Equations curled his hair.
Numbers made vacant his stare.
Behind his thick-lensed glasses
Reflected a worn day of classes.
Echoing in his ears
Are not gleeful cheers,
But moans and groans and sighs
From variables, constants, and pis.
With red ink the papers he graded.
Each problem he measured and weighted.
(Why not choose a gentler hue
Like lavender, sandalwood, or blue?)
And when the scores were meted,
Again he was not greeted
With praise or thanksgiving or grin,
But with moans and groans yet again.
Perhaps he should change his profession.
Let language be his obsession!
Instead of x minus y equals z,
He could circle words with sp.
Yet to his understanding
That, too, would be demanding.
For when he would mention Shakespeare
The moans and the groans he’d still hear.
And with that thought he concluded
He should not be so deluded
To think that changing from letters to letter
Would make his life any better.
Ah! For numbers he was designed,
Thus, to his true calling resigned.
And if faced with whether or not “to be,”
He’d settle for x minus y equals z.
Thanks go to the math teacher to whom I’ve yet to be introduced. I see him often at Starbucks or Barnes and Noble and I only know his profession because of watching him grade papers at the two locations while writing of him. (Isn’t writing nothing more than penning observation?) He’s also the source of my poem, “Fact versus Fiction.” Who says math cannot inspire?
Memoir Memorabilia 