace, synapse tipping
charges whipping…
and the trading of electrons at the border
of reality.






Oh Dear …
Vivaldi is
an ion shift, a peptide rift,
a Brain storm …or
a very complex bar-code in the count!








Deep inside, we find
a galaxy of plus and minus charge,
a trading floor …
a shock-exchange with books
more elaborate than Enron’s.
!
Color us in duo-tone, log it all binary,
Could it be that we are numbers, hearing number?
or
If you built a universe of only “ah!” and ( )
you might
assign a number
to my pleasure as I reel
within the ions of Iona?
Or could it be that this is magic
after all?






Part 5 -- Theometry 3/3-5/02
Note: while speaking this poem,
lift one eyebrow and burst into periodic maniac chuckle.



Everywhere I look
I see such incredible math.


The lashes is my daughter’s lid
are set like finely tooled ruler-hatch,
millipede legs,
or jewels…
But only fools
would trace that splendor
to roulette.


Indeed, I find mathematics in the oddest places:
Angle worms and
inch worms, tape worms,
and ADDERS,
manta RAYS and POINTers,
PoinSETtias and SETters


ha!


YARD dogs …
and
Foot dogs …(Foot Dogs?)
arithmeTICKS …
the Counting crows, the Great Divide …
the multiplying rabbits, METRICulating cows
Sub-tier-action beetles.
Eagle-signs (groan)
Hippo-possum-MOOSES!


HA!!!


Oh Dear,
Just speak a thing
and I find pleasure
in the measure,
and the beat,
the sequence and the shape,
the ratio and the rate,
the function and the art,
the ardor
and the order,
or
the look
of necessary
chaos.


Part 6 – Creation ditty



Could it be that we are living in a grand equation
greater than the sum of all effect?






Could it be the math is holy?


He was called
the Great Physician;
Anyone for
mathematician?
Posted on Wednesday, February 6, 2008 at 08:53AM by Doc Op | 1 Comment

READER COMMENTS (1)


there is a necessary
appearance
of chaos because
what would we do if there wasn't?

now take away
justification
minus the subtraction

and we have
a positive