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) |
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