With apologies to Gillian Beer, from whom I stole this title, and to Ken Golden, Mathematician
First, there’s what you can do with a ruler
Only as precise as your hand that lays it
Alongside inclusions, ice crystals melting, surprisingly
Similar in the abstract, whatever
Their particular uniquenesses. When waves
Move the ship, your hand slips too. There’s
What you can do in snow, what
In fire. What you can say about
Any of it in numbers: say 5, operating
Its own set of rules, magicked
Feathers fluttering from your sleeve. The change,
Sudden, where ice becomes not
Quite ice.
Permeable.
Excuse me:
The mathematician, not the poet, deployed the word
Magic, pulling the number
5 from which hat exactly? Unlike the poet, he’s studied
Theories of percolation for decades, head
Bent between lamplight and numbers, considering
How everything gives way, at
What moment. Crunching the numbers
Again, knuckling them under. You might say he invents
Nothing, just observes, creates only
Models of what he’s seen, if you haven’t seen him
Flick his wrist. Tada! A moment ago
You stood on solid ground. Now
Look down and see water rising
Right over your boots. Ice
Underfoot seemed just that firm
Until you looked across to the horizon,
Bedazzled, and saw it heave. Measurable
Undulation. Keep watching the hand turning
You to distraction. What
With all we know about
Walking on water, why do we believe
Our eyes? In solid ground? -5° C, say. A brine
Fraction of 5%. If numbers appear from thin air, golden,
Anything gives way, ice or earth. I’m not here
To charm or conjure. I’m just watching,
As if, knowing what the numbers come to,
I might be able to tell you how they mean.
Antarctica, 2010