Peter Schmitt     Miami         (Steve Kronen)
Friends with Numbers

     If you make friends with numbers, you don't need any other friends.  
         --Shakuntala Devi, math genius

They are not hard to get to know:
6 and 9 keep changing their minds,
8 cuts the most graceful figure
but sleeps for an eternity,
and 7, lucky 7, takes
an arrow to his heart always.
5, halfway to somewhere, only
wants to patch his unicycle
tire, and 4, who'd like to stand for
something solid, has never had
two feet on the ground, yet flutters
gamely in the breeze like a flag.
3, for all his literary
accomplishments and pretensions
to immortality, is still
(I can tell you) not half the man
8 is asleep or awake.  1,
little 1.  I know him better
than all the others, these numbers
who are all my friends.  Only 2,
that strange smallest prime, can I count
as just a passing acquaintance.
Divisible by only 1
and herself, she seems on the verge,
yet, of always coming apart.
And though she eludes me, swanlike,
though I'd love to know her better,
still I am fine, there are others,
many, I have friends in numbers.

Originally published in Hazard Duty (Copper Beech Press, 1995)