Finding the Best Mathematician
At an Aegean port, surrounded
in cypress, your eyes
speak. I’m not
sure exactly what
they disclose. But what
I hear is something about eight
valleys and a triangle. I’ve
never been astonishing
with math, and couldn’t describe
distances between a ship from Brindisi
and this frail dock. But I do understand
the sag in my ankles
and last night’s spill of moon
from your breath as we
raced the last ship. But that
was years ago
and the collapse
of Rome many centuries before. Funny
now, the way I take
my husband’s hand
and your hand is a bridge between us. I rub
my cheek against
his cheek and am swiped
by a spray of sharp envies—
or were they your kisses. Your shadow, less
pathetic than your presence, I am forced to recall—
the odd ovals you shaped, and that ungainly
cypress I sketched when the sky shone
like white metal and ouzo flooded
my arteries. Easy now to subtract
or add—an urchin’s grip,
a coral sprig, my body’s hum. Hands, interlocking,
hips.
– maureen alsop
The poem "Finding the Best Mathematician" previously appeared in Rhino; this is the first time the poem and its companion collage have been featured together.